Show HN: Heynay. friendly, local neighbor-to-neighbor rentals | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Heynay. friendly, local neighbor-to-neighbor rentals

heynay.com

7 pointsraimille17 comments

Started this app a few months ago with some co-workers. It's my first shot at a client-server app. Been learning a ton! I'm originally from Chile, so I plan on expanding it there as well once we validate the concept.

Wait for the React web based app! Just came out of Fluent Conference VERY inspired with all the new technologies coming up.

Looking forward to your feedback!

Cool app. Is it aimed at transactions between neighbors who don't know each other, or neighbors who already have some sort of relationship? If it's the former, how do you handle trust problems like "How do I know I'm going to get my stuff back?" If it's the latter, what advantage do you have over sending them a text saying "Hey, can I borrow X?"

Also, I'm curious what your experiences have been with market validation? Are you building first and then finding customers, or finding customers and then building based on their feedback? What have been the most annoying parts of the process? I'm somewhat interested in building tools to make it easier to get to the MVP/validation stage, since in my experience so far, it takes a surprisingly large amount of effort just to get to the point where you can show a potential customer something to react to.

Thanks for the feedback!

To answer you first questions, it's aimed towards both known and unknown neighbors. We'll have soon the ability to show you which neighbors you have friends or friends of friends in common so you can opt for those only. How do you know you're getting the stuff back is by security deposit right now. Working on a long term more sustainable partnership with an insurance company and include it in the service fee.

Decided to go with the first. We're two developers mainly, it's been free to develop in our free time, why not build and let the market talk to us! It is exactly what we're doing, by trying to show it off a bit more to the community.

Lastly, all it takes is passion for what you're doing. Dedicating some nights of "oh crap it's 3 am I need some sleep" but you just can't stop coding. As long as you remain passionate and focused, you'll achieve it! We did this in barely 3 months 10-20 man hours a weekend. With all the free-for-startups infrastructure and tools we have today it's amazing how fast you can prove concepts.

I love the idea, is part of the fee Heynay takes covering insurance if theres something wrong with the deal?

Even if you weren't renting items but were just loaning them to friends it might be nice to have all your loaned/rented items in one spot. For this, making private listings might be a good feature.

Thanks for the feedback! I;m using the concept of security deposits for now, so a hold is placed on the renter's credit card. It's all under the good-faith of neighbors.

Working on a more sustainable insurance plan that'll be included as part of our service. If not, why not just go and knock on your neighbor's door yourself right?

This looks neat!

looks great

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