We covered Berkeley-based Hotswap last month during its pre-launch stage. Next week they launch officially and open up the site with full functionality.
Hotswap is targeting the $370 billion/year U.S. used car market with a free, video-focused classifieds site. Listings are optimized to allow users to quickly upload video of the car with a camera phone or other low end video equipment.
Both normal users and car dealers can upload listings. The company has inked a deal with Red McCombs Automotive, which will upload all of their used cars to the site. Other business development deals are being negotiated now.
The company says sellers were very happy during the beta testing period and reported very high sell-through rates.
They’ve raised around $1 million in capital from Kinsey Hills Group, the investors behine Scribd and others. Hotswap competes with Vast, eBay, Edgeio (a company that I co-founded) and many others.