IVxChange - Our First Venture

In the Beginning

IVxChange was the name of our (myself, Russ, and Drew) first real business venture.  Essentially, IVX (as we called it, for short) was a miniature Craigslist for the local college community of UCSB and the infamous Isla Vista (hence IV).  We enabled users to list things to buy or sell on a market place, look for local events, housing, jobs, class notes, alcohol prices of the local retailers, and finding deals and promotions from the nearby businesses.

I wish I could show you IVxChange.com, but Russell lost it when we were moving hosting providers.  It pains me...

Anyway, we wanted to create a central location for students, businesses, and other community members connected.  We provided the environment that equipped these people to do this.  We thought this was such a GREAT idea. 

Young Lessons in Business

We were ecstatic and enthusiastic about developing and promoting it.  I remember telling my friends and family I had to go back to school two weeks before Winter Break ended because I had some "serious work" to do.  While Russell worked on developing the platform of the site, Drew and I pounded the pavement and pitched businesses, landlords, and rental management companies on signing up and getting involved.  We told them to get on it before we start sending loads of student traffic.

The reception was actually pretty good!  We had plenty of local housing listings for the next year on a cool map utility that Russ integrated with Google maps.  One landlord even called my cell phone one evening and had me walk him through signing up for an account and posting his listings because he was computer illiterate.

We struck deals with local businesses: in exchange for allowing them to advertise for free on our site we could put a sign or flyer in their place of business.  We also traded out advertising for services.  The owner of a silk screening business offered to make us shirts and signs at cost.

Once we had businesses and landlords on the site it was time to drive student traffic to the site.  The signs in the local businesses brought some traffic.  Facebook advertisements targeted to students in the UCSB network brought many more.  We had people listing things from old class notes, to textbooks, to old furniture in the marketplace. 

Next we started talking to the media.  I sent out emails to the campus newspaper, the Daily Nexus, and local publications like the Santa Barbara Independent and Santa Barbara News Press.  We had interviews with all three.  We were discussed in the Independent and on the front page of the Daily Nexus.  The reporter from the News Press wrote an article but never published it even though he said he was.  What an asshole.  That was another lesson, don't trust reporters.

Competition

Things were going well when...out of nowhere two competitors arose.  The first, Mablio.com, was another student group.  I must hand it to them, their website was well-crafted and they got their message out by flyering the school heavily.  They even offered prizes and drawings to their users for items like iPods. 

The second competitor is one that is still around and really picking up momentum, Uloop.com.  Uloop was a group of guys a few years older than us, well out of college, that shared the same idea as the rest of us.  They seemed to be well-funded and opened their doors with a beautifully crafted Web 2.0-esque website.  They hired students at $10/hr to flyer, hold signs, and otherwise evangelize.  I must commend Uloop, they were out there all day, everyday.  They quarter page ads in the campus newspaper, had 10 foot signs, and plastered campus and Isla Vista with signs.

On top of that, Facebook came out with their "Marketplace" which practically crippled all of us.  Although, I think Uloop is stilling doing well and going strong.

Heart Breaker

After a few months of hard work, we threw in the towel.  We learned many of our first business lessons competing with these guys.  Our time and effort was better spent elsewhere.  Plus, we had other exciting projects brewing.   More on those in later posts.