Hey there!  We’re your papaBARTER.com co-founders Geoff Holman and Thomas Santamaria and this is the story of papaBARTER.  Before there was papaBARTER there was DartBarter, a site just like those found across the country on papaBARTER, but specific to Dartmouth College (where we’re both finishing up our senior year).

We made DartBarter out of necessity.  The book buyback program at our local book distributor was abysmal.  $10 cashback for a $200 textbook, used 3 times?  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!  Not in my town.  We envisioned DartBarter becoming a very useful tool for future generations of Dartmouth College students, and a cool way for us to have a lasting impact on the Dartmouth Community.

The response was overwhelmingly positive.  We got everything from sincere gratitude to offers of help and guidance.  So we sat down to ponder the big question: if the response was so positive here in rural New Hampshire at a school with only 4,000 students, could we actually launch these sites at schools nationwide to help many more college students than just here at Dartmouth?

The next day we began working on papaBARTER, the new nationwide (and soon to be international) site where students can buy, sell, and trade everything from textbooks to tutoring services, keeping more money in the pockets of students across the country.  Through a network of college campus representatives we hope to expand to hundreds of schools across all 50 states, big schools, small schools and everything in between.