Mike Barile spent two years and racked up nearly $20,000 in credit card debt to bring his first startup, Backflip, to life.
The former management consultant had spent years toiling in the startup grind, first at Uber, then after taking a coding academy boot camp through AppAcademy (where Barile met his co-founder, Adam Foosaner), at Google, and a failed cryptocurrency startup.
Burned by the crypto experience, Barile was casting about for his next thing and trying to find a way to scrape up some rent money when he hit on the idea for Backflip. The experience of selling electronics online was still shady, and Barile and Foosaner thought there had to be a better way.
That way became Backflip. It offers customers cash on delivery for their used electronics — anything from Androids to Xboxes and Apple devices to Game Boys.
“When I first started working on Backflip in March 2019, I met Chris, and he wanted to buy some of my old iPhones. He had been a student at USF, and as a side hustle, he started buying used devices and would refurbish them and then either sell them himself or sell them to an official reseller,” said Barile. “Chris started making so much money he dropped out of school. That was a ‘holy shit’ moment. He can make a lot of money doing this, and he’s doing a perfect thing.”
The problem, said Barile, was safety. “He’s got all these devices he’s acquiring, paying cash for, and driving all around town… Everyone in the [refurbishes and resell] industry has at least one story about getting robbed at gunpoint.”
Backflip solved that problem by being the intermediary between buyers and sellers and taking a small commission for managing the transaction.
The company raised its first money at the end of 2019, but Foosaner and Barile lived off of credit and used electronics before that.
So far, Backflip has facilitated the exchange of roughly 3,000 devices. The company handles everything from wiping a machine and ensuring its quality to finding a buyer for the electronics. The company pays out approximately $150 per device and has deposited a little over $500,000 with users of the service, according to data provided by the company.
“We did all sorts of stuff to get our first few users,” said Barile. We posted ads on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. We started experimenting at the end of the summer with the most bare-bones mobile app kind of thing. At that point, it was just Adam and me,” Barile said.
Backflip now works with UPS stores to provide in-person drop-off and packaging centers for used electronics. Over time, Barile sees those services expanding to offer cash on delivery. “The experience will be similar to an Amazon return,” he said. “Except we’ll be paying you.”
About half of the company’s inventory uses handsets and mobile devices. Still, Barile said that could drop to a third of the list as word spreads about the hundred-odd pieces of electronics that Backflip is willing to accept.
“Unlike other resale options, Backflip prioritizes the user’s time and convenience,” said Foosaner. “Forget the back-and-forth of negotiating over price and scheduling a meetup. We’re here to do all the work for the seller and ensure they get paid fairly and quickly. Backflip users can know that they’re getting the most for their devices without having to do anything other than bringing them to The UPS Store or box them up at home.”
The connection to the refurbishing community started early for Barile, whose mother had a side business called “Stone Cottage Workshop,” She was flipping refurbished furniture on eBay and at local thrift stores near Barile’s rural New Jersey hometown.
“We want to build the Amazon of making things disappear from your apartment,” Barile said.
