Tradepal

Tradepal (est. in 2009) is an education technology company based in San Francisco, California. The Company designs online tutoring software for collaborative learning to increase student success and retention in schools and colleges.

Tradepal
Type of businessPrivate
Founded2009
Headquarters
535 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94105
,
USA
Founder(s)Karim Guessous (Founder, CEO)[1] Tamar Burton (co-Founder, CXO)
IndustryVirtual learning environment
URLTradepal.com

History

Tradepal has a history of providing solutions for higher education. During their early initiatives, the Company developed technologies to facilitate the building of a proprietary interest graph leading to the discovery, sharing, and trading of items among like-minded people. The company developed a mobile application to provide students with a platform to support fellow students struggling with food and housing insecurity along with a growing number of campus initiatives including Keep America Beautiful with RecycleMania, Campus-based Food Pantries, and the Food Recovery Network (FRN).[2]

Tradepal introduced its people-centric marketplace at the DEMO conference held in Santa Clara, California on September 12 to 14, 2011.[3][4] The peer-to-peer product was well received by the Silicon Valley technical community, and was named one of the top 10 favorite startups at the DEMO Conference.[5][6] As of April 2013 Tradepal.com offered peer-to-peer sharing of resources to college communities.[7]

Tradepal originally designed a peer-to-peer (P2P) platform where counterparts would buy, sell and trade and ultimately take steps to reduce their carbon footprint by promoting sustainable behaviors through reuse.[8] In 2014, the Company created a mobile-first application to engage students promoting sustainability on college campuses. The Company collaborated with student organizations located in California, Florida, and Texas who were part of the American College & University Presidents' Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) network of colleges and universities. In 2018, the Company transitioned into a business-to-business (B2B) service where it develops educational, training and collaborative learning software platforms.

Original operations

Tradepal was made up of a core principle and multiple functionalities. Central to the experience on Tradepal is the social and interest graphs of the user, commonly called the Cluster of Friends, which includes both Facebook friends on Tradepal and Tradepal friends. The functionalities evolve around a User Profile that comprises the user’s Items, the Friends’ and Friends of Friends’ listings, the user’s Wishes and individual Carbon Savings Calculator. Both Profiles and Listed Items could be shared internally with Tradepal friends, or externally with Facebook friends and Twitter followers. Users can trade with peers by instantly buying an item using the Buy Now option or by sending an offer using either cash and/or barter[9] Users can also communicate with one another using messaging, item comments, or online chat. The concept of trust is based on both the use of Facebook identities as Tradepal identities as well as a rating system derived from all transactions conducted on the platform. All payments are conducted through PayPal's Adaptive Payments and benefit from PayPal’s Buyer’s Protection.

See also

References
  1. Lonoff Schiff, Jennifer (February 21, 2012). "9 Ways Google+ Can Help Your Business". CIO magazine. Archived from the original on March 22, 2018. Retrieved March 22, 2018.
  2. Nellum, Chris. "Fighting Food Insecurity on Campus". Higher Education Today. Retrieved 29 June 2015.
  3. "Tradepal". DEMO conference. 2011. Archived from the original on March 22, 2018. Retrieved March 22, 2018.
  4. Sprouter (16 November 2011). "Sprouter: Punchtab, Pressly, Kibits, Tradepal". Financial Post. Retrieved 16 November 2011.
  5. Chima, Chikodi (15 September 2011). "Our 10 Favorite Startups of the DEMO 2011". TheNextWeb. Retrieved 15 September 2011.
  6. Takahashi, Dean (12 September 2011). "DEMO:Here's the list of Demo Fall 2011 presenting companies". VentureBeat. Retrieved 12 September 2011.
  7. Cargo, Kathryn (24 April 2013). "Program allows trade with pals, increased sustainability". The ShortHorn. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  8. "CO₂ and other Greenhouse Gas Emissions". OurWorldinData.org. OxfordUniversity. May 2017.
  9. Kelly, Meghan (13 September 2011). "DEMO: Tradepal brings bartering of physical goods online". VentureBeat. Retrieved 13 September 2011.
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