Kyle
If you’ve got nice stuff that sits around a bit you can make money by renting. Say you have a mountain bike that you never use or perhaps a lawnmower that only gets a work out very two weeks? Well with rentstuff.com, a Nashville startup, your stuff can make money for you.
Rentstuff.com is a localized marketplace set up to help local people rent stuff to each other. Everything from dome tents to Dyson vacuum cleaners can be found for rent on rentstuff.com at a decent rate. The site even offers a quick calculator to show you an idea of what your stuff should rent for by the day.
The company protects your stuff by allowing you to charge a security deposit that puts the deposit amount on an authorization hold on the renters credit card. Provided everything goes well, the user gets their stuff back and the renter gets their deposit back. Rentstuff also has a community feedback system for renters and users. This way the renter knows that the person renting the property is trusted and vice versa.
We got a chance to interview the CEO of Rent Stuff, Chris Jaeger.
Who are the founders for rentstuff.com and what is your/are their backgrounds before starting rentstuff.com?
I founded RentStuff.com back in January 2010 along with my twin brother Robert Jaege (COO) and Adam Albright (CTO). Prior to starting the company, Robert and I were both working in Finance in New York City, and Adam was completing the first year of his MBA at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. Robert and I connected with Adam through mutual friends.
How did you come up with the idea because it’s brilliant?
Robert and I came up with the initial concept back in 2008. We were both frustrated after spending countless hours trying to track down kayaks and bikes to rent for weekend trips from small rental shops all over New York City. At the time, we were both living in a high rise building and knew there was a good chance that someone in our building or at least in our neighborhood had what we needed. However, there was no organized system to easily connect people who had stuff with people who wanted access to that stuff on a temporary basis. Our company solves the need to connect renters and lenders in a better way.
More after the break
Are you funded or bootstrapping it?
We recently closed a seed round funding led by Solidus Capital. Participation also included two other investment firms and a small group of angel investors.
When did you start it?
The initial idea was conceived in 2008. Pen and paper turned to action in 2010 after Robert and I left our full time positions in finance. Adam joined as our third founder just prior to starting the JumpStart Foundry incubator program in Nashville in May 2011. The site launched in private beta in August 2011 exclusively in Nashville area. As of January 2012 we unlocked the site to markets across the US.
What are your primary methods for marketing?
We currently use social media, primarily because of cost effectiveness and penetration to our target customer base – millennial generation, tech savvy people in larger cities. We have a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Pinterest to get our message out about our site. We put a referral system in place where users receive a buck for every friend who signs up for the site using their referral link. Also, word of mouth is huge for us. A guy made $400 renting out his digital camera to someone for two weeks on our site. When his friends heard about it, they immediately listed tons of their own stuff to rent out as well.
I see there is a security deposit however what else is in place to protect the lenders property. Have you had any problems with property not getting back to the owner?
The security deposit works very well to protect people’s stuff. For example, say that you list a bike with a $200 security deposit. When someone rents the bike from you, a $200 temporary hold is placed on that person’s credit card. Assuming the transaction goes well, the hold is dropped. However, if your bike is completely damaged or stolen, you would automatically be credited $200. In addition to the security deposit, we allow members to rate and review other members. This creates a self-policing system that encourages users to be good renters and lenders. We haven’t had any issues with items not being returned to the owner and hope it will stay that way. However, if an issue should come up, our users can rest assured that they are protected up to the full value of their security deposit.
Is it designed for local transactions?
RentStuff.com was designed to create hyper local sharing communities. We want to build these communities through shared assets. Think back to the time when you would ask your neighbor to borrow a cup of sugar. These days, technology has made it possible to go on with your day without any face to face human interaction. We want to combine the sharing culture of the past with the technology culture of today to get people face to face again to share their stuff.
While local transactions are our bread and butter, we do give businesses and individuals the option to ship their items to other cities. This is a smaller part of our business model, but we want to give people to access a more diverse inventory.
Did you face any challenges launching a start up outside of the valley?
There are actually many benefits launching a startup in smaller cities such as Nashville. Nashville has a small but growing entrepreneurial culture that is very supportive and extremely collaborative. In addition, the lower cost of living in Nashville helped to stretch out our initial capital even farther.
What’s next for you and rentstuff?
We just recently opened up a second office at the 1871 space in Chicago. 1871 is a collaborative working space for digital startups located within the Merchandise Mart. Chicago will be a great place for RentStuff.com, because the population is so dense and people don’t have the space to store everything they need to use on a temporary basis. In addition, we have several new features in the pipeline. I look forward to building RentStuff.com and becoming the go to name for all things rentable.
Fun question: what’s the oddest thing rented so far?
A leaf blower. The item itself isn’t very odd, but how it was used was. Check out this cool video that some RentStuff.com members created with the leaf blower they rented from our site: Video Here
Linkage:
Check out Rentstuff.com or go rent your stuff today here at rentstuff.com
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