
Uber for Everything - jamesjyu
http://diegobasch.com/uber-for-everything
======
oinksoft
The abundance (of mostly idle drills) the author points to is one of the main
ideas behind Kropotkin's mutualism ("anarcho-communism"). Industrialization
and agricultural breakthroughs have produced such plenty that it is
inexcusable that anybody wants for, well, any common need. In a mutual system,
the drill belongs to nobody, and it is taken and used as needed. Idealism?
Surely. But many anarchists would tell you that anarchism is an ideal, a goal,
more than it is a destination to be arrived at in short order.

So, I'd much rather see a tools co-op than yet another tools rental service;
perhaps I fail at capitalism in seeing this as something other than a startup
opportunity. Maybe this _is_ what the author is getting at, but the article is
couched in startup language.

~~~
NSMeta
> Idealism? Surely. But many anarchists would tell you that anarchism is an
> ideal, a goal, more than it is a destination to be arrived at in short
> order.

It always struck me, that so many people discard the idea of anarchism either
as "a teenage rebel idealism", terrorism, or simply "not going to work". Hence
they go back to capitalism or however things work today.

But in the end, what anarcho-communism is trying to achieve is what most of us
would agree with: eliminate poverty and exploitation (via equal rights to
access means of production), let people have control over their own lives,
direct democracy and self-organization. And when people say it's not going to
work, it saddens me that we are not even trying to move in that direction. Of
course, it may not ever happen, but innovating in this direction surely could
lead us to a better world.

Of course, don't take my word for it, as I'm obviously biased. Instead
research the topic if you're interested.

~~~
mmanfrin

      But in the end, what anarcho-communism is trying to achieve is what most of us would agree with: eliminate poverty and exploitation (via equal rights to access means of production)
    

You can replace the words 'anarcho-capitalism' with every single other
political system, and you'd reach the same ideal endpoint. Everything promises
fairness. People don't simply dismiss anarchism as 'teenage rebel idealism'
because they're unaware of your notions of endpoint, they disagree with it
because of inherent flaws (namely that money tends to lead to more money, and
any system devoid of oversight or regulation will inevitably lead to a power
structure built around those already with power).

There is no panaceatic system -- only the continual tamping of natural power
leavening. To claim that your system, above others, will achieve a system that
brings about permanent fairness is to belie a shallow consideration for how
power accumulates.

~~~
NSMeta
Note 'anarcho- _communism_ ', not - _capitalism_. In fairness, I am opposed to
anarcho-capitalism for the reason you outlined above:

> namely that money tends to lead to more money

In general, yes - there is no such thing as "panaceatic system", instead I was
suggesting to trying to find different methods, organization structures to
lower the possibility of (or in ideal world eliminating) power accumulation.

------
teej
Reminds me of something Paul Graham said a few months ago:

"Will ownership turn out to be largely a hack people resorted to before they
had the infrastructure to manage sharing properly?"

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/323875236225363968](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/323875236225363968)

~~~
jacquesm
Communes have been sharing things properly as long as mankind has been around.
The trick here is that we have redefined 'properly' as accountably, but it
need not keep the beancounters happy and you can still share stuff. The taxman
hates that kind of thing, they like to see receipts.

~~~
sopooneo
I'd say communes are small scale, and the dynamics of efficiently sharing
among a larger number of people are fundamentally different.

~~~
jacquesm
Some Ashrams are huge, and that's only one form of commune. A quick bit of
googling turned up Auroville, 2000 inhabitants.

~~~
lobotryas
That's cool. Can this scale to 2,000,000,000?

~~~
jarek
Does setting up 100,000 communes count?

------
j2d3
The drill example is a good one. I'm currently building a pergola. It's nearly
complete, but I need to cut a few more pieces from 4x4s at a 45 degree angle.
Somehow I did a decent job of this already on a few pieces with my handheld
circular saw, but it's just not the right tool for the job. I screwed up a few
times trying last night. What I really need is a chopsaw that will cut @ 45
degrees perfectly well.

I could go buy a chopsaw. I will probably keep using it on occasion. But it's
another $200 or so and - I'd rather just borrow one from a friend. But I don't
really know who of my friends has a chopsaw I can borrow, I don't want to
invest the time to figure that out and then go and get it, and tool rental is
ridiculously expensive, and it doesn't generally deliver without even more
ridiculous expense.

I also need a nail gun, and the good ones are all air powered, which means I
need a compressor, too. Again, I could go rent this stuff, but I want it
delivered, and I don't want to pay a price that is pretty close to what it
would cost to just buy the tool!

I have several power tools I rarely use. If I could sign up for a service that
would let me loan my tools out and borrow tools from others that also join the
service, and if the tool sharing service delivered and picked up tools from my
home and I requested what I want and made known what I have via an app, I'd
sign up right away.

I think it could be done with little cost to the end user.

So - Uber for everything - yes - and Uber for powertools - give it to me now!

~~~
sgrove
> "and I don't want to pay a price that is pretty close to what it would cost
> to just buy the tool!"

Why not pay the full price for the tool + delivery (handled by some monthly
membership fee, maybe) to keep it as long as you like, and then push a button
on your phone and someone shows up from the service to "buy it back" and
return it to the cloud. You'd essentially be paying a deposit to cover the
item, and then get the money back when the service got it back.

I'd liken this more to the original "netflix-for-everything", with a dash of
exec/uber-for-everything.

~~~
IanCal
You could do this p2p without having to have a central storage of all the
tools. Assuming the scale is large enough, there should always be things
available that you want. That also covers deprecation in value. The central
service could charge a small amount and handle disputes, etc, and come with
ratings of how reliable someone is.

You could call it something like eBay.

------
qq66
These are problems and solutions created by a very weak American social fabric
that no longer has any meaningful element larger than the nuclear family. See
Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone."

When I stay with my cousins in India, they can borrow anything they need on
pretty short notice. We wanted to play chess -- my cousin went a few doors
down to borrow their chess board. He saw that the cardboard chess board was
falling apart -- he spent about half an hour fixing it up with tape.

The closest that you see in America, since the days of Elks Lodges and bowling
leagues are behind us, are religious communities. Mormons, for example, have a
very tight-knit community of friends that they see frequently. Forget a power
drill -- if your house burns down, your fellow Mormons will be there in an
hour to get you housed/clothed/fed/taken care of.

~~~
aacook
I would argue that at scale and density, Airbnb has the chance to create a
community like this.

~~~
pavel_lishin
AirBNB is all about transience, though - I'm not going to join a community by
staying at someone's house for two days. At best, if there's a strong mutual
enjoyment, I'd end up making an acquaintance I might grab a drink with if I'm
passing through that city again.

------
dkrich
I think this line of thinking, while interesting, is backwards-looking.

One of the major advancements of mankind was precisely being able to
manufacture goods at a minimal marginal cost. Set up a billion dollar stamping
machine and now you can produce widgets for a marginal cost of a few cents.

Compare that to centuries past where manufacturing goods of any kind- metal,
clothing, or food took enormous amounts of resources compared to today and
therefore goods were either too expensive to purchase, or had to be shared.
Ironically, computers are probably the single best example of this. Previously
they were complex and expensive to make, so the fortunate few who had access
to one had to share it. Nowadays you can go to Best Buy and buy your own for a
few hundred bucks. That is a huge leap in progress. Why would you want to move
the other way?

~~~
commanda
That's a different use case. Computer owners usually use their computers every
single day for multiple hours, while drill owners, unless they are
professionals or hobbyists in construction, use them very rarely, maybe once
or twice a year.

~~~
dkrich
But the cost is vastly different as well. You can get a drill at Wal-Mart for
under $40 and it barely takes up any room. People's time is a lot more
expensive than the drill so there will never be a time that it will be
economical to pay somebody to do just that for you instead of buying a drill
and doing it yourself.

------
cmcewen
I think the author hasn't researched the topic very well - there are a ton of
startups who have tried this "stuff-sharing/selling model" and it hasn't
really worked out.

I wrote a blog post about why a drill is a bad example for the sharing
economy: [https://www.credport.org/blog/12-Why-a-Drill-is-a-Bad-
Exampl...](https://www.credport.org/blog/12-Why-a-Drill-is-a-Bad-Example-for-
the-Sharing-Economy)

~~~
aacook
Your post and outlook on this problem is the result of your definition of
"sharing economy" being too narrowly focused.

To me it seems most people interested in the sharing economy only care about
to talk about sharing if both sides of the transaction are individuals. If
you're open to the idea that the sharing economy could be a transaction
between a business and individual, then the market for temporary product
rentals suddenly becomes a $40B space. This is nothing new, either. Small
businesses have been renting out to other businesses and individuals since the
1950s. And, it's an existing $40B+ industry.

So while sure, peer to peer rentals for small items might never work, that's
not to say that an "Uber for rentals" model wouldn't work. Uber started by
bringing _existing_ limo drivers online... not by trying to create a new
supply side.

Edit: I also find the conclusion and only looking at drills to also be too
narrow of a conclusion. Seems like most people when they look at tools only
think about power drills. Totally agree that there isn't a $2B market for
power drill rentals. However, there is a massive market for all other types of
tool rentals.

------
JoelSutherland
The Uber for Everything is called Craigslist.

It's a fairly efficient market which means you can generally buy a used drill
for the same price that you can sell it for.

~~~
mason240
Who want to deal with spending, at minimum, two hours of time to buy and then
sell a $40 item, when you can just buy the $40 item and keep it on a shelf.

~~~
abruzzi
This is, I think, the most important point. The fact is when considered as a
single transaction: the $22 drill vs. the $22 guy that comes out drills holes
may seem like a wash. But given a usage interval of 6 months and a likely life
span for the tool of 5-10 years, you are looking a $220-$440 cost for the
service. If your goal is not to profit off people who don't own tools, but
rather maximize use of existing tools, and somehow you can make the whole
thing work without charging anyone a dime, you are still converting a 5 minute
job (pull the drill out of your storage box, and drill 5 holes) into hour or
so job (fire up the app, request a drill, it tells you where the nearest one
it, you go there and get it, go home, drill your holes, then store it, then
some time later you get notified by the app that someone needs the drill so
you stay home while that person comes by to pick it up.) Ok, so maybe you
could simplify that process, but most of the simplifications still impose time
penalties, or costs. The point is, for me, after two jaunts through the
process I'd start seeing $22 for my own drill as a bargain.

The whole approach would be more likely to work the more expensive the tool
(or other object) and the less frequent your need. Thats why car share
services work in cities with 1M+ population, but not in the town of 2000 I
live in.

The other thing is informal stuff like this happens all the time. I don't own
a MIG welder, but my brother does. He doesn't own a plasma cutter but he has a
friend that does. Neither of them own a tubing bender, but I do. So tool
sharing is common among existing social peer groups, and it works without an
"uber" because there is existing trust within the group that if I borrow and
break the welder, I'll pay to repair it. When you lend to strangers, you would
need a group to guarantee that your $1200 welder will come back in one piece.

------
jonny_eh
This has been tried so many times, and failed. I suspect that the reason is
that it's just not a big deal to buy and have tools you use rarely. Compare
that to the cost of owning a car, which includes insurance, maintenance,
parking, and not to mention the actual purchase price. That makes car sharing
much more valuable, like orders of magnitude more valuable.

~~~
sgrove
It won't work in areas of low density - the convenience and per-transaction
cost would be lost. But in dense cities with an ability to deliver in an
hour/day to/from your door, it could be very nice. I would get rid of quite a
bit of my stuff that I never use, but I keep around in case I buy a desk, or
move, etc.

------
czzarr
To me, the drill example misses a crucial point about cars. Cars are a pain in
the ass to own. First you need a license. Then you need insurance. You need to
get it checked up once a year. You need to park it every day and night. You
need to refuel it every so often. So Uber doesn't only solves the
transportation problem. It relieves you of all these (super) annoying chores
and is much more convenient for a lot of people. But uber for drills? Brings
more problems than it solves at an individual level imo.

------
nonchalance
How is this different from what craigslist does?

Searching for "drill rent" in the NYC page reveals
[http://newhaven.craigslist.org/tls/3961251107.html](http://newhaven.craigslist.org/tls/3961251107.html)

~~~
jarek
It'd have a beautiful flat-design iOS app, delighting users.

------
dajohnson89
Don't hackerspaces[0] solve this issue? I mean, with hackerspaces, the
emphasis is more on building stuff in the space, instead of taking the tools
home. But the idea is the same, and it's been around for a while.

[0]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackerspace](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackerspace)

------
JelteF
The car service he describes actually sort of exists. It's car2go and it's
around in Amsterdam and London as well.

You rent little electric smarts per minute and get free minutes for putting it
back at a charging location. The cars can be put back anywhere in the city
though and you can find them using the app which shows you all the locations.

~~~
jarek
It's not in SF or NYC or Boston, which means hardly anyone on HN or in VCland
knows about it.

~~~
zevyoura
It will likely be in some of those places soon; they've been expanding quite
quickly. A motorcycle is the only vehicle I own, and it was the perfect
complement for things like groceries, moving small things, vet appointments,
etc. I used it in Austin, and I miss it dearly in LA.

------
retroafroman
I've thought of putting together a "Netflix for tools" where you order a tool,
it gets sent to you with a returnable box and label and you send it back when
you're done. A drill is a bad example though. I wouldn't stock commodity tools
like drills and saws, it'd be things you're going to have to order online
anyway, like tools made specifically for one car.

A good example that I could use right now is a BMW airbag reset tool. I
stupidly disconnected an airbag when replacing my window regulator. Now I need
a very basic, $20 on eBay, electronic tool to reset the system and get rid of
the warning light. I'd pay $10 to have it by the weekend when I'll do the
work, and it could be used many, many times over. Every German car I've ever
owned had similar electrical and mechanical specialty tools I've had to buy
and can't use when I get a new car.

------
squeakywheel
The article addresses a very common problem. Drills are not the best example
of tools to rent, since they relatively cheap and you use them quite often. I
personally have gone through this thought process every time I worked on my
car and needed new expensive tools that are used once. When I moved to a
house, I always needed equipment (not only tools) on a short term basis. This
is why I started [https://www.1000tools.com](https://www.1000tools.com) I
wanted to be able to rent tools [specifically tools] from people around me and
couldn't find a good enough solution. So, we built our solution.

It's live and open in select cities, 8 weeks old startup.

------
secstate
Not to be overly philosophical, but this problem was more or less created by
the urbanization of human culture. I live in a small town in Maine and
telecommute to my job. If I need a tool, before I ever even think of hitting
up Amazon or Home Depot, I ask around.

Problem solved. Live in communities where your peer group is varied enough
that you're likely to be friends with someone with what you don't have and
this is a non-issue.

Of course, that's not realistic for the vast majority of the U.S. So I
suppose, good luck. I'm gonna go chat with my neighbor about something and see
if needs any help.

------
erikpukinskis
There are a _lot_ of people trying to do this. Namenotrequired mentioned
[https://peerby.com/](https://peerby.com/) but there are others:

[http://snapgoods.com/](http://snapgoods.com/)
[http://us.zilok.com/](http://us.zilok.com/)
[http://www.openshed.com.au/](http://www.openshed.com.au/)
[http://irent2u.com/](http://irent2u.com/)
[http://www.hirethings.co.nz/](http://www.hirethings.co.nz/)
[http://rentalic.com/](http://rentalic.com/)
[http://www.rentstuff.com/](http://www.rentstuff.com/)
[http://www.loanables.com/](http://www.loanables.com/)
[http://www.rentoid.com/](http://www.rentoid.com/)

And that's just the ones who are still trying. Many domains are dead.

And honestly, I suspect that they'll all fail. "Rent anything" is too big of a
problem for a startup to solve in one fell swoop. I think someone could
succeed at it if they picked a market that is _really_ underserved by other
existing options and focus on just a small set of goods, in a specific
geographic area, and really work the kinks out before slowly expanding.

Becoming the go-to place for tool rentals in San Francisco before your team
burns out is doable. Becoming the "rent anything from anyone" company is not.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
I wonder if it is too much for Amazon to take on though. The OP mentioned
buying a drill with Amazon Prime which is almost on demand use of the tool.

What if Amazon had a "Rent for 4 hours for $5" option on their site (right
below the buy button).

~~~
michaelt
How do you imagine them picking the item up when you're done? You wait for the
UPS guy? 1 hour pick up time slots? You go to their drop-off location?

~~~
plorkyeran
Put it back in the box and back outside the door where it was dropped off, and
the next delivery guy to come by picks it up. My apartment building already
gets multiple deliveries from Amazon each day, so partial-day rentals are
theoretically possible without any more visits.

It'd be a logistics nightmare, but Amazon seems to be really good at solving
those.

------
Demiurge
Hm, diminishing the importance of exclusive ownership? Sharing and
optimization of utilization? Doesn't sound very American or capitalistic to
me. What's next, long term sustainability and planning? Sounds like socialism,
if not communism!

It is kind of ironic that now there is a for-profit, commercial product based
on the concept that has been so stigmatized during the Cold War. Perhaps
rebranding is what it will take for a less consumerist, less wasteful and more
efficient society that can survive global warming and overpopulation.

~~~
peterjancelis
Capitalism has always been about maximizing utility. It's just that as
transaction costs are falling thanks to the internet and other tech, more
effective sharing becomes possible. Note that it would still rely on ownership
of the capital good itself as well as the sharing marketplace, to avoid the
tragedy of the commons.

------
peterjancelis
Markets like "Airbnb for drilling holes in my wall" will take off once we have
self-driving cars. Right now to order a "hole in my wall" you need to pay:

1) A human's time to come to you 2) A human's time to drill the hole 3) Capex
for the drilling machine

Self driving car tech can solve point 1, which would leave a huge incentive to
solve point 2. Even a low cost worker can easily cost $50K all-in (including
overhead), so if self driving car tech is commonplace that would mean a "robot
that drills holes and knows how to drive itself to the customer's wall" can
cost up to $50K / risk adjusted interest rate.

Take interest rate at 10%, that means the market will pay upto $500K per such
robot, multiply by a few of those in a few hundred cities and you now have a
market oppotunity for 1000 hole drilling robots i.e. 500 million USD. It now
becomes interesting for VCs.

Now redo this scenario for every little thing people do in life. Of course
eventually someone who will invent the "iPhone for robots", a base robot that
does the self driving and developers can make apps on top of it to do
different tasks. The robot can go back to base to retool when needed.

This is why I am convinced self-driving cars will take automation to a whole
new level. I think PG is right when he says ownership could turn out to be a
temporary hack for efficient crowd sharing. (I am saying this as a 100%
capitalist.)

------
Navarr
NeighBorrow was trying to do this, but it looks like they've gone from "share
the things you don't need with your neighbors" to "pay us a montly price and
when you need something you'll get it."

They're over at [http://beta.neighborrow.com/](http://beta.neighborrow.com/)

Disclosure: I used to be contracted as a developer by the guy running it. I
wasn't the best developer then, but I was a lot younger too.

------
mindslight
Honestly, wishing to absolve yourself of common tools? Shame on you.

I've driven back and forth across the country twice with everything in the
trunk of a Honda Civic and still brought a drill with me both times. $13 will
get you a corded drill (no battery to wear out) at Harbor Fright. While you're
there, get a few more simple hand tools you may need someday.

People should strive to own more tools and learn to do at least some things
for themselves. It sounds like this guy's actual problem is that he needs to
pick up that drill and start using it more without too much planning. Imagine
how good of a coder you'd be if you had to schedule an hour ahead and pay $10
every time you saved a file!

Spend some time in LA if you'd like to see the broken society that develops
from outsourcing everything to services performed by cheap labor. Utterly
disempowered people floating through life afraid of doing anything besides
what they're told, because they have no clue how anything actually functions.
And it's not like they save time either, dealing with administrative overhead
for every little task and invariably supervising the worker from the shade.

~~~
reustle
Sounds like you missed the point of the article. It's not about not being able
to use the tools, just letting them collect dust in your shed.

------
mikepurvis
A lot of this stuff is already in place, perhaps without a spiffy iOS app. You
can rent all kinds of tools from Home Depot, and there are lots of places
which rent dinnerware.

For example, my wife and I have dinner service for 9 in our house, so when we
threw a sandwich luncheon for 30, we rented three dozen plates and punch
glasses for 24 hours. I think it was about $40, and it was way nicer than
using disposables.

------
eranation
One aspect of Uber that I think is missed as key, is not necessarily sharing,
they are offering an existing service, a taxi service. It was there before,
you share a taxi, you don't own it. What they did here is to take a very old
industry and, well, disrupt it. They make it look elegant (home page looks
like a fashion site), easy to use, rating of drivers makes sure quality is
high, and no need to tip is a big thing, I hate when taxi drivers complain
that I only left 15% and not 20% as if it's mandatory.

Uber make the Taxi service better, more modern, that's all, and it's good
enough.

The next Uber IMHO will do the same for another service, any other service,
that things like getting your service provider's photo in advance, following
their arrival on GPS, no need for cash or credit cards due to a one click
payment, known and final quote and pricing, and ability to rate them without
the need to answer a recorded phone call with 10 questions, will have value to
customers.

Any service that follows this, sharing drills or not, will have a good chance
of making it big IMHO.

------
temuze
Sounds like you could just sell your drill!

It all comes down to how much money/headaches are you saving. Let's say the
temporary drill/hole making service costs half as much as getting a drill
itself ($11 for the service instead of $22 for the drill). If you need to put
another shelf in, the service would cost as much as getting the drill in the
first place! Also, is it more convenient as a service? Are you sure you want
to deal with getting a person to go to your place to put a hole in? Sometimes,
I don't want to deal with people and I don't want to wait. Is it worth the
effort of ordering on your phone and waiting a hour every time you want to use
a drill? Are you saving money in the long run?

I don't think everything can be put in the fancy schmancy "sharing economy."
It comes to one simple principle - is something more convenient as a service?

Maybe it is convenient at scale. Maybe renting all the power tools you need or
all the equipment you need is more convenient.

~~~
alexharris6
I believe that the author is implying, in the first two paragraphs, that they
would rather spend more money in the long run than have the drill sitting
around unused.

------
callmeed
I wonder if a variation of this would work for home-grown produce.

Our house has a 1/4 acre yard, huge garden beds, and a drip system. Even with
a household of 6 we've got zucchinis, tomatoes, and lemons coming out the
wazoo[1]. Every block in our neighborhood has a few giant avocado trees and
more and more people seem to be setting up chicken coops.

On the weekends, my kids will pull their wagon around the neighborhood and
sell lemons[2]. On a good day, they'll make $25.

Would be cool if people could request some lemons or eggs and a text could be
sent to the closest people who might have them.

1 [http://instagram.com/p/dDishZi9tI/](http://instagram.com/p/dDishZi9tI/)

2 [http://instagram.com/p/WFiKiEi9u-/](http://instagram.com/p/WFiKiEi9u-/)

------
itsybaev
Wow! We're Silicon Valley-based startup and have been working on this idea for
several months already! Feel free to join our closed testing that we've
recently started: [http://yoneibs.com/](http://yoneibs.com/) or just shoot an
email at yo@yoneibs.com (yoneibs@gmail.com)

~~~
isalmon
This is actually pretty interesting

~~~
itsybaev
Thanks! Looking forward to have you as one of our beta-testers.

------
mhb
How is a Tragedy of the Commons
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons))
avoided?

There will be enough people who use the drill and leave it in a degraded
condition (dirty, broken in some way) that a replacement would soon be needed.
Is the answer to this accountability? Or are people better-mannered than I
give them credit for? How much of an investment in tracking borrowers would be
required?

------
jarek
This can and has been done, non-commercially.
[http://vancouvertoollibrary.com/](http://vancouvertoollibrary.com/) is just
one example.

~~~
benmaraschino
Berkeley and Oakland have some pretty amazing tool-lending libraries as well.
SF had one too, but I'm not sure what happened to it.

------
jlongster
I think a true peer-to-peer sharing network would be a nightmare. However, I
love the idea a centralized service that I could rent all kinds of things
from. It's like Lowe's tool rental service on steroids. There's been hundreds
of times that I wanted to rent something smaller, like an impact drill, or
something else that they don't have. A full commodity rental service would be
neat.

~~~
aacook
I'm a founder at Rentabilities and this is exactly what we're working on.

Would love your feedback:
[http://www.rentabilities.com](http://www.rentabilities.com)
[http://www.rentabilities.com/26135/1-5-rotary-hammer-
drill/](http://www.rentabilities.com/26135/1-5-rotary-hammer-drill/)

As a first step to solving the problem, we've aggregated much of the data on
what's available for rent locally.

As a second step, we're currently experimenting with an online booking flow in
event categories and it's going well.

For equipment, most people want immediacy and prefer to just book on the
phone. So right now, we're just giving consumers that option. However, I would
love to give you the ability to book the impact drill instantly.

~~~
jlongster
Wow, that's cool. I live in Richmond, VA, and it looks like all of the rentals
come from just a few places: lowes and home depot are obvious. I found United
Rentals through your site though. It would be nice to book immediately from
your site, because otherwise I'll probably just skip your site and call the
company directly after I use your site once to discover the rental companies.

Also, I expected a bunch of tools to be listed on this page:
[https://www.rentabilities.com/united-rentals-richmond-
va/](https://www.rentabilities.com/united-rentals-richmond-va/). It took me a
little bit to figure out to click a category on the left.

I noticed your site is responsive, too. A random technical point is that you
would probably benefit from concatenating all of your js/css into 2 js/css
files, since on mobile latency is critical.

It's a cool idea though.

------
namenotrequired
I like [https://peerby.com/](https://peerby.com/) for this. You can borrow
anything from people close to you.

------
Guvante
I think the major issue with this concept is that people are going to want a
discount. "Why would I rent when I could just buy for that price", even if we
won't get any more (or heck even less) utility by buying, we think that is a
better option, just in case.

Given how cheap a lot of this stuff is, it isn't surprising a proper sharing
system hasn't shown up yet.

------
nawitus
The car sharing service already exists in Finland. It's not very popular
because it's expensive to rent a car for use, and renting one's own car to
someone else is not very profitable (so most people won't do it). Besides, it
means that the car owner can't use his own car any time he pleases (which is a
key selling point of owning a car in the first place).

------
arbuge
Stuff has become so cheap that using it rarely is not that much of a problem
in practice. I'm not sure where the author concluded that it would cost $22 to
get his holes drilled - I'm guessing in SF it would be more. That's not too
far off from cordless drill prices ... especially if you're only looking for a
drill that doesn't last very much.

------
kevinpet
What we need is efficiency in the second-hand goods marketplace. One partial
enabling change would be to eliminate sales tax on second hand goods (or only
charge it on the markup).

I don't want to worry about how long I need to possess something at the time I
order it. I want to buy it and a repurchase agreement and then sell it back to
some marketplace.

------
state
I was thinking about the "sharing economy" yesterday and started wondering if
you could approach its underlying infrastructure as a software problem. It's
easy, in our heads, to generalize the aspirations of the many companies that
get lumped in to that category — but could it be accomplished in practice by
building tools?

------
neonhomer
In all honesty i feel like this is an issue of a breakdown in community. If
you are a part of a community with a level of trust, it isn't that much to ask
a friend to borrow a saw, or a cup of flour, etc. I'm not sure any sort of app
or website can replace that level of trust and sharing.

~~~
jessicasumthing
I think you're close -- its a critical mass issue in communities. There are
countless networks to handle borrowing (some already mentioned) neighborrow,
neighborgoods, peerby, nextdoor...the list goes on. There are also tool
libraries in communities across the country and don't forget timebanks whose
forums/email lists often turn to I'll borrow x for a time dollar.

Effectiveness is constrained by network adoption/critical mass -- Lyft isn't
useful unless there are enough people to have someone available to pick you up
when you need them.

>I'm not sure any sort of app or website can replace that level of trust and
sharing. Apps/websites don't replace the trust and sharing, they increase the
effectiveness of your local relationships. In a lot of cases, living in the
same area carries an amount of trust and sharing. Trusting relationships are
actually built upon a certain level of risk that is taken at some point -- you
trust your neighbor a lot more after you ask them to keep your key and an eye
on your home while you're away for a weekend. So its sort of a chicken and egg
question. Is there a lack in trust in local communities because
neighbors/community members don't interact, therefore peer-to-peer tools will
increase trust? Or will these types of networks not succeed because there
isn't enough trust?

------
dougabug
Maybe like an eBay for rentals. Reputation is everything. Also some kind of
micro-insurance to protect against loss or theft. Rapid distribution centers
w/ pre- and post- checkout inspection, optional door to door service
(aggregate inbound and outbound deliveries to lower cost).

------
scottmagdalein
The specialness of Uber isn't the car, it's the driver that is summoned
seemlingly magically from your phone and paid just as easily.

The drill analogy only works if you're quickly hiring a handyman to drill the
hole, not a delivery person to drop off a drill.

~~~
Domenic_S
Erm, that's exactly what TFA said.

 _What if for $22 I could have had a reliable person show up at my place
within an hour, drill the holes, and go away?_

------
brador
Don't forget the marketing issue here. Someone wants a drill, you want them to
think of you at the same level as Amazon. That will take marketing dollars.
Big marketing dollars.

My guess is weak marketing is why every startup in this space will flop.

------
athst
This is a great idea that I would use all the time, but I don't understand
this trend of posting long blog posts of company ideas. If it's a good idea,
why don't you just start working on it?

~~~
commanda
Perhaps because ideas are a dime-a-dozen, but not every idea-haver has the
time, energy, desire, or capital necessary for execution. Perhaps someone else
will come along and run with this idea. I think sharing startup ideas aloud in
blog posts is wonderful for this reason.

------
rexreed
This already exists (as many have mentioned). Here's one in the DC / Baltimore
area: [http://www.toolspinner.com/](http://www.toolspinner.com/)

------
lorenzk
I think the idea gets taken a bit too far here. The solution to all cited
examples has already been invented: it's called borrowing from friends, family
and neighbours.

------
mahyarm
I think things like this will become far more workable when something like
electric delivery air drones become commercially viable.

------
aresant
"Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff." \- Frank Zappa

Uber, Groupon, and the other spoilage / sharing successes are amazing, world
changing businesses.

But we're not going to live in a binary future.

Some downsides that are immediately apparent in the drill analogy:

(a) Convenience - You wait for the drill (b) Exclusivity - Everybody can own
the drill (you're not special) (c) Privacy - Using the drill winds up in
somebody's database.

Consumerism will chug along and the sharing-economy will grow along side it,
because people will want a choice, and many will continue to want to OWN.

~~~
jarek
> Uber, Groupon, and the other spoilage / sharing successes are amazing, world
> changing businesses.

So are Modo, City Carshare, and numerous bikeshare implementations. Except not
businesses.

> Exclusivity - Everybody can own the drill (you're not special)

This is different from the current case when you buy a drill for <$100 how?
It's a largely-non-consumable commodity.

------
agrover
tool libraries like [http://neptl.org/](http://neptl.org/) ?

