Show HN: P2P Marketplace for renting stuff | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: P2P Marketplace for renting stuff

rentzar.co

17 pointselbuo815 comments

Some honest feedback, FWIW...

What's your plan to get users? A large part of the success from other asset-sharing services is due to the fact that they initially chose a vertical (Airbnb: apartments, Getaround/RelayRides: cars) and made a small number of people in that vertical incredibly happy. Generalizing to "all things" has the advantage of making your target audience/market bigger, but also seriously risks making the average experience worse for a couple of reasons: (1) you're constrained to keeping the interface generic enough for "all things", and (2) by not targeting a vertical, demand/supply becomes much less targeted, meaning you need a large user base for the marketplace to be useful.

Thanks for the feedback we really appreciated your input, well keep everything you mention on hand to solve those issues.

You have a chicken-and-egg problem.

Also, each renter now must do fulfillment themselves. If I'm renting my bike for $5/day, it's a huge pain if the person that is renting from me is twenty minutes late to pick up and return it.

What I want to see is someone who focuses on have all the household essentials for rent, and does fulfillment themselves. I think electric drills are typically used for 5 minutes total by most owners. Could I please rent hardware and one-off supplies from one place? Pretty please?

Thanks bravura for the feedback we really appreciated your input, thats great to see what type of listing you will get the most benefit.

Rentzar.com where you can find next to near free stuff! Seriously, what's to keep people from just paying for one day only to never return?

Reasonable concern. A credit card hold or a cash deposit could solve that. What solutions have been used for other 'sharing economy' startups?

If the cash deposit covered the complete value of the item no renter would want to pay such a high cost(the renter would then be vulnerable to theft; same with a credit card), and if the deposit didn't cover the value of the item then a thief would still benefit.

>What solutions have been used for other 'sharing econom[ies]'?

Two things come to mind, rental cars and places like rent-a-center. To rent a car you have to give ID and a credit card, and if the car is stolen the police can and will be contacted. Whereas with rent-a-center they can't call the police, police don't deal well with "small" stolen items. Rent-a-centers employ call centers that harass the person into paying or retuning and calls family and friends to shame the person into paying. If that doesn't work they turn it over to a collections agency who has the power to continue to harass and even ruin someones credit.

I don't see something like this working P2P and in the startup space, it requires too much "infrastructure" if you will, to work and be successful in deterring and overcoming theft, loss and damage.

Airbnb is pretty much the standard: https://www.airbnb.com/safety#features

Thanks You Joe for the feedback we really appreciated your input we will keep working hard to solve those issues.

This would work well if it were also a storage service...charge for storage, rent to offset costs, send me the difference.

Not bad, but you've got a two sided marketplace you need both people with stuff to rent and people who need to rent stuff.

I'd start with a metro area and get ahold of existing rental places and get their inventories listed to break the chicken/egg issue you face.

Rgarcia makes a great point, you should think about focusing on a specific vertical as it will make it easier to get both sides of the market jumpstarted.

Dear Would-Be Entrepreneurs Wanting to Use Buzzwords:

It's not peer-to-peer ("P2P") if peers are not communicating _directly_. If they are using your server to communicate, e.g. post ads, then it's NOT peer-to-peer. It's a bulletin board. There is a difference between a) a switchboard, b) a bulletin board and c) a person-to-person telephone call.

Sincerely

End-User Looking for REAL P2P Services Not Fake Ones

Great idea, but without venture funding this is a tough operation to scale. With such low barriers to entry for this market, other local markets can easily replicate this model if it is indeed successful.

Great idea. I'd use it, if there were things to rent in my area.

Thanks for the feedback we really appreciated your input.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com