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A Short History of LeftoverSwap

March 29, 2014 / 2 Comments

As I craned my neck to balance out the pain from sleeping on a couch in my friend’s studio, I squinted at subject of the latest email in my inbox: “Leftover Swap (SF Weekly).” Thinking I misread something with my askew glance, I read on: “Is Leftover Swap for real? And if so, would you consent to an interview?”

Little did I know how this email would dictate my life for the next several months. I folded up my sheets, set them in my designated corner, and headed back to what was now the office couch, formerly bed.

A snapshot of some leftover food posts.

A snapshot of some leftover food posts.

The past
Three years back, I had traveled to Seattle to visit my old college roommate to feast, dream, and rest in the salty humidor of a coastal city. Our relationship was built much more on conversations about ideas, philosophies, and music rather than alcohol, video games, sports, or women in our life, and in 2010 the conversation gravitated toward Silicon Valley’s absurdity. Like Facebook recruiting videos describing how the video chatting application would, like, change the way the world communicated. And like the outrageous bags of money going to adding social layers to everything, connecting people who like potatoes with other people who like potatoes: potatr or some other bullshit like that. Sure, we were a bit jealous that our parking space social network didn’t take off, but at least we were still grounded. And no matter, we had our own parking spaces.

We discussed what other concepts that could benefit from some slapped-on digitized social features. And while we did, we found ourselves with a modern quandary: too much pizza, and too little fridge space.

“I wish we could share that we had extra pizza available.”

And so LeftoverSwap was born. A hasty watermelon logo chosen. A quick website set up with limited functionality. But it was getting late. And a day or so later, I headed off back to other places for awhile. The site languished, development stalled, and leftovers trashed. For three years.

The nearer past
Earlier last year, I relearned some web development. I took the LeftoverSwap idea as some good sample content, created some nice graphics, grabbed some stock photos, faked some screenshots, and came up with something seemingly halfway legitimate. Legitimate enough that the San Francisco reporter and then thousands of others at least believed in it, if only for the time required to have an initial revulsion.

After she published the small blurb in the SF Weekly, it echoed through NPR, BBC, newspapers, and hundreds of radio shows. I answered reporters’ questions and spouted off a litany of food waste and hunger facts while I sat, or paced, in my boxer-briefs. My sister texted saying that she heard Paula Poundstone joke about it on “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!” I grew up with Poundstone’s rasp voicing the characters of some cartoon favorites, and to have her acknowledge and riff on something my brain thought about is LeftoverSwap’s greatest accomplishment.

Of course, we didn’t whip the press up with just a website. Soon after that first article, my old roommate took to his computer like he did back in his nocturnal computer science class days. I filled him in on the latest mentions, hoping each one would somehow polish and speed up the release of the final, real, app. It took him a few months, and it lacked many features (no potato networking), but it was published. In the app store.

Would people use it? Would this actually work?

The nearest past
We launched, I sent out an announcement to our email list, and we waited. We got word of the first swap: Pop Chips in New York City. To have people actually download it was astonishing. To have the system actually work? Well, a cherry on top.

Overall, we have had about 10,000 downloads, and 90% of those actually created an account. We now have a stockpile of thousands of leftover food photos. As to what we’ll do with them, who knows – maybe one of those giant pictures made up of thousands of thumbnails. A giant half-eaten pizza, made out of thousands of half-eaten pizza photos.

traffic

Website traffic over three months after the launch.

The fervor of the launch has died down, but posts still accumulate. We’ve both had other projects and circumstances carry us away from this experiment. I’m open to suggestions on where to carry it next, though — we have yet to put out an Android app, though we have some fundamental code written (or so I hear). A web-based version would also be awesome. Perhaps open-sourcing and letting the community take control is the next step.

Learnings, if any
LeftoverSwap is on the edge of acceptable – technology-wise and socially. It’s on this possibility frontier that things happen and move society in one direction or another. When first conceived, the lack of GPS-enabled phones didn’t support the idea. When first conceived, the thought of meeting strangers through the Internet still carried a lot of stigma (ew, who uses the Internet? What kind of creeps? Oh wait, I guess I use the Internet. Maybe OKCupid isn’t that bad. Maybe Tinder is on to something…).

On this frontier is where people have intense reactions, as well. These are the kind of reactions that the press loves to induce in their audience, and will heavily report on: “And did you hear about this? Did you hear about this one? How would you like to EAT someone ELSE’S leftovers!?! Story at 10.” And the press is how you get the word out about anything — especially when you don’t have a cent to spend.

A few other random lessons:

  • Reporters are extremely nice – especially the Japanese who gave me a pizza and a mousepad of Mt. Fuji.
  • You never know where posting ideas on the Internet can lead.
  • Making an app is hard, and will take you at least twice as long as you expect.
  • If there seem to be laws against what you’re doing, do it anyway, just to see if anything happens. This does not include murder or any of the bad ones.
  • All those “Featured in x publication, x website, and x show” that companies tend to list are meaningless.

And that’s a short history of LeftoverSwap.

Tagged: business, food, leftoverswap, press, start ups

Brain Dump on Beneficial Marketing

February 25, 2013 / Leave a Comment

Many cast marketing as a manipulative industry that distorts our beliefs into craving another taquito or plastic injection-molded toy to fill the voids of our stomachs and closets. Even if we see marketing that espouses the concept of an energy-efficient, locally-based, low-carb widget, we tend to think that the whole thing has been ‘greenwashed‘. Wal-Mart can’t actually be a net positive for the environment, can it?

Is there a place for a marketing agency that promotes only truly net-positive goods and services? And not just promotion with the goal of increasing sales, but with the goal of bettering our world. Obviously this flies in the face of capitalism and the need for profit, but I think there are plenty of business owners who would agree with that sentiment, and who believe their products do such a thing.

I’m thinking things like Patagonia’s “Don’t Buy This Jacket“. One of the premises behind Patagonia’s values is that its goods are built to last, and that due to their quality you don’t need to replace them as often which means less waste. For “Cyber Monday,” Patagonia said don’t buy things. This worked for them because no one else had this message.

This hypothetical agency would have a high bar for clients. Being a client of the agency would be as much as a certification as being a ‘B-corporation‘. The agency would only use the most efficient means of advertising. Maybe some of the resources would be used to attack greenwashing, exposing other companies ‘Yes Men‘-style.

This type of marketing would usually be called activism. But if it participates within the system and remains profitable, it could be another gear in the progress machine.

Tagged: business, ideas, marketing, Patagonia

I Have Money, Now What?

January 22, 2013 / 1 Comment

Some of my friends have wondered what to do with their money now that they can comfortably pay for rent, food, and drinks with some cash leftover. Sure, they know enough to put it in a savings account, and may even know enough to keep enough savings for a few months in case or emergencies or their current employment situation deteriorates. But soon that savings account balance begins to grow beyond what is needed for that emergency legal advice about what to do with the kilo of yayo, and beyond what is needed to feel comfortable without a job for a few months. What then?

Why lots of cash is bad to hold on to
Welcome to the world of investing. Banks, due to the Fed’s low rates that are a result of a slow economy (#thanksobama), currently offer extremely low interest rates (the current highest from bankrate.com is 0.95% from Ally Bank). Inflation, on the other hand, was 1.7% in 2012 and 3% in 2011. That means, if you leave cash in your savings account, it loses that purchasing power each year. And even with the highest rate available with a savings account, you’d make up only about half of that eroding value in 2012 if you kept your money in cash.

You might think you should just purchase all the beer you can then, if cash loses value. Unfortunately, beer goes bad too. And even though liquor keeps, your landlord may not accept that.

So what the hell do you do?

What the hell you do
You have a few choices – one of which I’ll go over that probably applies to 95% of the population. Before we go into the choices, if you work for a place that happens to match retirement contributions, max those out — it’s free money. Also, make sure you do have enough cash set aside where you are comfortable if you are fired, quit, or just can’t handle pushing paper around anymore. I’d say the main goal of investing is for you to be comfortable. Everyone has a level of risk they are willing to accept. If you want 6 months of expenses saved up, and that’s what makes you feel comfortable, do it. Moving on.

You either like the idea of following separate companies, keeping up on how business is going for them, betting on them, and taking responsibility for those choices, or you don’t have time for that crap.

If you don’t have time for that stock picking crap
This is what you do with the cash outside of your emergency fund:

  1. Open up a Vanguard account.
  2. Transfer in whatever pile of cash that you have sitting around.
  3. Allocate it as follows: 45% Total Stock Market (VTI), 20% Total International Stock (VXUS), 20% Total Bond Market (BND), 10% REIT (VNQ), and 5% Materials (VAW).
  4. After this, once a year, readjust your holdings to match the above allocation. This just means sell those that are above the allocation percentage and buy more of what’s below your target percentage.

Why the above choices? It’s just a general type of portfolio that gives you exposure to plenty of assets, and unless you’re trading in and out of stocks, Vanguard allows you to invest in their funds for free. Each one of these exchange-traded funds (ETFs) holds several different stocks (i.e., the Total Stock Market fund holds Apple, Exxon, GE, Chevron, IBM, Microsoft, AT&T, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and P&G in its top ten holdings…with about 2,990 other stocks). The international fund is obviously less U.S.-centric. Bonds are seen as less risky than stocks. REITs give you exposure to real estate and typically offer nice dividend yields (which is kind of like interest from a savings account — currently Vanguard’s REIT fund VNQ offers 2.36%). And, I’m just a fan of materials (chemicals and metals) based on how much more food and raw resources humans will seem to need in the future.

But, you can totally change these allocations to suit your needs. Don’t think materials are a good bet? Take that out of your allocation and put that 5% back into the Total Stock Market (VTI). There are plenty of other allocations that might suit your feelings as well. Remember, it’s about being comfortable.

ETFs versus index mutual funds
A side note on ETFs. There are some who speculate that ETFs can collapse. I don’t think this is likely, and if they do collapse, you probably have a lot more to worry about than a collapsed ETF (see zombies). But, if that collapse argument makes sense to you, use Vanguard’s index funds instead. The difference between these is spelled out here – and mainly that ETFs can be sold during the day while the index funds have a day or so lag. The corresponding funds for the above allocation are: VTSMX, VGTSX, VBFMX, VGSIX, VGPMX.

The costs of investing
With these funds, you will be paying an expense ratio. For example, the Total Stock Market fund has an expense ratio of 0.06%. However, the fund yields 2.1%. Additionally, this 0.06% is pennies compared to other managed funds. Now, you don’t get the same “expert” managing of your money with a Vanguard fund that simply buys everything possible in the market, but you don’t pay a 0.85% expense ratio like one of the largest mutual funds in the country. And the most important point is that 80% of mutual funds underperform the market. You may get one of the 20% that beat the market, but odds are simply against you. Also, since Vanguard doesn’t charge transaction fees when you use their account service, you avoid what other brokers normally charge.

Will you lose money with the above allocation? It’s possible. But if you do, chances are that everyone else will too — you own a little bit of all of the market. For example, the Total Stock Market fund lost about 50% of its value from 2008 to 2009, just like the rest of the market. But, if you didn’t panic (like you shouldn’t have), and held on, the ETF and market returned back that 50% over the rest of 2009. Beating inflation takes some acceptance of risk.

Socially responsible investing
You may not want to support some of the companies that these funds invest in. This is called socially responsible investing. If you care, you can look at what each fund holds and determine if you think it deserves your money. You might want to check out the Vanguard Social Index Fund (VFTSX), as well. But if you really want to avoid supporting the share prices of companies that you may have ethical or moral reservations about, you will probably have to invest on your own outside of index funds. You may also choose to invest in index funds now, even though it may compromise your values, and use whatever money you earn to fight those greedy, corporate bastards in the future.

Retirement accounts
Finally, you might wonder what the hell to do with a retirement account. Vanguard has funds for those as well, based on the year you aim to retire, and will allocate your money to safer assets as your retirement year approaches, so you don’t even have to reallocate anything yourself.

When do you start throwing money in a retirement fund? Well, after you have that emergency fund, and have maxed out any company-matched retirement contributions, and put aside whatever you have to save for that trip to Aspen or vacation or blow or other immediate spending goals, put some away for yourself in the future. Because ‘future you’ will appreciate it. Chances are you’ll need roughly a kajillion dollars to retire comfortably by the time that comes, especially for air conditioning based on the way the climate is going, so get started on that — while still having fun today.

And you might wonder whether to get a Roth or a traditional IRA. With a Roth, you pay taxes on contributions now. However, if you make $110,000 or over, you can’t contribute anything to a Roth. With a traditional IRA, you are taxed on the money you withdraw when you hit retirement age. It gets pretty confusing, so you really have to read up on this yourself.

If you like the idea of picking your own stocks
Now, if you do have time for that crap, you have time to research what the hell you should do on your own, and should get used to doing research. Good luck.

In closing
Your idea of acceptable risk will be different than others’. Do what makes you comfortable. If you want to keep half of your portfolio in cash, and only begin to invest a little of your savings, go for it. Additionally, while timing the market is pretty impossible, right now it’s hitting all-time highs. Maybe only invest a tenth of what you aim to, and keep investing a tenth over the next year or two until you’re fully invested – that’s called dollar cost averaging. While some studies prove it doesn’t do much, I think psychologically that it helps you feel comfortable that you’ll never really invest at the worst time ever.

Remember this advice was free, and that’s what it’s worth — while I think it applies to a majority of people, your situation may warrant a different tack. If you’re really worried, go see a financial advisor, but know that they also have their own incentives. The best usually charge a percent of your assets, and the worst likely get commission for each transaction.

Tagged: business, money
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