Archive for the ‘Announcements’ Category

Welcome to iRent2u.com all Pepperdine MBA alumni!

In the ongoing efforts to reach 1000 respondents to our survey, the wonderful faculty at Pepperdine has agreed to send out our survey request to all graduating MBA classes as far back as the year 2000. This will be a great help, as we have stalled a bit around the 480 mark, and can use the help.

If you haven’t taken the survey yet, please go here to do so. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=0S3pPYxkR6S0eGbiQVlZ7A_3d_3d

This is just another example of the wonderful help Pepperdine University has been in launching our business. In case you are interested I will tell you a bit about how Pepperdine has really helped us along the way.

To start off, if it wasn’t for Pepperdine’s excellent study abroad program to Spain, I never would have met my business partners. Without that I never would have heard of the idea or had a chance to participate, even though one of my partners was right next door in UCLA Anderson.

Besides the study abroad program, there were many opportunities Pepperdine facilitated that really helped prepare us to launch a business. One of the most impactful was my participation in T.E.C. (The Executive Committee – now called Vistage ). Vistage is the world’s largest CEO network, and is a program where you create a personal board of advisers. Here we got the chance to have very personal and candid meetings with extremely successful businessmen & women from the LA area. Speaking and learning with them helped me realize that my true calling was starting my own business. This also helped me to recognize the opportunity when it presented itself, by keeping me in the right frame of mind. There were many other great learning opportunities before I went to Spain, but Vistage was the most motivational and inspirational of them.

A special Thank You is due to Gary Brinderson of Brinderson Construction who made this experience a reality and gave such valuable insights. The things I learned while working with you were invaluable, and will stay with me the rest of my life.

Great benefits came after I returned to Pepperdine with my new team and business plan. Obviously winning the Business Plan Competition was incredible in helping us validate the concept and obtain startup financing, but we received so much other help that it is hard to quantify. You can’t know how many people coached me, brainstormed with me, mentored me, and assisted me with every part of the business. It was this help that turned an incredible idea into a tremendous opportunity, and it was the people from Pepperdine who made it happen.

Now that my partners and I have all graduated and started the business, the relationship has continued to help us tremendously. We were invited to attend a black-tie event, the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award Ceremony, where we got to network with highly successful local entrepreneurs. We got 7 different volunteer interns to work with us on varying projects of great importance. Just this last weekend we were invited to speak at a Pepperdine Entrepreneurship Forum where we met other motivated entrepreneurial students who gave us great feedback and others who are interested in investing.

Overall our relationship with Pepperdine University has been a huge help with the launch of the business, and for this we simply want to say thanks!

A special thanks to the following:
Charles Morrissey – for giving us great insights into the crazy entrepreneurial world
Molly Lavik – for connecting us with incredible mentors and advisors
John Mooney – for a couple really great brainstorming sessions that helped remind us the best help doesn’t always come with a price tag
Dean Livingston – who has been ever supportive and has offered the help of Pepperdine many times
Michael Magasin – for his incredible “Scared-Straight” business law class which has motivated us to do everything correctly while forming the business
Doreen Shanahan – who gave us such great feedback after the second round of the business plan competition
Andrea Scott – also willingly gave excellent feedback on the concept during the competition
Geri Jabara – for getting me to Spain and being one of the most positive and supportive persons I have met in my life
Kristin Strange – for approving my intern request forms =^)
Nicole Hall - for putting up with my repeated emails asking when she was going to send out the survey to the alumni. =^)

Of course this is just the tip of the iceberg. The whole University has been behind us. I haven’t even begun to mention all the incredible fellow students who did the bulk of coaching and assisting, but I will leave them for a post another day.

For now just let me say thank you for all your help, and we, at iRent2u.com, appreciate the support!

And if you are also a Pepperdine alumni, don’t forget to utilize the excellent resources available to you through the staff and other students & alumni. They can have a tremendous impact on your business.

Popularity: 10% [?]

iRent2u.com - The Public Speaks Up!

Well apparently we have a lot of friends out there, but even more people who we don’t even know that have really gotten behind this concept called iRent2u.com.

Last week we asked for feedback from the public, and we had a great response. So that I don’t overwhelm you I am only going to post 10 of the responses, and then I will post some more later. If you haven’t had a chance to send your comments, take a moment now to write up a one or two sentence statement letting us know how you feel about what we are trying to do and send it to feedback@iRent2u.com

By the way, if anyone still hasn’t taken the survey, here is the link. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=0S3pPYxkR6S0eGbiQVlZ7A_3d_3d

Endorsements:

-iRent2u.com,
Your new website irent2u.com is an enormous idea that has broad reaching potential. “ We don’t know what we don’t know,” and many times we are not aware of what we lack until someone comes along with the solution. I sincerely think that you this program will gain substantial traction out of the gate.

My best,
Kevin Crosthwaite, CEO
The Crosthwaite Group

“What is most amazing to me about irent2u is that I don’t have to reason why I should or should not buy the set of golf clubs that I know I will probably only use once and then will sit in my garage for years gathering dust. With irent2u I can either find someone else willing to rent the clubs to me for the day or rent them out myself. It makes so much sense.”

Brad White
Countrywide Financial

iRent2U.com is an idea so good and so obvious it’s hard to believe it doesn’t already exist. If these guys weren’t working on it, I’d do it myself. As it is, I’m just glad I may be able to get some use out of that rotary saw I bought three years ago, renting it out to people who will actually use it more than once a year. If iRent2U had been around back then, I probably would never have bought it!

Dan Reines

I think the rest of the world is much more accepting of this culture of sharing, but it could really work well in the U.S. For example in Buenos Aires, Argentina, you could hail a taxi home from the airport and get ripped for about 80-100 pesos or you can rent a “remis” for about a 1/3 of the price. Remis are people’s cars that would normally be sitting in a work parking lot all day. Instead, people rent their unused work cars to a company that drives clients around in those same cars all day. The people who rent their cars get paid each day and passengers can economize on travel expenses. I thought it was a great idea and I have used it every time I go back. I think iRent2u takes that successful concept and extends it to all of our unused assets. (I know I would use it to rent snowboards, surfboards, and international housing.)

Dave Contreras
MBA, IBM Client Executive, Globetrotter

Just as the saying goes: “It takes a village to raise a child”, why not “It takes a neighborhood community to raise awareness”. I believe that iRent2U is going to do just that, raise awareness about our over consumption. Going “green” is much more than just saving some gas and a little bit on your electric bill, it is a lifestyle change that means living in a way that gives back and protects rather than purchase and waste. I think if we all did just a little sharing with one another starting in our own communities, we can start a whole new way of living across the nation. iRent2U isn’t just another eBay-ish rental website; it has the power to push regular people into a different mindset—green living that includes sharing with your neighbors in an equitable fashion. Just brilliant!

Sean Cook, MBA/TM
CEO / Webmaster: Salyris Studios
http://www.salyris.com

iRent2u.com comes with a first-class service which fosters relationships with your neighbors!

It offers a clever and economical alternative to access a multitude of products and services, and lets you have a positive impact on the environment with minimum efforts. A must use!

Fabrice Talbot

iRent2u.com is a great idea for building a discerning and reliable community of borrowers and borrowees; it’s a great spin on the “equalizer” marketplace concept that works so well on the web and an idea whose time has come. Tim, a savvy and industrious web entrepreneur, and his management team are in a great position to successfully execute their award-winning business plan.

Jeff Rozic

Very nice idea. Like the layout and setup. Clear and simple. My type of website.

John Dierckx

This business idea appears to have great potential as a game changing approach to borrowing and lending and interim equipment rentals. The concept is simple and the website is also quite simple in scope. I look forward to seeing this business rollout in my area of the Midwest so I can realize value for myself, not just cost to rent from others.

Dan Carney

Not because you went asking - but seriously because I believe your startup has potential - here’s my review.

“Simply put - the iRent2u.com works, and it does so WELL. None of the usual fussing about - no unnecessary fluff. Just the hardcore concentration on creating value that we all so dearly love.

Affiliate Marketing Expert David Wilkinson

In addition, we were also covered in the Startup Research Blog by Anurag Wakhlu. You can view the story here http://startupresearch.blogspot.com/2007/07/irent2ucom-peer-to-peer-lending.html

Thank you again to everyone who sent in comments, and to those who don’t see yours here don’t worry, I will post some more next week.

For now let me just say that we are overwhelmed with the positive feedback and are doing everything we can to live up to your very high expectations.

Popularity: 7% [?]

News Break: iRent2u.com does shameless requests for endorsements!!

In our continuing efforts to be chosen to present at the TechCrunch20 this September 17th & 18th, iRent2u is looking for informed parties who would be willing to write endorsements of our efforts.

Does our concept speak to you? Does it make sense? Do you see the value in what we are trying to do?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, we would love to hear from you. We are looking for short one or two sentence comments regarding the concept and our progress to date.

We have already began receiving comments from people, and are excited to begin sharing them with you. Once we have collected more we will post them onto a separate page along with links back to the authors so that you know who is speaking.

To give you an idea of some of the comments we have received so far, here is a brief list (authors names are not displayed as we are still coordinating permissions for their publication)

Comments made about iRent2u.com so far:

“This website has the potential to change the face of commerce as we know it”

“Just as the saying goes: “It takes a village to raise a child”, why not “It takes a neighborhood community to raise awareness”. I believe that iRent2U is going to do just that, raise awareness about our over consumption. Going “green” is much more than just saving some gas and a little bit on your electric bill, it is a lifestyle change that means living in a way that gives back and protects rather than purchase and waste. I think if we all did just a little sharing with one another stating in our own communities, we can start a whole new way of living across the nation. iRent2U isn’t just another eBay-ish rental website; it has the power to push regular people into a different mindset—green living that includes sharing with your neighbors in an equitable fashion. Just brilliant!”

“This business idea appears to have great potential as a game changing approach to borrowing and lending and interim equipment rentals. The concept is simple and the website is also quite simple in scope. I look forward to seeing this business rollout in my area of the Midwest so I can realize value for myself, not just cost to rent from others.”

“The concept is brilliant. I have shared Nils’ “drill” thought countless times”

“oh, man, i can’t wait to start renting out my circular power saw.”

Thanks to those who have already written reviews:

This is very exciting for us, and we appreciate your support. Some people are requesting to see the actual site before writing a review, which is totally understandable. If you prefer to see the site first please send me an email and I will give you a sneak peek sometime after the 15th. We can’t make the site totally public though because we made a promise to TechCrunch not to release it openly to the public until the conference.

If You Don’t Like to Write:

Some people do not enjoy writing stuff. If you are one of these people, we would appreciate your listing us on any of the social networking sites such ad Digg.com or StumbleUpon.com. Or just tell your friends, that is enough to make us feel all warm inside. =^)

Survey Update:

In the meantime, if you have not taken our survey we would appreciate your input. You can find the survey here.

Feel free to forward the survey on to other people as well. To do so send this link. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=0S3pPYxkR6S0eGbiQVlZ7A_3d_3d

Our survey now tops 445! People keep responding, and we appreciate your input. If things keep moving like this we will definitely hit our 1000 mark!

Popularity: 9% [?]

347 Responses & How Renting Makes You Green…

For those of you keeping track, our survey responses continue to roll in. I am happy to say that we have reached 347 total responses, well on our way to the 500 & halfway mark. If this keeps up we are sure to reach 1,000 responses, but only with your help.

If you haven’t had a chance to send out the survey to your contacts, we politely request that you do so now. It only takes 5 minutes to fill out, and would be a great help for those of us who are working feverishly to change the world.

If you haven’t taken the survey yet, here is the link. Remember it is totally anonymous so please tell us exactly what you think. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=0S3pPYxkR6S0eGbiQVlZ7A_3d_3d

Are You Green? How Can You Be?

Here at iRent2u, we are trying to make the world greener. We do this by creating a system where everyone can get more from what they already have. If you can get more from what you own, then you don’t have to buy as much stuff. By buying fewer things, you save money. That means you work less. That means less waste, because there are fewer things being thrown away. Everyone wins, except the big businesses who are brainwashing us to buy their stuff.

Want an Example?

Imagine a normal neighborhood. In this neighborhood there are 100 homes. Of course everyone has to cut the grass, so traditionally that means 100 lawnmowers have been purchased to facilitate this. Some people would buy riding lawnmowers for thousands of dollars, and some people wouldn’t buy one at all, but for convenience let’s say that everyone bought this standard lawnmower from Sears for $479.

$479 times 100 homes = $47,900 spent on lawnmowers. Ouch!

That is just the money spent. Additionally each mower had to be built, creating waste. Natural resources were used, and most likely some low wage child worker in China working 100 hour weeks was exploited to do so.

Many people will get rid of their old mower after 10 years, whether it is broken or not, just because they want a newer model (maybe the new one with a drink holder - what a feature!). So let’s say that after 10 years half of the homes replace their mowers. At present day prices this costs another $23,950. Double Ouch! Not to mention that 50 lawnmowers were just thrown away into a landfill to sit for the next 10,000 years.

So what’s the alternative?

Imagine how much more efficient it would be if everyone used iRent2u.com. How much money and waste could be saved? Let’s figure it out.

According to YardCare.com a normal lawn needs to be mowed about once every week. If one lawnmower can only mow one person’s yard in one day, and you have Saturday and Sunday to do yard work, then it is very easy to imagine that two people could share one lawnmower. Using iRent2u.com, one neighbor could buy a lawnmower and the other could rent it each week. This is the most minimal example, as it would be easy for 4 or 5 houses to use one mower with a bit of coordination.

So if each two houses shared a lawnmower, that would cut the amount of mowers needed in half. So instead of spending $48,000 on lawnmowers, this neighborhood could save $24,000! Less waste, less money spent, no loss in value to anyone!

What is the individual impact?

Imagine you are person X, and you just bought your lawnmower. You spent $479 for that lawnmower from Sears. You work out an arrangement with your neighbor who borrows it once a week to cut his grass for $6 each time. Since where you live you only have to cut the grass half of the year, you lend it 26 times. You just made $156 back on the purchase of your mower. At this rate you make your money back, off only one neighbor, in a little over 3 years. Lend it to more neighbors and you can make it back in one year!

Now imagine you are person Y, and your neighbor just bought a lawnmower. It cost you nothing up front, so you could use that money for a vacation with your family. Then each week you pay $6 and still get to mow your lawn. Plus you have the option of borrowing from your other neighbor as well if they get a nicer mower (that cool one with the drink holder!). Over the course of the year you pay $156, saving $323, and you didn’t have to store the thing in your garage.

Imagine that, there is actually room in your garage for your car!

At this point maybe you can buy the new mower yourself for $323, because the price of mowers just dropped considerably (turns out fewer mowers are being purchased, so they are slashing prices). Rent or buy, either way you come out ahead.

Everyone Wins, Except the Lawnmower Companies

In a normal neighborhood, 4 or 5 neighbors could share a lawnmower without any inconvenience. This would save tens of thousands of dollars just on mowers alone. That is money that could be invested, used for vacations, or used to pay off those credit card bills.

Do this with multiple items, not just your lawnmower, and the effect is truly incredible. With one website and a bit of coordination you save thousands of dollars, have more storage space, get to know your neighbors, and reduce trash.

An Unsustainable System

The present system where everyone buys everything is unsustainable, and frankly it is ridiculous. Billions of dollars every year are quite literally thrown away. Things are purchased, used once or twice, sit in a garage for 10 years filling up space and deteriorating, and then thrown away. Where is the value? Who gains from this system?

Companies do. Big companies that pay lots of money to bombard you every day with message after message about how buying their product will make you happy. But will it? In our hearts we all know that buying things will not make us happy, but at the same time we have been trained to do it. How many of you get upset and go out and buy stuff to make yourself feel better? I know I do. I guess the advertising companies are really doing their job well.

Here are iRent2u, we don’t want you to stop buying things. We are just creating a system where you can spend your money on things you really want, instead of wasting it buying 100 lawnmowers. Use your money for vacations with your family and friends, or just work less and spend more time at home. Use your money to buy that new shirt, or a new car, instead of buying an extra truck you use twice a year that sits in your driveway rusting.

Together We Have More

Here in America we are individualists. We love our freedom, and we have been graced with the liberty and opportunity to do as we please. This is a great thing, and has given us the opportunity to achieve incredible feats. Is it possible though that we have taken this liberty too far? We are the largest polluters in the world. We consume more than most other countries put together, and throw away things that have hardly been used.

Our wealth and abundance make it easy to waste, but we are the people who ultimately lose in this cycle. By working together in such little ways as sharing our lawnmower we start to change our world. With iRent2u.com it has never been easier to get more from what you already have. Start sharing today, and together we will build a better tomorrow.

iRent2u.com - Launching this September.

Popularity: 12% [?]

254 Responses, We Are A Quarter of the Way There!

Yesterday was quite a day! We jumped from 100 responses in the morning, to over 250 responses by today. I am very impressed by the high level of involvement, and with how many people have forwarded on the survey to their list of contacts. Check out our Survey Meter to see our progress.

I see this level of involvement as evidence of two things. First we have great friends who want to help us succeed. For this we are extremely grateful. The second is that people really see value in helping each other. This is a core concept behind the iRent2u platform, that “Together We Have More.” Helping each other, lending to each other, sharing our property; these concepts are the foundation of a movement.

If you haven’t taken the survey yet, simply click here.

More Survey Info:

A bunch of people have been asking about the survey, so here is a bit of info. At the moment I am writing this we have received 254 responses. I would love to start sharing some of our findings but hesitate because I don’t want to influence future responses. There are a couple of figures that seem to be prevalent enough that I can go ahead and post them without causing too many problems though.

From the moment we started this we have known that a very important aspect of this sites success is trust. Do people trust each other? Constantly on the news we hear about all the bad things that happen in the world, which makes us nervous. This is primarily because fear sells, and thus the media uses it to make a lot of money. Well at iRent2u we believe that people are basically good. While we know there are always going to be some bad apples, and we will do everything in our power to stop them at every turn, the majority of people are good. They help each other, care about each other, and trust each other.

Well this was something that we wanted to get your opinion on, and the results look great so far! Out of 254 people, 68% say that in general they trust their neighbors. Well, of course your neighbors are very close so perhaps they are easier to trust, but another 56% of people say they in general trust the people in their community. So these are very promising results.

Of course your trust is very precious, and shouldn’t be wasted. Because of this we are building multiple safeguards into the site. I wont go into too much detail now, but we are including such items as a rating system, optional insurance, and deposits. Besides that we have some more up our sleeves, but will leave that for later. Rest assured that we have your best interests in mind. Knowing this, plus recognizing that most people are basically good, should help you to know that there are some incredible things that will happen in your community.

Thanks for your attention. Make sure to keep sending out that survey to people. The more who respond the better idea we have on how to tailor the site to your specific needs.

Have Your Cake and Rent it too! www.iRent2u.com

Popularity: 6% [?]

A big thank you to everyone who has completed the survey so far. We have officially reached 145 survey responses, which puts us well on our way to the 1.000 response goal we set when we created this survey.

To those who have completed the survey, you can feel great that you have done your part towards making this dream a reality, the dream that everyone can get more from what they already have. The dream that you can buy less, yet have more, all while reducing waste and pollution!

For anyone who hasn’t taken the survey yet, don’t fear. All you have to do is click on this link to get there http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=0S3pPYxkR6S0eGbiQVlZ7A_3d_3d

With just five minutes of your time you will earn a lifetime of gratitude from not only myself, but all the people in the future who benefit so greatly from this service.

Thanks for your help!

Popularity: 6% [?]

Hello everyone,

We have a quick survey that we would really love if you could complete. It deals with some of the basic concepts for this site, and we would love to get your feedback. Of course, any really interesting comments and findings we will share with you later!

Go here to take the survey. It should only take you about 5 minutes (unless you like to think really hard).

Click Here to take survey

Thank you for your help!

Popularity: 5% [?]

So, we have some very exciting news. We have solidified our timeline with our web development team. It looks like we should actually have our site by July 15th!

Of course don’t expect us to make the public launch until a bit later as previously planned. We want to take the time to verify that everything is working correctly before we launch it, but when that happens we will be happy to have you test it and tell us what you think.

But for those of you itching to get a sneak peak at the site, I will be posting some screen shots very soon.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Hello everyone,

This is officially the first post for the official iRent2u.com Blog! You should feel very special to be around from the very beginning, and to watch this company grow into the industry titan it is destined to become. =^)

There is so much to say that I literally don’t know where to begin. With that said, lets start at the beginning and do a quick history of the company. A real quick history. Here goes.

The concept for iRent2u.com was conceived when one of its founders, Nils Von Bothmer, moved to UCLA to attend their MBA program. Upon arrival, he needed a drill to put together his IKEA furniture. He didn’t want to buy one for a one-time use, knew there had to be at least 20 within a one mile radius, yet didn’t know how to get his hands on one. At this point, he knew there had to be a better way…

Now let me just stop for a minute and make sure you know what I am talking about. iRent2u.com, the website that we plan to launch this August, is the perfect solution for this kind of problem. We will provide an easy way for individuals to list items online that they own, yet use infrequently enough they could lend them out for a few days and not miss them. Basically an “eBay for Rentals”, we are creating an online virtual marketplace where persons can rent & lend items from their neighbors and neighborhood businesses. A one-stop shop for anything you can imagine, it will be a centralized location for all of your needs. With that said, lets go back to our story.

So after this Nils knew there had to be a way that he could access his neighbors tools, without going door-to-door begging. This concept stuck in his head, so much so that in the second year when he took a business plan class during a study abroad in Spain, he pitched the idea to the class. Immediately a team was formed, among them Tim McCormack (your faithful author), and Roy Bacharach, IT consultant extraordinaire. Together this team, along with the help of countless other students, faculty, and friends, created a plan that not only captured the hearts of its members, but eventually won them the Pepperdine Business Plan Competition.

This leads us to today, where two of the three original members have graduated and are working on the concept full time, with Nils to soon follow in June. After that they are all relocating to Loma Linda, Califoria, where they will commit their minds, bodies, and hopes into making this dream a reality.

Well that about does it for our first post. Check back frequently for updates on how our project is coming and when we will launch.

Popularity: 5% [?]