11 ms·

Show HN: RentEver – Social Rental Marketplace – Rent Anything from Anyone Nearby

55 points by usenkanov 12y ago

dopeboy 12y ago
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.
- realdlee 12y ago
  is your site still up? would be curious to take a look if it is.
  - dopeboy 12y ago
    I've taken it down but I'm happy to share more over email. Hit me at arithmetic@gmail.com if you're interested.
- bbody 12y ago
  Not to steal dopeboy's thunder, but here (http://dopeboy.github.io/Lessons/ http://dopeboy.github.io/Lessons/) is a post-mortem about his startup. It might provide some good tips on things to avoid :)
- namenotrequired 12y ago
  Thanks for chiming in! Your earlier part about your experience is popular among my colleagues. Out of curiosity, since you say you pivoted, I'd love to see what you're working on now. Is it public?
  - dopeboy 12y ago
    You're welcome! That's really rewarding to hear. Well the pivot was to a specific product category - audio & video. That didn't work out either. Right now, I'm in the process of trying to find a co-founder to pursue an idea with.
ereckers 12y ago
Is the redirect on the client side? Your link is www.rentever.com with a redirect to rentever.com and that basically breaks the back button for me.
- usenkanov 12y ago
  Sorry man, we use client redirect for this initial version. We'll try to fix it in the future releases.
  - ereckers 12y ago
    Hey. Cruised back around today. Looks like you got it fixed! Thanks and it looks like your getting a lot of good feedback on your project. Congrats on the launch.
    - onlyurei 12y ago
      We removed the redirect on client side during the weekend, and a 301 on the server side is now added so that we always have 1 hostname for all the merits. Thanks for pointing it out and your warm words!
phantom_oracle 12y ago
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. Good luck and keep promoting.
- usenkanov 12y ago
  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. Again, thanks!
  - phantom_oracle 12y ago
    > Thanks for all the suggestions. We are two techies and one more of a marketing person. How did you guess? :) because I would likely do the same thing and hope HN/Reddit/some-other-once-of-promo tool would make my cool/interesting webapp get a little successful. Truth be told, the marketing and labour-intensive work (like even going as far as renting things on behalf of friends/family) is shittier and harder than all the tech work. Another truth be told, I just want to randomly see you succeed. Somebody deserves a lucky break and maybe this weekend it is rentever!
  - cbeach 12y ago
    I added facebook "friends of friends" features to StreetLend. A nice Neo4J graph DB powers this. Unfortunately it didn't save the site from the other issues described in my earlier comment
therealdrag0 12y ago
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.
7updude 12y ago
That is an awesome idea. I just signed up and ready to use it to host my outdoor party. So much cheaper to rent audio gears and party supplies than buying or renting from an event planning company.
- aaronbrethorst 12y ago
  I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, but this comment looks like it came from a sock puppet.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jqm 12y ago
I think this is fantastic idea. I really hope it takes off.
hurin 12y ago
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.
- leereeves 12y ago
  I had the same concerns. 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.
  - contingencies 12y ago
    Valid strategies? Fat deposit, reputation system, other?
    - leereeves 12y ago
      It's not that different from trusting an Uber driver/passenger, or Handy handyman/customer, or Airbnb host/guest. The strategies are traditional business practices like guarantees, insurance, and dispute resolution combined with technology to lower costs. In this case, perhaps an app in which both the owner and renter agree when the item is loaned and returned, which reminds the renter to return the item, automatically tracks charges on overdue rentals, and allows some automated dispute resolution like: "I'm at the owner's address (GPS confirms it) and the owner isn't available."
      - hurin 12y ago
        I think it's not so simple. If someone is renting out an apartment for a month they can afford to spend time doing paper-work, receiving the renters etc, because the turn-over per rental is large enough (and Airbnb provides guarantees for damages). The question is how is it going to work with the $10/day power-tool. Let's say even if someone breaks my power-tool it will be reimbursed and I'm 100% sure - how much time/paper-work will this reimbursement take up?
avalaunch 12y ago
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.
- qopp 12y ago
  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.
himynameistimli 12y ago
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.
prostoalex 12y ago
I'm sure you've done your research, but what differentiating factor does it have from http://neighborgoods.net/ http://neighborgoods.net/
reustle 12y ago
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.
- namenotrequired 12y ago
  http://whyownit.com/ http://whyownit.com/ did this, but couldn't get it off the ground.
  - gloeckler 12y ago
    here's the story about it. put it on google translate. http://whyownit.com/blog/we-failed-warum-die-verleih-app-why-own-it-nicht-funktioniert-hat http://whyownit.com/blog/we-failed-warum-die-verleih-app-why...
petersouth 12y ago
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.
cbeach 12y ago
I created a similar "rent anything" marketplace in 2013. http://www.streetlend.com/ 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.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- usenkanov 12y ago
  cbeach, 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: usenkanov@gmail.com.
UserRights 12y ago
does exist anything like an open source local sharing app? preferably python, thanks!
namenotrequired 12y ago
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.
harrumph 12y ago
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.
alxndros 12y ago
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. Good luck on this!
ollysb 12y ago
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. What I want is amazon for rentals.

55 points by usenkanov 12y ago

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.

realdlee 12y ago
is your site still up? would be curious to take a look if it is.
- dopeboy 12y ago
  I've taken it down but I'm happy to share more over email. Hit me at arithmetic@gmail.com if you're interested.
bbody 12y ago
Not to steal dopeboy's thunder, but here (http://dopeboy.github.io/Lessons/ http://dopeboy.github.io/Lessons/) is a post-mortem about his startup. It might provide some good tips on things to avoid :)
namenotrequired 12y ago
Thanks for chiming in! Your earlier part about your experience is popular among my colleagues. Out of curiosity, since you say you pivoted, I'd love to see what you're working on now. Is it public?
- dopeboy 12y ago
  You're welcome! That's really rewarding to hear. Well the pivot was to a specific product category - audio & video. That didn't work out either. Right now, I'm in the process of trying to find a co-founder to pursue an idea with.

ereckers 12y ago

Is the redirect on the client side? Your link is www.rentever.com with a redirect to rentever.com and that basically breaks the back button for me.

usenkanov 12y ago
Sorry man, we use client redirect for this initial version. We'll try to fix it in the future releases.
- ereckers 12y ago
  Hey. Cruised back around today. Looks like you got it fixed! Thanks and it looks like your getting a lot of good feedback on your project. Congrats on the launch.
  - onlyurei 12y ago
    We removed the redirect on client side during the weekend, and a 301 on the server side is now added so that we always have 1 hostname for all the merits. Thanks for pointing it out and your warm words!

phantom_oracle 12y ago

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. Good luck and keep promoting.

usenkanov 12y ago
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. Again, thanks!
- phantom_oracle 12y ago
  > Thanks for all the suggestions. We are two techies and one more of a marketing person. How did you guess? :) because I would likely do the same thing and hope HN/Reddit/some-other-once-of-promo tool would make my cool/interesting webapp get a little successful. Truth be told, the marketing and labour-intensive work (like even going as far as renting things on behalf of friends/family) is shittier and harder than all the tech work. Another truth be told, I just want to randomly see you succeed. Somebody deserves a lucky break and maybe this weekend it is rentever!
- cbeach 12y ago
  I added facebook "friends of friends" features to StreetLend. A nice Neo4J graph DB powers this. Unfortunately it didn't save the site from the other issues described in my earlier comment

therealdrag0 12y ago

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.

7updude 12y ago

That is an awesome idea. I just signed up and ready to use it to host my outdoor party. So much cheaper to rent audio gears and party supplies than buying or renting from an event planning company.

aaronbrethorst 12y ago
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, but this comment looks like it came from a sock puppet.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

jqm 12y ago

I think this is fantastic idea. I really hope it takes off.

hurin 12y ago

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.

leereeves 12y ago
I had the same concerns. 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.
- contingencies 12y ago
  Valid strategies? Fat deposit, reputation system, other?
  - leereeves 12y ago
    It's not that different from trusting an Uber driver/passenger, or Handy handyman/customer, or Airbnb host/guest. The strategies are traditional business practices like guarantees, insurance, and dispute resolution combined with technology to lower costs. In this case, perhaps an app in which both the owner and renter agree when the item is loaned and returned, which reminds the renter to return the item, automatically tracks charges on overdue rentals, and allows some automated dispute resolution like: "I'm at the owner's address (GPS confirms it) and the owner isn't available."
    - hurin 12y ago
      I think it's not so simple. If someone is renting out an apartment for a month they can afford to spend time doing paper-work, receiving the renters etc, because the turn-over per rental is large enough (and Airbnb provides guarantees for damages). The question is how is it going to work with the $10/day power-tool. Let's say even if someone breaks my power-tool it will be reimbursed and I'm 100% sure - how much time/paper-work will this reimbursement take up?

avalaunch 12y ago

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.

qopp 12y ago
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.

himynameistimli 12y ago

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.

prostoalex 12y ago

I'm sure you've done your research, but what differentiating factor does it have from http://neighborgoods.net/ http://neighborgoods.net/

reustle 12y ago

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.

namenotrequired 12y ago
http://whyownit.com/ http://whyownit.com/ did this, but couldn't get it off the ground.
- gloeckler 12y ago
  here's the story about it. put it on google translate. http://whyownit.com/blog/we-failed-warum-die-verleih-app-why-own-it-nicht-funktioniert-hat http://whyownit.com/blog/we-failed-warum-die-verleih-app-why...

petersouth 12y ago

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.

cbeach 12y ago

I created a similar "rent anything" marketplace in 2013. http://www.streetlend.com/ 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.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
usenkanov 12y ago
cbeach, 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: usenkanov@gmail.com.

UserRights 12y ago

does exist anything like an open source local sharing app? preferably python, thanks!

namenotrequired 12y ago

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.

harrumph 12y ago

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.

alxndros 12y ago

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. Good luck on this!

ollysb 12y ago

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. What I want is amazon for rentals.