Swapt

# Swapt: High-Level Overview

Swapt is a B2B SaaS platform that bridges physical and digital commerce by enabling businesses to capture customer data and deliver personalized experiences in the real world.[1][2] Founded in 2022, the company helps e-commerce brands and retailers understand the return on investment of their in-person campaigns and activations by converting offline interactions into trackable, centralized customer data.[1] Swapt serves a global market of e-commerce stores with retail presence, targeting a total addressable market of approximately $564 billion.[2]

The platform uses intelligent QR codes, NFC tags, Apple Wallet tap-to-pay functionality, and interactive games to bridge the gap between physical brand experiences and digital customer insights.[1] Key customers include DoorDash and OuterKnown.[1] With a lean team of approximately four core members and 75% local Boston-based employees, Swapt operates remotely while maintaining focus on proving its core value proposition before pursuing additional capital.[1]

# Origin Story

Swapt was founded in 2022 by Andrew Smith and Trevor Brown, with Smith serving as CEO and Brown as COO.[1] Smith brings significant retail technology expertise, having spent four years as an early employee at Klaviyo—a leading retail and e-commerce technical consultant for enterprise brands.[2] This background directly informed Swapt's mission: helping brands make sense of their offline data and transforming e-commerce into true commerce by connecting physical and digital touchpoints.[1]

The founding team expanded to include Alyssa Donovan as Product Designer and Nazir Doğan as Full Stack Developer, both instrumental in building out the platform's core technology.[2] The company secured pre-seed funding of $550,000 in September 2022, backed by notable investors including Klaviyo founders Andrew Bialecki and Ed Hallen, along with Asymmetric Capital and Perkins Cove Partners.[1][6] This investor pedigree reflects confidence in Smith's vision and the team's ability to execute in the offline-to-online data space.

# Core Differentiators

• Intelligent engagement layer: Swapt uses QR codes, NFC technology, and Apple Wallet integration as seamless onramps to capture customer data at the point of physical interaction, rather than relying solely on traditional loyalty programs.[1][2]

• Personalization at scale: The platform enables brands to deliver personalized marketing messages, incentives, and experiences based on previous customer engagement behavior, making consumers feel like VIPs regardless of purchase history.[2]

• Clean, centralized data: By consolidating offline customer interactions into a unified dataset, Swapt solves the fragmentation problem that plagues brands operating across physical and digital channels.[1]

• Founder-led expertise: Andrew Smith's deep experience at Klaviyo—a company that revolutionized e-commerce marketing automation—brings proven product-market fit intuition and enterprise credibility to an emerging category.[2]

• Lean execution: Operating with a small, focused team allows Swapt to move quickly and iterate based on early adopter feedback before scaling.[1]

# Role in the Broader Tech Landscape

Swapt is riding a QR code renaissance that has accelerated since the pandemic normalized mobile scanning in retail environments.[6] The company addresses a critical gap in the modern commerce stack: while e-commerce platforms excel at digital personalization, most brands lack the infrastructure to capture and act on offline customer behavior at scale.

This timing is significant because retail is increasingly omnichannel—consumers expect seamless experiences across physical stores, pop-ups, events, and digital channels. Swapt enables brands to close the data loop by treating offline moments as entry points into their customer relationship management systems, not dead ends. The $564 billion TAM reflects the massive opportunity in helping global e-commerce businesses understand and optimize their physical activations.[2]

The company also benefits from growing skepticism around third-party cookies and privacy regulations, which make first-party data collection through direct customer engagement more valuable than ever. By positioning offline interactions as a primary data source, Swapt aligns with broader industry trends toward owned-audience strategies and direct-to-consumer engagement.

# Quick Take & Future Outlook

Swapt is well-positioned to become the operating system for offline customer data in e-commerce, but execution will be critical. The company's stated focus on proving its value proposition and building out the core platform before raising additional capital suggests disciplined prioritization—a smart approach for a pre-seed startup in a crowded personalization market.[1]

Key challenges ahead include competing against larger marketing automation platforms (like Klaviyo itself) that may add offline capabilities, and proving that QR/NFC engagement drives meaningful ROI for brands beyond novelty. However, the founder's Klaviyo pedigree and early traction with recognizable customers like DoorDash suggest the team understands enterprise sales and product-market fit.

The next 12-18 months will likely focus on deepening customer relationships, expanding use cases beyond QR codes, and building network effects as more brands adopt the platform. If Swapt can demonstrate that offline-to-digital data capture materially improves customer acquisition costs and lifetime value for e-commerce brands, it could unlock a significant funding round and establish itself as essential infrastructure in the omnichannel retail stack.