marco_guate

This will be like a couchsurfing for books or the catalog of hundreds of personal-libraries together, in places where there are no libraries or bookstores. This can later become what Amazon was at the beginning, a marketplace for books, that handles payments and shipping, but at the beginning, it will only be sharing. Knowledge is key for development, and people know it. Thousands of people in developing countries are paying high amounts of money for private education. After Amazon and kindle, it may be weird for many of you to think about books, but they are still a reality, and will be for at least the next 10 years. They are particularly expensive in developing countries because they are printed somewhere else, so prices have extra shipping and import taxes on top. Highly efficient database, just text (like Hacker News), will allow parents, college students, and professionals exchange books. Business Model: Still working on it, but it will be for profit. (v1.0) Maybe subscriptions that will help the safety factor, plus selling advertisement. (v2.0)Online market place. Right now credit cards companies are being ridiculous in Guatemala so don´t know a way to work with them at the moment. We´d have to find another way to manage payments. A couple of Guatemalan payment startups are “starting” right now. Maybe we can work with them in the future