

What’s Asseta (YC S13), A Used Equipment Marketplace, Doing In Y Combinator? - Asseta
http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/02/whats-asseta-a-marketplace-for-used-manufacturing-equipment-doing-in-y-combinator-um-making-money/

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frisco
I'm a huge user of stuff like this... There are definitely big opportunities
in this market. It's not sexy, but it's really valuable.

One thing that's not clear is how Asseta is better than DoveBid or Equipnet.
All the best deals are found at auction, and running those is going to be
really hard for these guys to get into. There aren't any prices listed,
either... just "contact seller" buttons. There are tons of markets that just
list items with web-to-lead forms (biox, biosurplus, alliance analytical,
etc).

Everyone who buying from these markets for long enough ends up writing bots to
crawl pricing and availability data. That would be a useful service. Because
it's all based on auctions for a very thin market, it can be hard to get a
sense of availability or fair pricing for a particular type of equipment.
Aggregating all that and making it actionable would be useful. I'm not sure I
get just another site with listings and no prices though.

Logistics is another huge problem. There have been several times where we've
bought something for a huge discount only to end up spending more than the
cost of the hardware on rigging and shipping it. Some companies even pick up
trucks at transportation auctions, hire a driver, and use it to pick up their
equipment from all over before selling the truck at auction again.

We spend huge amounts of money on capital equipment, along with much of the
rest of the world, and these kinds of services would be a big deal to us. I'm
excited to see how their business evolves.

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CamperBob2
_One thing that 's not clear is how Asseta is better than DoveBid or
Equipnet._

Similarly, it's not _that_ clear how DoveBid is better than plain old eBay.
DoveBid does a lot of liquidation sales of equipment that eventually ends up
on eBay. It would be better for buyers if one or the other middlemen were cut
out.

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Asseta
Two main differences.

1\. DoveBid, Equipnet, eBay all take a consumer-centric approach by just
providing basic information and a countdown timer. Very few companies can
purchase anything in that type of system. Our customers are not individuals
but organizations that have more complex requirements, i.e. approval chains,
inspections, contract negotiations, etc.

2\. Auctions work well for sellers who have many items for sale and a limited
time-frame, typically facility closures. The vast majority of idle equipment
does not fall into that category.

~~~
frisco
> Very few companies can purchase anything in that type of system. Our
> customers are not individuals but organizations that have more complex
> requirements, i.e. approval chains, inspections, contract negotiations, etc.

All of the major auctioneers pre-announce the auctions and have inspection
windows. They're used to working with companies that have those kinds of
requirements.

> The vast majority of idle equipment does not fall into that category.

Yep -- solve this and that's amazing. I know several large biotech with huge
amounts of idle old-ish hardware that we'd love to buy from them, but right
now it's hard to crack that. Convince them to sell, lease, loan, whatever all
that stuff and we'd be all over it.

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ShabbyDoo
I'm a Clevelander, and I bought workbenches for my basement here:

[http://www.hgrinc.com/](http://www.hgrinc.com/)

The warehouse is huge. It's (somewhat ironically) in an old auto plant in a
Cleveland near-ring suburb. They (as of a few years ago) list items both on
their own website and on eBay/others. I recall being told that their business
model is to make an offer to a company closing a plant for all equipment --
simple liquidation.

When I was there, some guys from Florida were looking at some sort of
precision measuring device. They owned a small machining operation and said
that this particular device would cost $125K new. HGR was selling it for less
than $5K.

I was quite pleased with my $30 workbenches. One had been modified with large,
lockable casters. On the way out, another customer noted that the castors
alone would cost $100 new for a set. One could question the time efficiency of
my purchase, but I wasn't working at the time so my opportunity costs were
low.

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cpursley
Interesting. My product is an office management tool for appraisers. It was
originally intended for real estate appraisers (my background) but I had a
significant and unexpected interest from non-real estate (personal property)
appraisers, many of who are equipment valuers. Apparently this is a pretty big
market. Good luck to them.

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CamperBob2
Interesting logo, looks like they'll be hearing from Rockwell at some point.

