What Swapstar is all about
It’s a web-platform that connects people and enables you to engage in market activities irrespective of your financial endowments. You can meet new people, share experiences, make new friends, and exchange or lend goods as well as services among each other. Summing up, you are able to use your individual talent, create a real social network, and have an ALTERNATIVE.
How does it work?
- Register for free
- Upload products and services
- Determine an appropriate amount of Swapstars for the product or service
- Earn Swapstars
- Get what you need and create a real social network
How to earn Swapstars?
- Uploading your products and services
- The actual exchanging or lending process
- Making advertisement for Swapstar (e.g. sharing FB posts)
Categories
There are no limits to your possibilities (as long as it is legal), e.g. electronics, tutoring, transportation, sports, music, entertainment, …
Your advantages
Circumvent the monetary system
- Trade without money
- Swapstars are just a means rather than an end in itself – nobody can enrich him-/herself by accumulating Swapstars – they can never be exchanged for money
Social component
- Meet new people and enlarge your real social network
- Share experiences (e.g. travel report)
Efficiency
- Use your talent
- Trade through the platform efficiently
Substainability
- Reuse instead of waste
- Minimize your use of resources (e.g. car sharing)
Broad Range
- Exchange goods as well as services
- Use the possibility of lending
Special features for entrepreneurs
- Present your business idea
- Use Swapstars as non-monetary crowd funding option
- and many more…
How the idea emerged
Discussions and talks with fellow students and professors as well as examining alternative systems encouraged us to make a first step to translate such a system into practice. First, we summarized different concepts, ideas and models, which we have learned and done research on; they created the basis for our idea. Our experiences include various academic courses on (socio-) economics (orthodox as well as heterodox ecomomics), marketing, finance and social entrepreneurship. Moreover, books we read as well as research papers also contributed to the concept.
The money raised will be used to
Create the platform itself in technical terms
- design
- gamification features
- internal Swapstar system
- launch
- tab the website’s full potential in Austria, Switzerland and Germany
- a possible mobile app