4 ms·

It seems like what you've done is to reduce your liabilities (you hold no textbook inventory) by pushing that onto a student. If it works, awesome -- brilliant

by Travis 17y ago

It seems like what you've done is to reduce your liabilities (you hold no textbook inventory) by pushing that onto a student. If it works, awesome -- brilliant business strategy! However, a few questions: - do you have reason to believe that there is a small entrepreneurial subset of students who want to deal with the extra hassle of shipping/receiving books for a few extra bucks? - do you think students won't realize that they can buy used, sell back, and end up ahead (versus your system)? Have you done any customer development or validation on this? I highly recommend Steve Blank's method. Students are easy to get ahold of, and generally willing to talk to people, so it'll be a good test of your idea. Go through his customer discovery and validation steps first, before you build any more. In short, it seems like your value add to the student who owns the book is to say "hey, rent your books and own them, make more than you otherwise would!" This implies that the other side of the transaction will be the source of this revenue. I don't see the renters getting very much value from using this system (versus buying used and selling at the end of the semester). THen again, I'm not your target, so get out there and talk to students!

jmathai 17y ago
We've done a survey and have had positive feedback so far. We don't believe that means the idea will work because there's more friction in real life than in taking a survey. But it's given us enough motivation to determine if students will really use this system. We hope that in time we can make it more financially viable for students. At first we'll need early adopters who buy into the idea of renting from students instead of bookstores. That seems to be an easy sell since few students aren't frustrated with the options available. The trick will be providing them with a great experience so they, in turn, become evangelists to the rest of the student population. But yes, we share your concerns...and plan to squash them :).

by Travis 17y ago

jmathai 17y ago

We've done a survey and have had positive feedback so far. We don't believe that means the idea will work because there's more friction in real life than in taking a survey. But it's given us enough motivation to determine if students will really use this system. We hope that in time we can make it more financially viable for students. At first we'll need early adopters who buy into the idea of renting from students instead of bookstores. That seems to be an easy sell since few students aren't frustrated with the options available. The trick will be providing them with a great experience so they, in turn, become evangelists to the rest of the student population. But yes, we share your concerns...and plan to squash them :).