One of CWC’s Business students has co-founded an app for Android phones which was launched across London this week. Ziad Al-Ziadi, a second year student, co –founded the app with two business partners he met at a Startup Weekend event at Google Campus last June. The app, called Paperclip, allows users to take a photo of an unwanted item, upload it and trade it for another item nearby of a similar value. The app has been developed by a team in the Czech Republic following investment from a hedge fund in New York.
“Back in June last year, I met Rich who is a finance professional at Google Campus as part of a weekend event,” said Ziad. “The goal of the weekend was to come up with a business plan, develop an app and pitch it to investors and mentors and the winner would get a prize. I encouraged him to pitch his idea, which got through to the final 10 and we then had a team of seven people at Google who we worked with to build the website and did the best with the limited time that we had. In the end we came second overall and had some really positive feedback from the judging panel. Since then we’ve had the app developed properly and created a website following investment that we received after just two weeks which is quite rare and we’ve been working really hard, putting the money to good use.”
“The app is free to download via our website – at the moment it’s just for Android but in the next few weeks it should be available for iPhones. It’s really easy to use – you take a picture of an item you don’t want anymore, give it a price, title and description and then you upload it to the app. You’re then matched with items based on value so if you’re selling a guitar worth £100, you won’t see an offer for a car because the values of the two items are so different. You’re able to set the distance you’d like to search for items, swipe left or right indicating if you’d like to trade or move onto the next item until you see something you’re interested in and then you start messaging with the other person through the app before you meet up and trade. It’s different from Gumtree or Craig’s List as you don’t always know who you’re dealing with when using those sites, but this is social media integrated so you have to have a Facebook account to log in.”
“The thing I’ve learnt is that you don’t have to be techy to develop an app – you often find that people who are good at technology don’t really know how to run a business, so they can make the app but they don’t know how to market it or get funding etc. As part of a small team I get involved in every aspect of the business from marketing to finance and business development and as a resident at Google Campus, you get help from people who’ve been in the business for years which has been invaluable to us.”
The app is available to download now via https://paperclip.co/