Baruch senior hopes to reduce clutter through flierguy

One pervasive scene that takes place in the beginning of every semester here at Baruch is the massive number of fliers, listing textbooks, electronics and other miscellaneous college items taking over the school. From bulletin boards on each floor to hallway walls, many students utilize fliers to buy their materials for the semester.

If students cannot find a particular textbook on the listed fliers, their option is to buy them from the bookstore usually at a much higher price. It is reasonable to say that students find expensive textbooks from the bookstore financially burdensome and the need to look for right fliers on every floor of Baruch an annoyance.

Recognizing this, a Baruch senior named Jason Navallo, who majors in Finance, created an online marketplace where students could list their textbooks, class notes, and electronics to be transacted without any service charges.

"Throughout my tenure at Baruch, I spent way too much money on textbooks than I needed to. I bought the books primarily from the bookstore and I had to sell them at a much cheaper price through the bookstore," said Navallo in an interview.

He explained that he found the flier scene here at Baruch inefficient since a lot of papers were wasted.

According to him, the moment that set about his entrepreneurial zeal happened entirely by chance.

"I came about with this idea when I was looking for a Finance textbook for my class during midterm. Library's textbook reserves were all checked out, books from the bookstore were set at hefty prices, and Amazon listed expected delivery as two weeks."

In the midst of experiencing a textbook paranoia, he came to a realization that there exists a huge demand to accommodate students' need by providing them a venue where students could easily find and purchase textbooks.

This, he explained, had lead him to the idea of creating a Craigslist version of an online bookstore, that allows students to socially interact and transact in a shorter period of time, since there is no shipping involved.

The transaction process at the website is easy to follow, as Navallo claims "the process is fairly easy and is user friendly."

All students have to do is first register at the website – submitting which college you are from, categories of textbooks, and recommend prices that can be negotiated between students.

After that the post will automatically go online. When a student is interested in buying a listed textbook, the student would send a message to the poster asking to buy. When both parties agree to a price, they can basically meet up at a specific time and location to exchange the good.

The divisive point of flierguy.com claims Navallo is that the users can use the website without any service fee and allows face-to-face transaction between buyers and sellers, allowing for more social-interactions among the student body.

Since its launch on Oct. 27, the website has seen a growing number of users. Based on information provided, the website currently has close to 170 users.

"Right now, we are providing services for Baruch, Brooklyn College, College of Staten Island, LaGuardia Community College, and Syracuse University, but we are in the process of including more CUNY schools," Navallo said.

Before expanding this website onto other schools, Navallo wants to experiment various features and allow users to get used to the website before making any major changes.

Presently, the website is seeking for more development as it recently received an angel investment from Disruptive Ventures, a California based seed fund. The investment was possible because he worked for one of the directors at the firm during the summer. He claims that the firm and himself are maintaining a mentor to mentee relationship for business plans.

Another major development that the website is expecting to establish is the addition of a jobs features section, which is expected to launch by the end of this month.

According to Navallo, "Vice President of Technology Georgi Morozov, also a senior who is majoring in Finance at Baruch, is adding a comprehensive jobs feature to the site where students can see all the latest internships and full-time jobs based on their major and areas

of interest in real time."  With the job features program, he hopes that "this feature will give students the better tools that they need for their job hunt and will make the site more usable."

Reflecting his initial inspiration, he emphasized the notion of "students first" throughout the interview. When asked about his net profit through the website, he replied "Most of revenues come from advertising fees, but profit is not my biggest concern since main focus of this website is to accommodate students' needs first."