>I wish there was a startup in this space.
I have so much house maintenance stuff. For example, I only really need a ladder once a year. But I keep it around forever because when you need a ladder, you need a ladder.
I would love to not have to store and maintain all this stuff and to just request it on demand. Can someone solve that for me?
Actually there is a sorta famous example of a startup that tried to do just that -- or close, they tried to build a social site for people to easily borrow whatever (ladder, chainsaw, etc) from other people in their area.
Turns out, most people said it was a great idea and encouraged them, and they even got lots of signups, but people really don't like dealing with strangers for such things, and nobody used the service in practice.
A, found it:
>There was just one problem. As Adam Berk, the founder of Neighborrow, puts it: "Everything made sense except that nobody gives a shit. They go buy [a drill]. Or they just bang a screwdriver through the wall."
Actually there is a sorta famous example of a startup that tried to do just that -- or close, they tried to build a social site for people to easily borrow whatever (ladder, chainsaw, etc) from other people in their area.
Turns out, most people said it was a great idea and encouraged them, and they even got lots of signups, but people really don't like dealing with strangers for such things, and nobody used the service in practice.
A, found it:
>There was just one problem. As Adam Berk, the founder of Neighborrow, puts it: "Everything made sense except that nobody gives a shit. They go buy [a drill]. Or they just bang a screwdriver through the wall."
http://www.fastcompany.com/3050775/the-sharing-economy-is-de...
and
http://entrepreneurship.org/resource-center/lessons-from-fai...