My monthly column for VentureFizz is back. This month, I take a first look at peddl, an MIT Media Lab startup. From the post:
When it comes to buying and selling secondhand things, there have been few technological innovations after the garage sale and Craig’s List. But a new startup called peddl is using its MIT Media Lab brainpower to use a combination of a mobile app, hyperlocal, and new market models to make it easier to broadcast the idea that “I have this” and “I want this” to prospective local buyers and sellers.
The story starts at the MIT Media Lab, where Tony DeVincenzi, a creative director, Matthew Blackshaw, a Yale graduate and former Microsoft employee, and Dávid Lakatos, a Hungarian national and particle physicist work on experimental computer interaction projects. They came up with an idea 6 months ago to come up with a software application that could have a large outreach and would solve a problem that many people have: easily buying and selling secondhand things to people around us, with “people around us” meaning hyperlocal.
