Swapt

/ Startups / By

Founders: Trevor Brown & Andrew Smith
Founding: 2022
Mission: Website
Employees: 4 & 75% Local
Workplace: Remote
Stage & Capital Raised: Pre Seed & <$3M Raised
Investors: Asymmetric Capital, Perkins Cove Partners, Andrew Bialecki & Ed Hallen
Key Customers: DoorDash, OuterKnown
Glassdoor Rating: N/A
Valuation (estimated): <$10M
^ this is a useless number. There is no tangible valuation until the business is sold or goes public. Don’t forget it!

Swapt is “software that helps increase brand awareness and help you track return on investment of your in-person campaigns and activations”. Founded in 2022 by former Klaviyo engineer Andrew Smith & Co-Founder Trevor Brown, Swapt is on a mission to help customers make sense of their offline data and make e-commerce into, well, commerce. They’re backed by Klaviyo founders Andrew Bialecki & Ed Hallen with additional seed capital from Asymmetric Partners & Perkins Cove Partners.

Andrew founded the Enterprise Solution Architecture Team at Klaviyo and through that experience got to work with brand name commerce partners like Lord & Taylor, Glossier, etc. providing solutions and doing deep consulting work focused on helping them grow their business. 

He learned a few things. First and foremost, brands don’t really understand their offline data. Some retailers might put a QR code in their stores and get like 100 subscribers in a year. That doesn’t exactly move the needle. Then there’s the quality problem. Brands struggle with understanding which data is relevant and why. They grapple with integrating different datasets as well as assessing data quality. The appeal of third-party datasets is high, but the conversion rates are disappointingly low, causing potential damage to businesses.

Swapt is bridging the divide. They use onramps like QR Codes, NFC Tags, Apple Wallet (tap to pay), and games like spin the wheel to bridge the physical and digital world, helping brands acquire more customers and keep their datasets clean and centralized.

Let’s give a quick example of this in action. Swapt powers activations for Kelly Slater’s brand Outerknown. Outerknown sets up a booth because, why be at a store when you can sell merch at the beach? They put a surfboard front and center with a QR code taped to the front. The QR code captures e-mail & SMS data for users who want to enter a live giveaway for a Kelly Slater signed surfboard and 20% off of purchases made at the booth. 20%? Utah, get me two! These QR codes led to 500 new subscribers in 48 hours, with 52% of purchasers making a second purchase, and a material lift in average order value. And all I did was regurgitate their case study. Swapt helps Doordash leverage QR codes at all of their events like the St. Patricks Day Parade, Boston Calling, the Congressional Baseball Game, Philly’s Italian Market, Eat LA, and more in order to increase brand awareness and help them track return on investment of their in person campaigns. This team gets it. The possibilities are endless!

Swapt codes are now in the hands of over 30 brands like Chomps, DoorDash, Wears Woody & Outerknown and recognizes repeat customers at the individual retailer level in order to better facilitate personal offers and instant gratification experiences, tightly integrated with Shopify & Klaviyo. They can offer custom offers, direct money, or anything personalized really. 

Swapt’s current focus is to prove out their value proposition and build out their base technology platform before they go out to raise an additional capital later this year. Until then, they’ll stay lean & mean building better, faster, cleaner commerce experiences for brands over the summer ahead!

Operators to Know:

My investigative powers continue to need work so apologies to the Swapt team if I missed any up & coming operators internally

Key Roles To Be Hired:

  • More roles coming later this year!

If I were interviewing here are some questions I’d ask:

  • What are the most important company goals for the rest of the year?
  • Could you share some details about how the technology works? Why is it important now?
  • What are the biggest challenges as you prove out the value proposition?
  • What is the long term vision for the company?
  • What are the most important company goals for the rest of the year?

We’re optimizing for readability here so to learn more about Swapt you’ll have to D.Y.O.R. I’m excited to watch this team bridge more commerce from the digital to physical world. All consumers applaud your efforts. See you in a QR code around town and beyond!

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