5 ms·

Sydney startup Curbit lets users pick up someone’s unwanted goods from the kerb

32 points by dean_mcpherson 11y ago

Outdoorsman 11y ago
Nice to see someone organizing the re-purposing of perfectly re-usable items... Not sure what's in play in Australia, but in the U.S. there are more than a few individuals (entrepreneurs) who drive around looking for "curbed" articles... These are gathered and added to second-hand shop inventories, for resale... If that's true in Australia it's something you might want to be aware of...you might consider a way of ensuring that those interested in an article get a fair shot at it...just a customer satisfaction thing... Good luck!
- prawn 11y ago
  Yes, the same happens in Australia. Typically councils have "hard refuse" opportunities for disposal of larger items. I'm in South Australia. In my home area, I can call for one pick-up per financial year, totalling 2 cubic metres. In my office area, there's a period once per quarter where you can put items out for collection. There are people who drive around with a cage trailer grabbing recyclable items, some for personal use, some for resale. Besides these "official" options, a few people use Freecycle (mailing list, bit annoying) and others use Gumtree (like Craigslist).
drallison 11y ago
http://www.freecycle.org http://www.freecycle.org https://www.freecycle.org/about/background https://www.freecycle.org/about/background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Freecycle_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Freecycle_Network
- jsankey 11y ago
  Indeed, Freecycle have been operating in Australia for a long time. There are several other competitors too, the article doesn't make clear what Curbit's advantage/angle is. I'm all for the general idea and wish them well regardless, the amount of cheap stuff we buy and waste is astonishing.
  - sien 11y ago
    Freecycle is pretty terrible in Australia. Gumtree (craigslist equivalent in AU) 'for free' works far better.
    - danieltillett 11y ago
      That is until you get some idiot ringing you 20 times asking you to deliver the free item to them. They seem surprised when you say no that you aren’t going to spend 2 hour driving to give them the item for free.
  - dean_mcpherson 11y ago
    Hey jsankey, the advantage of Curbit is simplicity. All existing solutions require a fair amount of effort of the person wanting to get rid of something. Freecycle is solving the exact same issue, but I feel that the burden that comes from having to manage pickup / messaging / condition reports all from a very rough web UI deters a huge portion of the population. We shouldn't have to work to get rid of something for free :) Compared to classifieds in general, it can be much simpler to use, because money isn't changing hands.
    - jsankey 11y ago
      Thanks for the reply Dean. It seems there is room to make this easier, although it can be hard to find and convince the market of that when there is something "good enough" out there. Hope you have some luck. An idea, to take or leave: a very active niche for this kind of thing is parents of young children. Very young kids (babies/toddlers) in particular churn through a lot of "stuff" by growing out of it before it wears out. Parents are very active on a range of Facebook groups trading this stuff (though not usually for free, just cheap). In fact the groups are so active that I know people using them daily, and the biggest issue with offloading stuff is posting are lost in the noise. If you're looking for a nice to focus on this is a strong one.
      - dean_mcpherson 11y ago
fucking_tragedy 11y ago
Does Craigslist have a section for Australia?
- somedangedname 11y ago
  IMO Craigslist has no traction in Australia. The big player in classifieds is Gumtree [0] which is owned by Ebay. [0] http://www.gumtree.com.au/ http://www.gumtree.com.au/
femto 11y ago
Careful. Putting stuff on the kerb outside of official kerbside collections is considered illegal dumping in many Australian cities. It's hard to prosecute though, as the council generally needs to catch the offender in action ("not my stuff on the footpath guv"). Unless the law changes, it seems like a bad idea to dump something on the kerb, then post proof of your actions to a website. Councils will potentially view Curbit as an evidence collection service, rather than a recycling service. Can anyone from Curbit confirm whether this will be an issue? It might be as simple as telling people to put the items in their front yard, rather than on the footpath.
- danieltillett 11y ago
  Yes it is illegal, but if my council is anything to go by the chance of anyone using curbit’s data to prosecute anyone is close to zero. This basically happens organically anyway. There are teams of pickers who come around just before council pickups and take away anything of value (and lots of stuff of no value too). All that gets left to be collected by the council is the absolute rubbish (rotting mattresses, etc). What I want to know with these sort of startups is how do they plan on making money?
  - dean_mcpherson 11y ago
    At the moment, we're not really interested in monetising. We're treating this as infrastructure that we wish existed that doesn't. However, if it does turn out to solve a problem for people, I'm confident that we will be able to generate enough small methods of monetisation to keep the doors open.
    - prawn 11y ago
      Might be related to your current venture, but I'd use an app whereby neighbours notified each other of any spare bin space they had that week. I could often use extra recycling or green waste space, but hate being the guy roaming the street at night trying to stuff garbage in random bins.
    - danieltillett 11y ago
Xorlev 11y ago
I appreciate the name. Curb+it, Cur_bit_.
megablast 11y ago
Surely this is just an app, not a startup?
- dean_mcpherson 11y ago
  Curbit is my side project, I work for travel startup townske.com.
mrmondo 11y ago
In Melbourne people seem to leave stuff out on the curb all the time and people just come and grab what they want, after its been there a week or so the council comes round and picks it up (I assume).
- yitchelle 11y ago
  I can confirm this, especially for inner suburbs like St.Kilda, Brunswick etc. I did it a couple of times when I have excess stuff that I don't need anything further.
bakadana 11y ago
https://www.tushare.com/ https://www.tushare.com/ tried the game for some time, couldn't make it profitable.
samstave 11y ago
It is interesting how basically all that Craigslist has had to offer in the last 16 years has moved to "CL microservices" as it were...
ancaster 11y ago
There's also https://trashnothing.com https://trashnothing.com, which is friendly UI over freecycle/etc..
jonesb6 11y ago
This is a very, very, very, common problem in American college towns where students frequently have to move on short notice. It is very common for the local homeless and impoverished to idle outside dorms, apartment complexes, or rental units, and immediately dig through anything left out on the curb or in the garbage. They're often able to scrounge items still in their original packaging, you know that stuff mom sent you that you never needed, and will sell them at the local pawn shop etc. for pennies on the dollar. Having recently necessitated the service, it is very expensive to store or move even medium sized items in this situation, as local and national movers/storage companies are well aware of the situation and will fleece customers with outrageous fees and even vulturous customer service (oh you didn't pick up our call? +$20 reschedule fee..). If 1) they can make themselves accessible to a large number of college students and 2) they provide a smoother user experience then craigslist and co (possibly by partnering with University housing associations cough cough) I can see this being incredibly successful.
- dean_mcpherson 11y ago
  Thanks jonesb6 :)
simula67 11y ago
How is Olx for this purpose ?
dean_mcpherson 11y ago
If you want to keep up with future developments, there is a waitlist at http://curbitapp.com http://curbitapp.com.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Sarki 11y ago
Nice project, for the record this is existing since 2006 and covers France, Switzerland, Belgium and Canada. https://donnons.org/ https://donnons.org/ ("Donnons" means "giving" in french) Perhaps you'll have more impact worldwide with this, it's never a bad idea to let ones enjoy what is a now a burden for others.

Nice to see someone organizing the re-purposing of perfectly re-usable items... Not sure what's in play in Australia, but in the U.S. there are more than a few individuals (entrepreneurs) who drive around looking for "curbed" articles... These are gathered and added to second-hand shop inventories, for resale... If that's true in Australia it's something you might want to be aware of...you might consider a way of ensuring that those interested in an article get a fair shot at it...just a customer satisfaction thing... Good luck!

prawn 11y ago
Yes, the same happens in Australia. Typically councils have "hard refuse" opportunities for disposal of larger items. I'm in South Australia. In my home area, I can call for one pick-up per financial year, totalling 2 cubic metres. In my office area, there's a period once per quarter where you can put items out for collection. There are people who drive around with a cage trailer grabbing recyclable items, some for personal use, some for resale. Besides these "official" options, a few people use Freecycle (mailing list, bit annoying) and others use Gumtree (like Craigslist).

drallison 11y ago

http://www.freecycle.org http://www.freecycle.org https://www.freecycle.org/about/background https://www.freecycle.org/about/background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Freecycle_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Freecycle_Network

jsankey 11y ago
Indeed, Freecycle have been operating in Australia for a long time. There are several other competitors too, the article doesn't make clear what Curbit's advantage/angle is. I'm all for the general idea and wish them well regardless, the amount of cheap stuff we buy and waste is astonishing.
- sien 11y ago
  Freecycle is pretty terrible in Australia. Gumtree (craigslist equivalent in AU) 'for free' works far better.
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    That is until you get some idiot ringing you 20 times asking you to deliver the free item to them. They seem surprised when you say no that you aren’t going to spend 2 hour driving to give them the item for free.
- dean_mcpherson 11y ago
  Hey jsankey, the advantage of Curbit is simplicity. All existing solutions require a fair amount of effort of the person wanting to get rid of something. Freecycle is solving the exact same issue, but I feel that the burden that comes from having to manage pickup / messaging / condition reports all from a very rough web UI deters a huge portion of the population. We shouldn't have to work to get rid of something for free :) Compared to classifieds in general, it can be much simpler to use, because money isn't changing hands.
  - jsankey 11y ago
    Thanks for the reply Dean. It seems there is room to make this easier, although it can be hard to find and convince the market of that when there is something "good enough" out there. Hope you have some luck. An idea, to take or leave: a very active niche for this kind of thing is parents of young children. Very young kids (babies/toddlers) in particular churn through a lot of "stuff" by growing out of it before it wears out. Parents are very active on a range of Facebook groups trading this stuff (though not usually for free, just cheap). In fact the groups are so active that I know people using them daily, and the biggest issue with offloading stuff is posting are lost in the noise. If you're looking for a nice to focus on this is a strong one.
    - dean_mcpherson 11y ago

fucking_tragedy 11y ago

Does Craigslist have a section for Australia?

somedangedname 11y ago
IMO Craigslist has no traction in Australia. The big player in classifieds is Gumtree [0] which is owned by Ebay. [0] http://www.gumtree.com.au/ http://www.gumtree.com.au/

femto 11y ago

Careful. Putting stuff on the kerb outside of official kerbside collections is considered illegal dumping in many Australian cities. It's hard to prosecute though, as the council generally needs to catch the offender in action ("not my stuff on the footpath guv"). Unless the law changes, it seems like a bad idea to dump something on the kerb, then post proof of your actions to a website. Councils will potentially view Curbit as an evidence collection service, rather than a recycling service. Can anyone from Curbit confirm whether this will be an issue? It might be as simple as telling people to put the items in their front yard, rather than on the footpath.

danieltillett 11y ago
Yes it is illegal, but if my council is anything to go by the chance of anyone using curbit’s data to prosecute anyone is close to zero. This basically happens organically anyway. There are teams of pickers who come around just before council pickups and take away anything of value (and lots of stuff of no value too). All that gets left to be collected by the council is the absolute rubbish (rotting mattresses, etc). What I want to know with these sort of startups is how do they plan on making money?
- dean_mcpherson 11y ago
  At the moment, we're not really interested in monetising. We're treating this as infrastructure that we wish existed that doesn't. However, if it does turn out to solve a problem for people, I'm confident that we will be able to generate enough small methods of monetisation to keep the doors open.
  - prawn 11y ago
    Might be related to your current venture, but I'd use an app whereby neighbours notified each other of any spare bin space they had that week. I could often use extra recycling or green waste space, but hate being the guy roaming the street at night trying to stuff garbage in random bins.
  - danieltillett 11y ago

Xorlev 11y ago

I appreciate the name. Curb+it, Cur_bit_.

megablast 11y ago

Surely this is just an app, not a startup?

dean_mcpherson 11y ago
Curbit is my side project, I work for travel startup townske.com.

mrmondo 11y ago

In Melbourne people seem to leave stuff out on the curb all the time and people just come and grab what they want, after its been there a week or so the council comes round and picks it up (I assume).

yitchelle 11y ago
I can confirm this, especially for inner suburbs like St.Kilda, Brunswick etc. I did it a couple of times when I have excess stuff that I don't need anything further.

bakadana 11y ago

https://www.tushare.com/ https://www.tushare.com/ tried the game for some time, couldn't make it profitable.

samstave 11y ago

It is interesting how basically all that Craigslist has had to offer in the last 16 years has moved to "CL microservices" as it were...

ancaster 11y ago

There's also https://trashnothing.com https://trashnothing.com, which is friendly UI over freecycle/etc..

jonesb6 11y ago

This is a very, very, very, common problem in American college towns where students frequently have to move on short notice. It is very common for the local homeless and impoverished to idle outside dorms, apartment complexes, or rental units, and immediately dig through anything left out on the curb or in the garbage. They're often able to scrounge items still in their original packaging, you know that stuff mom sent you that you never needed, and will sell them at the local pawn shop etc. for pennies on the dollar. Having recently necessitated the service, it is very expensive to store or move even medium sized items in this situation, as local and national movers/storage companies are well aware of the situation and will fleece customers with outrageous fees and even vulturous customer service (oh you didn't pick up our call? +$20 reschedule fee..). If 1) they can make themselves accessible to a large number of college students and 2) they provide a smoother user experience then craigslist and co (possibly by partnering with University housing associations cough cough) I can see this being incredibly successful.

dean_mcpherson 11y ago
Thanks jonesb6 :)

simula67 11y ago

How is Olx for this purpose ?

dean_mcpherson 11y ago

If you want to keep up with future developments, there is a waitlist at http://curbitapp.com http://curbitapp.com.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Sarki 11y ago

Nice project, for the record this is existing since 2006 and covers France, Switzerland, Belgium and Canada. https://donnons.org/ https://donnons.org/ ("Donnons" means "giving" in french) Perhaps you'll have more impact worldwide with this, it's never a bad idea to let ones enjoy what is a now a burden for others.