Published: December 2007
Greg Boesel JD, MBA’99 and Mark Hexamer JD, MBA’99 have created a stir in the Internet marketing world with their new web site, Swaptree, which enables users to barter books, CDs, DVDs, and video games without transaction costs. The site’s revenues come from advertising. Boesel describes how the concept was born in 2004: “My partner would come back from visiting his mom in Florida with 12 hardcover books, which we always ended up trading. It got us thinking about how to make trades happen. I was interested in the math behind it, and started working with some algorithms to make two-, three-, and four-way trades.”
The two already had a successful business track record. As law students they created a company in 1998 called “Sidebar Software,” which marketed a product to facilitate legal research. Family and friends provided an initial $200,000 to support Swaptree, and two years later, with the infusion of $2 million from additional investors, the partners launched their bartering web site. There are other Internet sites at which people can make trades, but Swaptree “is, significantly, the first site to pull off direct trades between more than two people,” thanks to Boesel’s “nifty algorithm” wrote Michael Copeland in CNN Money, which dubbed the new site “the eBay of swap, but better.”
- “About Us,” from the Swaptree site
- Carroll School of Management description of Sidebar Software (scroll down)
- Article about impending launch of Swaptree in the July 27, 2006 Christian Science Monitor
- Article on Swaptree in CNN Money
- Radio interview with Greg Boesel on WRLR 98.3 FM, Roundlake Heights, Illinois
(extended telephone interview begins approximately 10 minutes into the program) - Discussion of strengths and potential weaknesses of Swaptree in the blog, Techcrunch
