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Borrow — Borrow everyday things from your neighbors
An easy way to borrow everyday things you might not already have or don't want to buy, all from your neighborhood. Power drills, sushi-making kits, camping gear,-- join our community to help one another toward a more sustainable future.
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Top Hunter
This seems like a useful service, but will be really hard to build up inventory and control for quality and trustworthiness.
The app claims that it fosters "trust and transparency", but borrowing happens through.. email? There's no way to report users within the app, and perhaps most nonsensical, for an app predicated on "borrowing", you're expected to pay for the privilege. Borrowing, to me, implies freely sharing items — whereas loaning or renting comes with a price tag.
I want to like this app — but it seems like promoting local lending libraries would be a better alternative.
Also — ?makers — how does the app know how to filter the items in the inventory to items near me? I didn't give the app permission to use my location, so...?
@chrismessina Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts! It's a huge treat for us to receive feedback from you. I'm an admirer of your work and advocacy for product design-- enjoyed your podcast episode from last year with Happy Paths!
Re: Borrowing through email. We agree email is not the best way! This was our solution for this MVP and we're in-progress to add an in-app chat experience.
Re: Reporting users. We opted for users to be able to directly email us in this MVP. Reporting, rating, and reviewing are features we'd love to add soon.
Re: Borrowing vs Loaning or Renting. Users can opt to make their items Free to borrow too. For me, the word "Lending" or "Renting" is associated with banking, money, monthly apartment rent, etc, and felt "Borrow" was friendlier.
Re: Location. Implementing geo-location was a larger task for us to include in the MVP and we think testing out just in SF neighborhoods initially will give us good insight on how we can add geo-location and other filtering capabilities in coming versions.
Thanks for giving us a chance to respond to these points and for taking the time to try out our app and give us your thoughts. 😊
In Germany there's a similar service called "nebenan.de", you could check them out for some inspiration
Can't wait to see what's coming! Our startup Clous, was initially an app for neighborhoods. Kind of a replacement for announcement boards and concierges in buildings. Super curious to see where the waitlist leads!
@alvarovillalb_ That sounds like a great idea! Living in a smaller apartment, getting notifications about maintenance, inspection, etc would be super helpful.
Interesting tool! My apartment is pretty small to store a toolbox or ladder. Every time I need a drill or ladder for a small work is such a pain. I will definitely chek it out!
Congratulations on the launch. But why can't you take an item in the regular general chat? Or in a separate channel of the general chat?
@kostyadoronin Thanks Kostya! This is a feature we're currently working on. An in-app chat feature was a heavier lift for us to include in the MVP. We agree that it would be much better to be able to start a chat on an item. More to come!
I'm really excited about this! Everyone on my street has their own snowblower, lawnmower etc. and it just seems so wasteful when we could all just borrow/share. I've joined your waitlist!
Borrow