The idea of building a caring, good-natured barter network has been an obsession of mine for a long time, dating back to when I built a prototype as my bachelor thesis over ten years ago. Not being able to shake the idea, two fantastic Babbel colleagues of mine and I quit our jobs, obtained a government grant, and set ourselves the monumental task of building the best cash-free trade platform ever built.

We launched our passion-project in March in Berlin, and have since then attracted nearly 10.000 traders who have arranged over 2.000 trades in the community. We have seen a huge variety of trades, from language lessons and assistance to laptops to dance classes to homemade food.

While saving money is an obvious benefit to the platform, we have been thrilled to see that more often people are motivated more by a desire to help, and be more closely connected to, their community. Seventy percent of our users are non-German speaking and very often new to the city. 

The result is a community of open, kind, helpful people who take care of each other while opening doors of opportunity for people having a hard time integrating into German life. We are extremely proud of what we have seen from the community.

We are now bringing the platform to Amsterdam. We have seen that the Dutch are extremely open, kind people with a history of supporting and participating in endeavours of this kind. We are extremely excited to see if we can bring the joys of Jaspr to the wonderful city of Amsterdam!