Raffle.it: a new take on online trading

Many thanks to Ernst over at thenextweb.org for his time getting to understand Raffle.it. Here’s the interview:

Written on May 1, 2008 – 1:54 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

 

Every week we publish an interview with a start-up. We ask five questions, hoping the answers will give you inspiration and new views.

This time I’m interviewing Pascal Wheeler, founder of British start-up Raffle.it.This is a peer to peer marketplace based on the raffle as the trading mechanism. Although Wheeler and his team are still “stuck on the fund raising roller-coaster”, they’ve soft-launched the service. For now, selling is limited to invite only users as Wheeler wants to avoid unnecessary disappointment. Yet in the near future, Raffle.it could be an interesting new player in the field of online trading. In this edition of Five Questions for Start-ups, Wheeler explains why.

How did you come up with the idea of Raffle.it?

“Raffle.it came from a gut feeling that there was a better way to buy and sell. No science, little research (at that time) and not a great deal of brain time, just one of those ‘there’s a better way’ feelings. Raffles are such a powerful mechanism for channeling common interest but are so often overlooked and underestimated – raffles are for school and village fetes, and for charities to raise a little extra cash. Not so! People that enter a raffle do so because of their interest in the prize or their interest in the beneficiary. With a couple of tweaks Raffle.it was borne to be used by anyone – for good cause, personal gain, or commercial awareness.”