The best things in life can’t be bought — but they can be traded.
(Noel Wigdor is the cofounder and CEO of Jaspr Trades http://jasprtrades.com)
Sometimes the most beautiful things in life are hard to see. When AirBnB first promised their first users that they’d give them a platform to rent out their flats or travel like a local, it may have seemed like an idea that was economically sound or convenient or maybe fun. But what’s hard to see from just the kernel of a startup’s idea is the more subtle but infinitely more profound consequences that certain types of projects can have.
Think of the memories you would not have had without AirBnB. Think of your best vacations, and try to imagine what they would have been like had you and your loved ones stayed at a Best Western instead of that charming, special, authentic little spot you found on AirBnB. Economists might tell you the success of the platform is from the fiscal advantage it gives its users; a philosopher, though, will tell you it’s from the gap between the cookie-cutter vacation with the hotel and the rich, memorable, emotional experience you had instead with AirBnB. And the philosopher would be right.
The success of trade will rest on its ability to enrich the emotional experience of commerce. Yes, to make it longterm trades need to be lucrative, just as with the savings and secondary incomes from AirBnB. But the hard-to-see beauty of trade is going to usher cash-free exchange’s way into the mainstream — and we should all be thankful of that.
If you follow Jaspr you’re going to see this picture a lot:
The reason for this, apart from this being the first confirmed trade on our platform, is that for the team at Jaspr this represents a beacon on a hill for our vision. Marcel here, the one in green, dropped his iPhone and cracked its screen a couple of days before this photo was taken. He isn’t fussy when it comes to phones, he just wanted a smartphone without a broken screen (imagine that!), so instead of spending the money on a replacement, he checked to see how he might trade for one.
Using Jaspr (then called “Towsh” — check out our previous blog entries to learn about our history), he found me, who had an iPhone 4 sitting gathering dust in my closet. I was offering the iPhone in exchange for a few hours’ work translating our website — plus a coffee.
Now, Marcel had never done translation work in his life. But a moment of magic happened for him when he saw a perfectly good iPhone up for grabs for nothing more than some homework and a coffee. Incredulous, he contacted me, almost shy (can this be real?), and the next day we met up for the swap.
It’s Jaspr’s magical moment, like yours when you wake up in a oh-so-charming Italian villa instead of the insipid hotel room. He got a phone for nothing more than his skill as a regular Berliner with a strong level of English, and I used something taking up space in my closet for hundreds of euros worth of translation work — and did the exchange in a help-and-be-helped, feel good form of commerce.
This is the future of Jaspr. Economists will understand our rational appeal but miss the point, like they so often do with the sharing economy. Our users - our community - will have incredible experiences that only trade can offer. The rational reasons will be enough to get a large crowd to try Jaspr. The magic, though, will make them never turn back.
