Adam Albright is a second year MBA and co-founder of rentstuff.com. (www.about.me/adamalbright | )
Have you ever wanted to try something new on the weekend, like go camping or for a bike ride? As a student, opportunities such as these can be limited by minimal space to store gear or insufficient money to purchase equipment.
This problem led my co-founders and I (Adam Albright) to launch Rentstuff.com, a person-to-person rental marketplace that allows individuals and rental businesses to post items for rent. Now you can jump on RentStuff.com and rent that tent, or bike, or guitar that you want to try out. If you want to earn some extra cash, you can also lend out your stuff to others through our convenient, secure system.
Owen has been key in helping me launch this business. While being a student and entrepreneur can be extremely busy, there are some definite perks. Here are the ways Owen has helped me along the way:
- The Summer Business Plan Competition: In this annual competition students present business plans and the winner is awarded a grant to use for launching the start-up. Pitching RentStuff.com was a great experience, and the grant money was extremely helpful as we worked towards our launch in August 2011.
- “Launching the Venture”: In this entrepreneurship course a small group of student-presented businesses are selected and students then focus on financial plans, marketing, and distribution channels for these businesses. Contributions from my fellow students helped me evaluate the critical aspects of my business plan in more detail.
- Input from the Owen Community: Both students and professors have been willing to share thoughts and advice regarding RentStuff. This input has both validated the strengths of my business plan and identified areas for improvement.
A Little More About RentStuff.com
A growing number of businesses have models that are based around sharing. This is a movement called Collaborative Consumption, which is driven by the fact that people do not feel the need to own everything they use and are thus more likely to borrow or rent items as opposed to buy them. The first generation of companies embracing the collaborative consumption concept included ZipCar (borrowing a car instead of owning one) and Netflix (renting movies instead of buying DVDs).
The second generation of collaborative consumption companies maintains a focus on access to stuff instead of ownership of stuff, but utilizes person-to-person sharing/lending. RentStuff.com embraces the person-to-person concept as a site where users can post stuff for others to rent or search for stuff to rent from others, all within their local community. Renters and lenders must meet to pick-up and drop-off the item, but RentStuff.com provides security in the form of a temporary credit card based hold that is used to compensate the lender in the event of theft or damage.
In this down economy, there are many positive financial implications of renting and lending. RentStuff.com is an easy source for people to both earn money by renting out their stuff for others to use, as well as save money by renting instead of buying products that they infrequently use.
I believe RentStuff.com is a valuable resource that can truly benefit people, especially students; the level of support I have received from the Owen Community in making this concept into a reality has been phenomenal. So check it out: www.RentStuff.com!
Also on Facebook: and on Twitter:
Loading ...