This project has big potential to be a very effective tool in neighbourhoods, but I'm guessing you guys are all techies and not quite sure how to market this.
Depending on how many of you built this, start populating it by renting your own stuff and making your area the default location.
As a casual user, I want to see at least some activity on the site.
Also, your landing page is not incentivizing (is that not a word?) renters enough (or boldly enough).
Create price-points and stuff and draw folks in with money.
Now here comes the interesting part. This might be the first promotion you are doing. It may pick up on HN (or not) and you may feel shit if it doesn't and think about abandoning it, but you shouldn't.
Lastly, I'd suggest you try enhancing the "social" side of things a bit more through something like facebooks graph DB (or "friends of friends").
I won't rent shit to any guy who pings me on your app, but if Tom is a friend of my friend Jerry, I'll have incentive to trust him because Jerry knows him.
Thanks for all the suggestions.
We are two techies and one more of a marketing person. How did you guess? :)
Facebook graph DB is a good suggestion that we didn't think about yet.
We won't abandon this anytime soon, though we need more active users to help us steer in the right direction.
Probably the biggest issue here is conflict resolution. How do you deal with claims, what is expected wear and tear etc. I think this is why in practice people don't rent or loan their own things to those they don't know.
It's not hard to loan someone a power-tool - but $10 just isn't worth the potential problems which go with it.
They seem to have chosen to act as a free classified ad publisher and disclaim any responsibility for conflict resolution, but the business would be much more valuable if they could improve that.
It has some limited traction in London but a very limited number of transactions. One a month, perhaps. The problem with creating this kind of site is that seeding two-sided marketplaces is hard. And also, I relied on an ideal-world culture that sadly doesn't seem to exist in practise. People love the idea, but when it comes to it they rarely use the product. It's just too cheap and easy to buy stuff these days.
I spent a lot of time marketing StreetLend locally - flyer and poster campaigns, local blogs, forums etc. Organic growth won't work. To really get off the ground you'll need a serious advertising budget.
I wish you the best of luck. It's a product I want to see and use myself.
I checked your site. It's very interesting. I agree, people love the idea, but it's not about what people say, it's about what they actually end up doing. It seems there needs to be a very special approach to crack this nut.
I'd like to chat about this more if you don't mind. My gmail chat: [email protected].
I doubt you'll get many casual renters because of the friction of having to go out of your way to meet someone (that might not show up, or might show up late) for small amounts of cash. I also think not having a good conflict resolution plan (or insurance) in place is going to be a huge issue preventing people from using your marketplace. As it is now, I just wouldn't feel comfortable renting out my stuff without charging a near 100% deposit and as a rentee I wouldn't feel comfortable giving a deposit anywhere near that amount.
Some ideas:
1. Figure out a way that I can just drop off my stuff and you'll take care of renting it out for me, over and over again. I would love to make some extra cash for my stuff but I really don't want to spend the time and pain of scheduling, driving to meet the rentees, waiting for them to show up if they're running late, dealing with it when some of them invariably flake out at the last minute, ect... I would approach local consignment shops and see if they'd be interested in being intermediaries where all they have to do is act as dropoff/pickup locations for your customers. In exchange, you pay them a either percentage or a flat monthly rate.
2. An alternative might be a sort of rent it forward strategy, where instead of returning an item to the owner the rentee holds onto it until someone else rents it, and then passes it along to the next renter.
Of course, both of these ideas make it much harder to gauge whether the items are in approximately the same condition as they were when initially rented. And, at least for idea #1, you'd probably want to add a clause that any item not rented out within a month needs to be picked up, else the renter will be charged a storage fee.
3. Look on craigslist and ebay for professional sellers and ask if they'd be interested in renting out some of their stuff on your platform instead of selling it. That might be a good way to populate your inventory in various cities quickly while making them more money than they'd make by simply selling the stuff. You might also ask local thrift stores, flea market sellers, and consignment shops if there are any items they'd like to rent out on your marketplace.
The rent it forward strategy can be completely resolved through just completely selling the items each time. This resolves the issue of value depreciation and items getting worn out by using the free market.
For low cost items (i.e. the items on this site)- the price of space exceeds the cost of the item. In this way goodwill/salvation army could be seen as a place where you can rent items indefinitely and just pay for the shelving space.
As someone who started with the same idea and eventually pivoted, I'd highly suggest focusing on one vertical. Concentrate on solving this problem for a narrow group (say, outdoorsy people) and move on to other equipment categories. It will also simplify the marketing and custom acquisition on your end.
It's a really interesting problem to solve and I'm still bummed to this day I spent a year on it with nothing to show. I hope you solve the puzzle. Good luck.
Not to steal dopeboy's thunder, but here (http://dopeboy.github.io/Lessons/) is a post-mortem about his startup. It might provide some good tips on things to avoid :)
Neat! I do echo the suggestion made to focus on a vertical. Here in Chicago we could really use this as an ad hoc rental marketplace for A/V and audio-music production gear. Film and event production are stuck with sudden needs all the time due to bad planning and production variables. If you build in more protections (insurance jumps out at me here) and focused this squarely on the local production community, I think you'd seed both sides of the market well.
My suggestion is that if you're focused in Chicago, then market this product in...Chicago.
I'd like to rent a tent but I'm in Singapore now...and Boston soon.. So you'll never get a critical mass if it's just alot of people listing things for nobody else.
Focus on a region where you can build up something (i.e. Chicago) with renters and rentees, build buzz up in your region and then scale to other regions.
I work for a startup that does something similar. The biggest hurdle will be to get people to post enough stuff to get a decent fulfillment rate - most competitors couldn't get beyond 2-5%. Good luck, I really hope you can make it work.
Will be fascinating to see how this progresses, we thought about this 2-sided marketplace problem a lot to all the points that folks mentioned here: is the risk and time/ effort worth the reward, how do you seed appropriately, etc.
Ultimately we decided to build The Rentaholic, www.therentaholic.com, where you rent from other businesses. That way availability is guaranteed and the other businesses are equipped to handle damages and what not. All we do is provide a platform to connect you and a delivery service so for the renter it's literally the easiest thing they can do.
I think this is super cool...but never underestimate just how lazy, preoccupied, or uncaring people are. I've tried a few two-sided marketplace ideas and even people who could benefit will still find a reason not to use it.
Oh, this is industry specific, but there is an unfilled need for ring-saw or ductile iron pipe chainsaws that can cut clean through 6" diameter pipe. Called all the tool rental places around and nobody has one. See alot of construction guys doing way unsafe things because of this.
People want to own less stuff, we move around more, do less DIY etc., having stuff is a PITA.
I often want to rent things though, maybe I want a set of glasses for a big party or a steam cleaner to get the wine spill out that happened during the big party. I usually buy that stuff now because it's so much easier than renting.
Does something like this exist, but for free, and only with my friends (or friends of friends)? Things I need to borrow probably already exist in that group, in my area, and I then don't need to worry about weird people, insurance, money, etc.
Great idea. As a bachelor who doesn't want to accumulate a lot of stuff. I like the idea of renting a vacuum or iron every once and a while on the cheap.
[+] [-] phantom_oracle|11 years ago|reply
Depending on how many of you built this, start populating it by renting your own stuff and making your area the default location.
As a casual user, I want to see at least some activity on the site.
Also, your landing page is not incentivizing (is that not a word?) renters enough (or boldly enough).
Create price-points and stuff and draw folks in with money.
Now here comes the interesting part. This might be the first promotion you are doing. It may pick up on HN (or not) and you may feel shit if it doesn't and think about abandoning it, but you shouldn't.
Lastly, I'd suggest you try enhancing the "social" side of things a bit more through something like facebooks graph DB (or "friends of friends").
I won't rent shit to any guy who pings me on your app, but if Tom is a friend of my friend Jerry, I'll have incentive to trust him because Jerry knows him.
Good luck and keep promoting.
[+] [-] usenkanov|11 years ago|reply
Facebook graph DB is a good suggestion that we didn't think about yet. We won't abandon this anytime soon, though we need more active users to help us steer in the right direction.
Again, thanks!
[+] [-] archemike_|11 years ago|reply
Scale supply.
[+] [-] hurin|11 years ago|reply
It's not hard to loan someone a power-tool - but $10 just isn't worth the potential problems which go with it.
[+] [-] leereeves|11 years ago|reply
They seem to have chosen to act as a free classified ad publisher and disclaim any responsibility for conflict resolution, but the business would be much more valuable if they could improve that.
[+] [-] thret|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cbeach|11 years ago|reply
http://www.streetlend.com/
It has some limited traction in London but a very limited number of transactions. One a month, perhaps. The problem with creating this kind of site is that seeding two-sided marketplaces is hard. And also, I relied on an ideal-world culture that sadly doesn't seem to exist in practise. People love the idea, but when it comes to it they rarely use the product. It's just too cheap and easy to buy stuff these days.
I spent a lot of time marketing StreetLend locally - flyer and poster campaigns, local blogs, forums etc. Organic growth won't work. To really get off the ground you'll need a serious advertising budget.
I wish you the best of luck. It's a product I want to see and use myself.
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] usenkanov|11 years ago|reply
I checked your site. It's very interesting. I agree, people love the idea, but it's not about what people say, it's about what they actually end up doing. It seems there needs to be a very special approach to crack this nut.
I'd like to chat about this more if you don't mind. My gmail chat: [email protected].
[+] [-] avalaunch|11 years ago|reply
Some ideas:
1. Figure out a way that I can just drop off my stuff and you'll take care of renting it out for me, over and over again. I would love to make some extra cash for my stuff but I really don't want to spend the time and pain of scheduling, driving to meet the rentees, waiting for them to show up if they're running late, dealing with it when some of them invariably flake out at the last minute, ect... I would approach local consignment shops and see if they'd be interested in being intermediaries where all they have to do is act as dropoff/pickup locations for your customers. In exchange, you pay them a either percentage or a flat monthly rate.
2. An alternative might be a sort of rent it forward strategy, where instead of returning an item to the owner the rentee holds onto it until someone else rents it, and then passes it along to the next renter.
Of course, both of these ideas make it much harder to gauge whether the items are in approximately the same condition as they were when initially rented. And, at least for idea #1, you'd probably want to add a clause that any item not rented out within a month needs to be picked up, else the renter will be charged a storage fee.
3. Look on craigslist and ebay for professional sellers and ask if they'd be interested in renting out some of their stuff on your platform instead of selling it. That might be a good way to populate your inventory in various cities quickly while making them more money than they'd make by simply selling the stuff. You might also ask local thrift stores, flea market sellers, and consignment shops if there are any items they'd like to rent out on your marketplace.
[+] [-] qopp|11 years ago|reply
For low cost items (i.e. the items on this site)- the price of space exceeds the cost of the item. In this way goodwill/salvation army could be seen as a place where you can rent items indefinitely and just pay for the shelving space.
[+] [-] dopeboy|11 years ago|reply
It's a really interesting problem to solve and I'm still bummed to this day I spent a year on it with nothing to show. I hope you solve the puzzle. Good luck.
[+] [-] bbody|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] namenotrequired|11 years ago|reply
Out of curiosity, since you say you pivoted, I'd love to see what you're working on now. Is it public?
[+] [-] realdlee|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ereckers|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] usenkanov|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] harrumph|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] himynameistimli|11 years ago|reply
I'd like to rent a tent but I'm in Singapore now...and Boston soon.. So you'll never get a critical mass if it's just alot of people listing things for nobody else.
Focus on a region where you can build up something (i.e. Chicago) with renters and rentees, build buzz up in your region and then scale to other regions.
[+] [-] namenotrequired|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alxndros|11 years ago|reply
Ultimately we decided to build The Rentaholic, www.therentaholic.com, where you rent from other businesses. That way availability is guaranteed and the other businesses are equipped to handle damages and what not. All we do is provide a platform to connect you and a delivery service so for the renter it's literally the easiest thing they can do.
Good luck on this!
[+] [-] prostoalex|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petersouth|11 years ago|reply
Oh, this is industry specific, but there is an unfilled need for ring-saw or ductile iron pipe chainsaws that can cut clean through 6" diameter pipe. Called all the tool rental places around and nobody has one. See alot of construction guys doing way unsafe things because of this.
[+] [-] ollysb|11 years ago|reply
I often want to rent things though, maybe I want a set of glasses for a big party or a steam cleaner to get the wine spill out that happened during the big party. I usually buy that stuff now because it's so much easier than renting.
What I want is amazon for rentals.
[+] [-] reustle|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] namenotrequired|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] therealdrag0|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jqm|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] UserRights|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 7updude|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] aaronbrethorst|11 years ago|reply