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Comment by phalgunr | Hacker News Reader

An Amazon for renting things. All the top Google search results looked antiquated..

edit: my search query was just "rent anything"

Rentoid [1] was one that started about 10 yeas ago in Australia. Not 100% how well it was working. At least it is still going when I checked a few minutes ago.

Although its idea is slightly different to being an Amazon. It allows your items to be rented out instead of sitting in your shed gathering dust. Kinda like p2p renting.

[1] - http://www.rentoid.com/

That sounds like a bad idea from a counter-party risk perspective.

But I suppose so did AirBnB.

Everyone says AirBnB was a bad idea, but only the original idea was bad. Once you realise that the business is really about running illegal hotels where the risk is outsourced then it becomes a very good idea.

> Once you realise that the business is really about running illegal hotels where the risk is outsourced then it becomes a very good idea.

No, thats exactly why I'd say it was a bad idea, because who would accept that outsourced risk?!

(It turns out a lot of people did)

The original idea was for people to share their home or room to strangers. This was not a good idea, but pivoting into the illegal hotel business where the properties are continually rented was a good idea - at least until there is a major crackdown.

http://www.peerby.com (no affiliation) is the only company I know working in this space, but I assume there are others.

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