From “Capsize”, to “Towsh”, to “Jaspr”: How Berlin became ground-zero for a trading revolution

From a wide-eyed Canadian teenager to a Berlin cliché of a startup, Jaspr has had a pretty incredible history.

“Capsize”: A puzzle missing a piece

Jaspr has had three names. Its first — “Capsize” — was the name given to a teenage obsession I had. How can it be, with eBay then exploding and the “sharing economy” ramping up, that trade could be left behind? Why have all attempts to do it failed? I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

The result of that obsession was 1) to identify the core problem with the platforms that have come before and 2) a very simple, powerful, elegant solution to that problem. The problem was matching: none of the trade platforms out there would actually match you with suitable trade partners; they just followed the classified-ad paradigm that works for cash (“Here’s my tv, I want 200 bucks”) but was horrible for trade (“Which of these 200 TVs trades for what I have!?”). The good vibes around trade were again and again crushed by how hard it was to find a good trading partner.

The result was a website called Capsize, a project I build in Vancouver, Canada while severely jet-lagged from a trip to Europe and waking up every night at 2 AM. Eventually, the project was used as the basis of my master’s thesis where I got about 50 students to trade textbooks, electronics, ride-shares, language lessons, an other cool stuff with each other. It was a basic-as-hell website, but it worked. Capsize was born.

“Towsh”: An Idea is Nothing Without a Team with a Dream

Trade, it seemed, could work if you took the huge obstacle of finding a good trade out of the equation. But it took almost a decade before this powerful solution to the barter problem would be matched with the courage it would take to take the leap into making it a reality. And like any successful project it started with the formation of a great team… over beer in Kreuzberg.

With eyes watering from a heroic dose of hot-wings, Tobi was introduced to the idea of starting an app for cash-free trade with a very clever core technology. He was hooked — he saw that we would be the first to make trade lucrative, and at a time where the world seemed to be craving a more humane way to do commerce with each other. Working evenings and weekends, the project moved forward on mobile, with the goal of seeing whether or not Berlin wanted trade.

While holding our day-jobs at Babbel, Tobi and I realised two things: “Capsize” was a cool name, but not one that any non-native English speaker would get. And two: that we needed a product designer to bring us the distance. We approached a rockstar, Steve, and got him addicted to the idea of a world with trade. “Towsh” was born.

About a thousand traders later, the results were in: The world did want trade.

“Jaspr”: Here Goes Nothing

History has taught us one thing for certain: you can’t stop a group of guys with a shared obsession.

We quit our jobs, got a government grant (thanks, Angela!), and jumped into the deep end. On May 1 2016 our team met for the first time as a full-time army, with desks haphazardly strewn around our new office: my living room:

We moved to Switzerland for four months for a business accelerator, worked long hours with no such thing as a “quitting time’ and find ourselves closer to each other and impassioned by our mission every day.

Our team has expanded, too. We’re extremely lucky to have three more extremely devoted people join Jaspr and to fill in the gaps in the founding team. We have Tom as our Android developer, working like mad to get the Android app caught up to the iOS app. And we have Louis and Camille, who bring in much needed expertise in marketing to make sure we can get our message out to people who will love trade.

It’s a rare thing in life, to have a truly grand dream on the rainy shores of Canada’s west coast, and over ten years later to be sitting in Kreuzberg with a German and an Aussie, planning, plotting, and brooding for a future we think the world deserves: a future where cash-free trade can finally provide a people-first marketplace full of incredible opportunity. It’s a dream come true.

Find out more at http://jasprtrades.com