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Omni Rentals — Earn $ on stuff you own. Get access to everything you don't.
Omni is a new way to own and access things. Omni Rentals empowers owners to make money on the items they store in Omni while not in use, and allows anyone to access those items - with delivery and pickup straight to their door in as little as 2 hours.
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Replies
@joshdance Hey Josh, this is a bug that we have a fix going out for shortly. Your account was created, that error message is incorrect. We do exactly what you said -- waitlist you for the service in your zip code :) Sorry about that!
@delk @joshdance I agree completely that it's annoying I don't know that you don't serve my zipcode until after I've entered my email address and password, etc. I understand this is a tactic to get my email address early, but I'd rather be _asked_ if I want to give my email address to be notified instead of "Well, we don't serve you yet, but we already have your email address, so now we're gonna contact you." See the difference in the experience?
@delk @joshlewis I see your point. I signed up and want to be contacted, so I don't really have an issue with it. Cheers!
Congrats yall! I tried signing up using Facebook and I'm stuck on the "Amost there, confirm your details, enter your phone number" screen. After I type in my details and hit confirm, it's stuck on "Updating your address"
Congrats on the launch team!
I'm seeing lots of items (e.g. air purifiers, chairs) in the beta, can you talk about what other items people are sharing with each other?
@eriktorenberg For sure. We've got 1,000+ items available for rent today, with hundreds more being added each day. A few of the most popular items from the Rentals Beta: bikes, tents, drones, VR headsets, sous vide machine, boosted boards, heaters / fans, surfboards, drills, ladders and a ton of fashion items (designer dresses / purses / shoes / etc.).
Nice concept! Handling collection and delivery is a great idea.
What locations are you operating in?
@noellynagh Currently we serve the Bay Area -- Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, and down in the peninsula to Palo Alto. Expansion to new cities coming soon.
Congrats on the launch! Looking forward to giving this a spin for all my equipment sitting in my room
@charleyma Thanks! Send me feedback on the experience, we're always looking to improve: r@beomni.com
Love the idea and am a fan of anything @delk works on. Keep up the great work Omni team!
Omni is the greatest. Their service and customer support is perfect.
Pros:Super easy way to make some extra cash and get access to pretty much anything.
Cons:I wish they were everywhere.
Omni's ability to be at the forefront of Access > Ownership is something I've always admired! The steady + smart development of storage to sharing and rentals is one of the best iterations I've seen.
In terms of the actual service, all I can say is that it's an incredibly important step forward! Right away I thought of Kevin Kelly's book "The Inevitable" and this quote, "Possession is not as important as it once was. Accessing is more important than ever".
This is the brilliance of what Omni is building. Keep going @delk, @tmcleod3, and the Omni team!
@tmcleod3 @mattragland Thanks for the early support, Matt. This is exactly the vision.
Oh, man. This is fantastic work. What a way to help people earn a little side money on what they already have.
As far as experimentation with ideas in the sharing economy goes, I love this idea. I know a lot of people who would use this.
@tmcleod3 how are you doing liability insurance? I know that at a ski or bike rental place you have to sign a liability waiver that if the equipment malfunctions, they can’t be held liable. How does that work in the case of Omni?
This makes a lot of sense. If I want to go camping, I can drive to REI and pay $25/ day for a sleeping bag, or rent someone else's through omni for like $10/ day with pickup /delivery. If I own the gear, then I'm not going to use it every weekend so you get to recoup the cost. The only big ? for me is insurance for damage but it can be figured out
@evankimbrell Exactly! Your question about insurance is our big value add -- our Omni Shield coverage protects your items not just while they are stored in Omni, but while they are rented out as well. This means that if anything happens to your items, we have your back and will work to make it right.
Definitely, love the vision of what you're trying to do here. It's crazy how many things we purchase and just use once. Best wishes!
Great place to get outdoor gear, DIY tools, electronics
Pros:You can rent with XRP!
Cons:Could be available in more cities.
GREAT concept. What's the plan to expand this? Are you going to franchise this out to other regions or roll it out yourselves?
@casey_richardson We'll own the rollout -- planning on expanding to new markets soon. Where are you based?
@delk Based in San Diego, but frequently in Los Angeles and Las Vegas on business also. Would be really rad to see this come to SD/LA. Major housing shortage in SD. Lots of people needing to store items to free up space in spare bedrooms, etc. to capitalize on the booming short-term rental demand.
@casey_richardson For sure. San Diego isn't in the immediate expansion plans, but definitely a city we want to get to. Thank you!
Have you guys thought about streamlining object tagging, keyword extraction and maybe NSFW moderation? I imagine people are posting and attempting to rent out lots of stuff everyday, which I assume is overwhelming when you're trying to weed out stuff that isn't appropriate, or at least improve the search engine so customers can find more relevant stuff. If so, please consider http://machinebox.io - its machine learning, object detection, natural language processing etc. as Docker containers, priced and built for startups and developers. No making expensive, very public API calls to Microsoft Cognitive Services!
A post we wrote about improving search with NLP derived keywords: https://blog.machinebox.io/incre...
And one about implementing visual search: https://blog.machinebox.io/visua...
@delk Thanks for doing your share to save our planet! This is a pretty obvious and clever way to reduce our carbon footprint. Even if renting is costing me the same, if I know I will only need that tile cutter for one project, why not renting it from my neighbor? My question, like many others, is about insurance or if product is not returned at all. But love the concept for sure.
Summer Bod 2020