| Let’s swap!
Virginia Business
March 2004
Ever
get a gift certificate from a store you don’t
like? Cameron Johnson has, and now the 19-year-old Virginia
Tech student hopes to cash in on bad gifts.
Johnson, a Roanoke native, has launched
CertificateSwap.com, a Web-based business that lets
people sell off unwanted certificates or buy them at
reduced prices. If buyer and seller connect, Johnson’s
company gets 7.5 percent.
Gift certificates are a $40 billion a year business,
he says. He came up with the idea about a year ago and
last summer got a network of freelance programmers and
Web designers from as far off as India and the Ukraine
to help create the site, which launched in early December.
“It’s definitely a worldwide project,”
he says.
Johnson launched his first Web-based business at age
11, and sold another, an e-mail-forwarding Web site
called MYEZMail.com, at 15 for an undisclosed sum. Johnson
and his partner — a 17-year-old high school senior
— each sunk money into the current venture, though
he won’t say how much.
Right now he’s trying to raise $3 million to $5
million in venture capital. Johnson would also like
to sell companies on the idea of rewarding employees
with “GiftBux” that they buy through the
Web site and e-mail to recipients, who can redeem them
for any store’s coupons. He’d also like
stores to sell certificates to their stores through
his site.
His background makes him kind of an oddity to fellow
business students at Tech. “A lot of them have
said to me, ‘How do you start something like that?’
I don’t really know what to say about it.”
Virginia
Business - March 2004
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