jmzbond

Love this discussion! I’m currently running Last Minute Gear: www.lastmingear.com which rents outdoors gear for camping/ snowsports in the San Francisco Bay Area. Before that though, the concept was called www.projectborrow.com, very much borrowing!

I want to address why there aren’t “successful” startups here in my experience and my outlook on the future. The 2 dominant forces governing buy vs not-buy behavior for anyone are price & convenience. For example, if a tent costs $200 to buy and $100 to rent, you’re obviously going to buy it, since as long as you get 2 uses out of that tent, it’s financially more worthwhile to buy. If a tent costs $200 to buy and $1 to rent, you’re obviously never going to buy it since you’ll probably never camp 200 times in your life.

In the real world, though, the rental price is fixed and retail prices move. Let’s say the rental price is $20. A nice tent is $200 and a crappy tent is $40. If you’re like most people, you’re going to decide to buy the $40 tent, reasoning that as long as you get 2 uses out of it, you win.

But this is actually very irrational, because it doesn’t account for the fact that: - that crappy tent may break your 1st trip - even if not, you’d have to make sure you maintain it well enough such that it’s still usable the 2nd trip (i.e., did you know storing a wet tent can lead to mildew growth?) - and the psychological/ spatial burden cited elsewhere in this discussion

$40 may be too much of a low ball, but the reasoning above is why people persistently choose to buy instead of rent even though rationally, renting is almost always better. It’s irrational, but such is the amazing magnetic power of the low price. (Should prices be so low in the first place, aka should a bag of chips be cheaper than a bag of carrots, is a-whole-nother debate!)

Borrowing is just like renting, except that the cost is the value of your time in finding a lender and sorting out all the logistics. This has its own set of complications, because what I found is that different people place different premiums on non-monetary values (aka convenience). In other words, some people would rather pay a taxi back and forth $40 to get a tent for free, while others would rather rent a tent at a store for $40. Same cash outflow, but vastly different user beliefs about which is more “worth it.” Here’s an extreme example: if I told you that the building you lived in would stock a mini “toolbox” on every floor so residents could share things like drills, and the building would cover all costs, you can bet that plenty of people are still going to buy their own things. Your closet is 10 feet closer, and therefore, to some people, a million bucks more worth it. (Consider the startup service provider Alfred.)

Because people are so different in how they perceive the value of not buying, I think it’s improbable to have a product that works for even 50% of the market. In fact, I’d venture that stuff-sharing startups will continue, but you’ll see a lot of smaller players rather than large. But that of course limits investment, which further limits the appeal of this space.

Fair points

Thanks for sharing that! Yes the key difference here on the backend is that we make the food ourselves. But you're abs. right that from the frontend it's very similar.

This is also why I think people should be very careful before comparing two entrepreneurs, or saying something like: "why is ___ so much less busy than you and more successful?"

Well, because ____'s parents are literally billionaires. I have to work so much harder because my bank account is actually decreasing everyday!

I agree with you about how hard it is to maintain flavor and texture, it's always something we're working on. The meals come to you in biodegradable containers that you can microwave without transferring elsewhere. So far, so good, but we've definitely had to cut some meals where the reheat didn't work as well. We have stringent QC requirements!

I also love your last points, and totally agree that there are some work opportunities here, which we'd love to explore when we get to that size.

At the moment we're not scaling out ourselves just yet, we're just in one region, but you're totally right that franchising could potentially be a model. We have a lot of ideas on how to better scale, when the time is right. Thanks for your thoughts!

Love the illustrative parabola thanks! I agree with so many of your points, but I do hope there's an alternative as well, and that's actually why we're in business, to explore those models. This is just the consumer facing engine that will give us (hopefully) the funds to do so. And we have a lot of ideas about things to explore =)

Feel free to keep in touch if you ever have other thoughts, I always like chatting strategy: james@farmfeedery.com

Oooh thanks for asking, why don't I give you my personal code: "jamesdd". It'll get you $25 off when you sign up for any of our plans =)

True story for almost anything in food. The industry is famous for razor thin margins. We're passionate about small-scale local food systems and the ability of certain models of said systems to better weather economic downturns. That's all a part of our larger mission and vision, to see which systems work and promote them. Wish us luck =)

Yup, with the delivery thing it will be great if enough folks order from one area that we can designate a drop off point (like Lyft hotspots) OR just do a regular catering if that area is one business. Latter, specifically, would make much more sense in my mind.

Re: ingredients. I totally agree with everything you said. We also preserve a lot of food so could be tomatoes in December, just not the fresh form. You're right that there may be challenges still, especially if people's preferences are all: give me tomatoes in December! But this is a we'll see what happens when we get there story =)

Thanks for your feedback!

Well we're in Boston and Cambridge, MA. But in general why is food-tech "booming" more generally, I think it's a couple of things: 1) greater awareness, at least on my social media, about healthy eating, 2) related, a greater desire for full control of your food as people want to measure/ track more and more aspects of their life. Granted Farm Feedery doesn't have menus, but we do tell you exactly what you're getting with detailed ingredients, and finally 3) food is a fun space to work in, it's something that's inherently required for survival and frankly it's a delicious place to work =)

You're right! You know every time someone tells me this is a tech startup, I fire back that it's actually a logistics startup. Delivery is one of the hardest things for the new wave of "deliver everything" startups. We'll see as time goes on if it proves killer or not.

Agree, but I think now is the time when many small companies have dreams of figuring that out! We'll write about it if we do =)

oh shoot thanks so much for the catch!

How do I not "wonder" what to eat? Not sure it's super obvious to me immediately from the site.

you know what is amazing and hilarious? i have an idea on my pad that says: Idealist - a way to collect and help you move forward with your startup ideas

=D

Now mine was slightly different, since it was oriented more toward people in developing countries who don't always have the resources or support to think an idea should be pursued, but still, love it

Thanks! Re your first point, do you think it would be annoying to you to see some items with an increment of 1 and others with an increment of 0? I.e., is it better to have separation between items that you can select vs. which specific items you have selected?

Hmm... will test the images problem.

Third point is one we're thinking about how to address in the context of our pay what you want model.

A well balanced freak out certainly =)

=D

That's a really good idea, thanks! And definitely thanks for the example!

We're building a rental company for people who don't need to buy. Currently that manifests itself in outdoors, but hopefully not forever, since our vision is to reduce unnecessary consumption by making renting as viable and easy as buying.

At the moment yes. Most of our customers are new to outdoor sports and don't know what specifications they want. They're also generally going car camping and only in the summer, so it's usually not a big deal at all. Putting it up front will freak them out and make choosing harder. The way it works now, if you are experienced enough to know exactly what you want, you can tell us.

I do agree though that this part of the flow isn't perfect, so we'll work on this. Perhaps for different items, giving examples of what optional specifications people COULD write in? E.g., temperature for sleeping bags, capacity for backpacks, etc.

And it takes more time to go to REI rather than just have gear show up to you ready to go. That and we're cheaper and open 24/7 but REI isn't, so you can be spontaneous! =) There's another thread on here with a longer answer about why us over REI (to be clear, I love REI, but they're focused on selling and I think they are great for people who know they want to buy)

1 - In SF traffic? ;) 2 - Great insight, have not thought about this before, will work this in 3 - Fascinating, clearly we need to do better with this value prop

You're totally right, you and the gentleperson below. Done!

Well said!

Gross! So sorry to hear that... But good feedback for us. We have a limited social media presence and no Yelp (because for whatever reason the Yelp gods hate us and there seems to be no way to talk to a real person there), but I know this will help, especially Facebook reviews. Will work on nurturing that.

Thanks!

Ooooh... nice, I will definitely look into that

Ah I'm a 00s child =)

Great feedback thanks so much!

Great point! We will test this concept in the future, some people want the convenience of a total package, others want to customize so they can "make do" and shave off some money somewhere.