Sharing economy & future of ownership
Ellis Pinsky
8 replies
With the sharing economy becoming increasingly prevalent in day-to-day life I think we are shifting to a time where "owning less is more." From car rental startups like Turo, home rentals (Airbnb) , and obviously ride-sharing platforms (Uber&Lyft). I think consumers are willing to try new things and live a more sustainable life. Additionally, I believe with the shift to remote work, Americans in particular, are living as mobile of a life as they ever have! While I am noticing these trends I don't see any good options for people to rent & lend high-margin items that they only need for a weekend or a short period of time! I'm talking about electronics, sports equipment, travel equipment that kinda stuff! Thats why I am working on Rentr a p2p rental platform connecting renters (people who have items) and lenders (people who want items). While I have not launched yet I have been continually working on the product and plan to launch in the coming weeks! For now if you are curious / want to stay up to date you can checkout Rentr.me
This is my first product ever so I would love some feedback on the idea, your hesitations or if you just want to chat sharing economy reply below!
Replies
Rashmi Gupta@rashjbp
Looks very promising, good website, all the best!
Share
Interesting idea, are you starting with a specific type of product & specific locations?
Asking because in a marketplace you need liquidity- it's no use if the closest bicycle to me for is 50km away and available in 3 days. For this kind of app to work you need high "Search to Fill" or your users will churn after a few unsuccessful attempts.
I highly recommend reading every article here to learn about Search to Fill and marketplace dynamics: https://a16z.com/2020/02/19/requ...
@dkaravias Absolutely, great point! So I read a lot of Lenny Rachitsky's literature on marketplaces + went down some other rabbit holes regarding what makes these marketplaces successful and that liquidity , nearby in my case , is absolutely essential. I plan to launch in NYC only first and will likely do some hustling to get that original supply before launching publicly. I anticipate this to occur in the next week or so as just finished my final testing on the app, and hopefully I can launch it publicly in approx 2 weeks or so!
@dkaravias what I meant by Junk is all the stuff people have lying around in their house that they could lend on Rentr with no opportunity cost, but you do have a fair point it is a bit contradictory.
@ellisbuilds you have to consider the effort it takes for low-value stuff.
I once looked at selling on ebay some used cutlery etc when I was moving.
Everyone was already selling theirs for $1.
I just threw them away cause it wasn't worth the hassle.
The point I'm making is that you will only get engagement & profit margins with items that cost over $200 dollars, and even that might be too low. When talking to your users I highly suggest you filter out those who won't be putting $500-$1000+ items for rent.
@dkaravias You have a good point and this is likely true. The good thing is there are plenty of items 200+ even 500+ that users would want to rent from others, especially since I am confining the release to a certain geographic area hopefully it will make it a little less of a hassle.