Westport woman turns bartering into business

Carla Rosenkranz is making waves in the world of start-ups. The young Westport woman recently launched Barterchain, an app which allows people to swap services. She has successfully navigated a number of business programmes to reach this point in her journey, which is only beginning. Her love of bartering comes from her own experiences while travelling and living in Europe and her story is truly fascinating. As with many people who have paved their way in the start-up sector, Carla’s energy is infectious when we sit down to talk in her home in Westport.

Angelina: Carla, thanks for talking to me – let's start at the beginning and tell us a little about your background?

Carla: I am born and bred in Westport – from the town. Workwise, I started working at the age of 15 and I was in sales immediately and the people who I worked with, they didn't know I was 15. I didn't tell them. So I ended up getting a senior position very quickly – that was in a pop-up teddy bear shop! Then college came and I did not know what I wanted to do, I hadn't a clue, but I knew that I loved languages and I didn't think that I'd ever regret knowing a language. I went to UCD and did International Modern Languages – Spanish, Italian and German, and that let me go on Erasmus as well. I spent that time in Rome. Then I came back and did my final year, and I went abroad again because I just loved life abroad and that's actually where I started bartering.

Angelina: So talk to us about bartering?

Carla: After my degree in UCD finished, I wanted to go abroad again and knew that probably the easiest way to just land jobs easily was to be an English teacher. I got a qualification in English teaching and then immediately went to Madrid. I landed an English teaching job and thought I'd be fine for money. And I absolutely was not. I was really living week to week and asking mum to send me money online and couldn't afford things at all. I was quite stressed out. I had gotten into yoga and meditation before I went over there, but couldn't afford it there. Then there was a lightbulb moment one day. I think I was sitting in a park reading a spiritual book and a thought struck me – why don't you offer a free English class in exchange for the things you want – the yoga, the meditation. I went home and sat down, drafted an email and sent it all to the yoga studios in a one-kilometre radius to where I was. Every single one of them replied to me. I was doing it for meditation, for Spanish classes, for massages, for holistic healings, for energy therapies, to get my house cleaned, all of it. Then I did that around Spain and Italy. I travelled around for the guts of two years just doing that.

Angelina: So what came next when you'd finished that chapter?

Carla: Well, Covid-19 came next and put a stop to all of it. That was when I was in Verona. Obviously, that was in Northern Italy, which was the first place in Europe to be affected so badly. My school closed, so I lost my job. Then I started looking at flights home, booked a flight, it was cancelled, booked another flight for the next day, it was cancelled. I eventually got out on the very last flight to leave Italy, Verona to London.

Angelina So you get home and things are very different for you?

Carla Well, because I was coming from Northern Italy, I had to quarantine. So I was in my room for two weeks, and I think it was the second day in there that I just thought I have to do something with this time. I immediately started thinking about barter. Then I was looking up barter and saw that people around the globe had started bartering with each other because of the pandemic and because we couldn't go far and because things were closing down. Within those two weeks, I made a bit of a business plan and started wireframing what a website would look like on PowerPoint, very basic.

Angelina: So how long does it take for that to come together?

Carla: I started thinking about it in March 2020, but for ages all I could do was think about it because we didn't know what was going to happen. It wasn't really a time to be setting up a crazy business and I didn't know how to go about it anyway. I enjoyed lockdown as much as I physically could and was working on this when I got bored. But then at the end of 2020, the Empower Programme at the iHub at ATU Mayo started up again and it was virtual. And I just remember thinking if I get into that and if I do that, I will be committed to this. I did get into it and I had nothing, no business acumen, no experience really in a start-up. So I was going from one business development program to the next and working my way up. Then I did get into Techstars last year. That was the first proper funded thing that had happened. That was $120,000.

Angelina: What's it like to see an idea you've had grow like that?

Carla: I freaked out a bit, actually. We did two weeks in Dublin, everyone together, all the ten companies. I was the only female in the room. I was the only solo founder in the room. I was the only non-native technical person in the room. I remember coming back from those two weeks – I had had such a good time with all of the people, but I came back then to my bedroom and I was like, I can't do this. I'm going to give them their money back, instead of wasting it. There was definitely so much imposter syndrome. And it’s definitely hard to step back and just appreciate the things that have happened.

Angelina: How are you feeling about all of it now that you’ve launched?

Carla: I don't even know. There's always just so much to be done that you don't get all that much time to feel and reflect. Not on business, anyway. You don't really get the time to reflect on where you've come from because you just know where you have to get to. We launched officially on July 31. It's available now in iOS and Android mobile app. But now I'm just at the place where we have very little funding left – we have a rainy day fund – we know what that's going to have to go towards. Now we need a lot of users and we need lots of people to be on the app for it to have value for the networking effects. The more people you have, the better the barters can be, the better the choices can be.

Angelina: So what can people do on the app?

Carla: We have 20 categories because we have to get it down somewhat. What you do when you sign up is you add your offer and you have to add an offer or you can't see everyone else's offer. You then have a range of 20 services and you click categories that you're interested in and then the matchmaking algorithms will match you with the people who are interested in what you have and have what you're interested in.

Angelina: Are you one of the first companies in Ireland offering this type of service?

Carla: I know they have a time bank in Cork that's still really active. And the idea is you give an hour to the community, you can take an hour some other time from somewhere else. And there are also other online options too, but all of them I found are made in the same way, which is what I had thought originally as well. Whereas I can do something for you, you do something for them, they do something for me, and we pass around the gift and then a token of some sort. I actually ended up bagging the former CEO and co-founder of our competitor, Time Republic, Alfredo Giacardina, the Italian man who is now my CTO/CCO/co-founder. It was him who said that this extended barter system thing, it sounds great, but in reality it's more difficult because there's always someone who gave and didn't receive. Rather than when you have that one-to-one barter, the people become committed to each other and you want to give as good as you got.

Angelina: Where do you think your passion and drive comes from?

Carla: I think it was probably in me anyway. I'd say it was passed down through generations because my grandmas were both powerhouses. And I always remember my mom – one nice thing she always told me as a child is you can do whatever you want workwise. You will make anything work. She always said that to me. But I think it would be really, really difficult to see your own business through if you didn't love the cause as well. If I did not love barter, there's been so many obstacles, so many down days, it's a roller coaster. If I did not love the problem and the solution, I do not think I'd have been able to sacrifice all the things that I have for this now.

Angelina: What are your short-term and then longer-term ambitions for Barterchain?

Carla: So short term, I would just love to see a big community of Irish users. I would just love to see so many people benefitting from barter. Then longer term, I would love to see this going absolutely global and not even for me, just because I know how many benefits there are to barter.