Recently someone asked us who our typical customer is. As opposed to going into detailed demographic explanations about age and income, we believe that the typical participant in iRent2u is based on attitude and behavior. Anyone could make the smart choice to rent when it makes sense. The real question is, what type of person are you?

So we thought we would share with you a comparison between two different people - one who likes to rent things, and one who doesn’t. Then we will let you decide who you are more like.

Charlie the Consumer

Our first person is Charlie the Consumer. Charlie likes to buy things. In fact, he loves to buy stuff. It makes him feel good to get the latest technologies, that brand new car, or a new shirt. You should see him at the dollar store, because he goes crazy. Doesn’t matter what it is, Charlie has to buy it.

Of course most of us enjoy buying things, but Charlie is a true consumer. He believes all the commercials that tell him if he just buys that new (insert product here) he will get all the ladies. When he goes to the mall he only buys expensive stuff because “the name means quality.” Every time you see him he is carrying a bag from a different store. He has three iPods (his first was too big, the second too small, but his third one is jussst right). He has an RV, a boat, and spends his weekends at his cabin on the lake.

There is one more thing that Charlie has more of than most other people, debt. He has more credit cards than a pickpocket at Mardi Gras. He racks up $10,000 in revolving credit and doesn’t blink an eye. He has a second AND third mortgage, school loans from 10 years ago that are only half paid off, and enough money to last him one month if he loses his job. But Charlie is happy, at least until he sees the next thing he needs to buy.

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Rachael the Renter

Our other person is Rachael the Renter. Rachael likes to rent stuff. She likes the freedom to use something, have fun with it, and then drop it off. While Charlie’s garage is so full stuff is spilling into the street, Rachael’s is perfectly clean and almost empty. She has a new car - that she leases, a beautiful home - which she rents month to month, and enough money to last her two years if she somehow lost her job.

Rachael hates owning things. She thinks possessions tie you down. The next time Rachael moves to a new house she will be able to move in one day with just one friend’s help. She likes to travel, and only takes one small bag with three days of clothes even if she is travelling for a month. She takes vacations at a lake house that she rents from time to time, has traveled across the US twice in an RV she rented, and has become an expert water skier behind a rented boat. In fact, Rachael has done everything that Charlie has done, it just cost her less money to do it.

–

So Who Are You?

So who do you want to be? Would you like to be Charlie who constantly has all the new gear but enough debt to scare a politician? Or would you like to be Rachael, the free soul who never ties herself down with possessions and has plenty of extra money?

Our opinion? Who cares!? Be either one of these people. They are both great. The truth is that both of them are our customers!

Of course Rachael is great. Whenever she needs something she comes to our site first. That way she can compare the different lenders in the area, see who has the best price and reputation, and get the best deal. She is always renting stuff from us, and for that we are truly grateful.

I bet you expected us to say you should never be like Charlie. We would never say that, Charlie is a great guy! He likes to have fun, tells lots of jokes, and springs for dinner when we go out. And who do you think Rachael rents all her stuff from?

Charlie is able to support his lust for possessions by renting out the things he is not using to Rachael. He only uses his RV once or twice a year, and has been able to cover some of the loan payments by lending it out. He likes renting to Rachael because she pays on time. Rachael always leaves his cabin clean after she uses is, and leaves the tank of gas full on his boat after a day on the lake.

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Everyone’s Happy

There was one other side effect of our website for Rachael and Charlie. They were neighbors for three years but never met before they started using our site. Now that they have met they are great friends. Rachael likes to come over and watch movies on Charlie’s home theater, and Charlie likes to day-dream about all the cool stuff he would buy for Rachael’s sparsely decorated home. In fact, they like each other so much they are thinking about moving in together. Wow!

Our service works for everyone. Are you an extreme shopper? Be like Charlie and make some extra money by lending out your goods. Are you extremely frugal? Save some money by borrowing those things you only need every once in a while. Either way, iRent2u is the place to do it.

Are you looking for love? Well we can’t promise you that you will be as lucky as Rachael and Charlie, but what better way for the girl-next-door and the good-old-boy to meet?

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iRent2u.com

iRent2u.com – the Online Rental Marketplace. Come here to find anything you are looking for; go away with extra money, cool things to rent, and maybe even love… =^)

Oh, and for the record, we don’t really think it is going to work out between Charlie and Rachael. Can you imagine their first fight about money? Yikes!

–

Today I received a very nice surprise. The exact kind of surprise a new business owner and fervent blog writer loves to receive. Our company made it onto TreeHugger!

For anyone who has not seen the article, you can read it here.

I have been a long time reader of TreeHugger, and saw the post that Tamara had done on a similar site in Europe, Erento.com - but I was sure happy to see that we hadn’t fallen through the cracks in our efforts to bring this excellent opportunity to the United States.

For anyone who is curious to learn more about our service, click here to take our short survey. Make sure to leave your email address at the end and we will send you updates for when our site launches.

In the article, Tamara makes a very important point. I have quoted her here:

“Rental” has typically been synonymous with the less affluent that can’t afford to buy something outright, so instead pays an ongoing fee for the receipt of using it. But in a world of finite natural resources, waste and the legacy of post consumer goods becoming everyone’s issue, renting and not having the burden of owning and then dealing with the disposal or storage of goods is a compelling proposition.

We all feel that this is a very exciting time in the world. While we are confronted with so many important issues, we are also faced with incredible opportunities. We fully believe that together we can find solutions that will make sense for everyone, and make the world a better place to live.

It is really an honor to make it onto a blog that we respect so much. Again we would like to welcome all the new visitors we have from TreeHugger, and extend a special “Thank You” to Tamara for writing such a nice article about us.

On August 13th I posted some information about the new podcast I am doing, GreenTech.fM. It is a bi-weekly interview between myself and a Topanga green architect who not only shares a love for new technologies but also has some incredible innovations of his own. We have received a great response to the show since its launch. We hoped people would like the show, but little did we know that we were going to get hugged by people we had never met!

If you haven’t taken our survey yet, please go here now. Click Here to take it now!

Huggs for iRent2u

One of the ways in which we have gotten a great response is from a relatively new site called Hugg.com. Hugg is a website for people who are interested in green news. Green being a catchall phrase for things environmental in nature, likes issues related to global warming or pollution.

The way the Hugg site works is that people read the short articles, and then vote for the ones they support or agree with. When I posted a snippit of our press release onto the site to see if anyone cared, the response was incredible!

Of all the posts on the website, ours has the 7th highest votes. There have been a total of 29 different people who have “Hugged” our article, plus people have left great comments. Here is a picture of the site and our Huggs.

So we are very excited about all the attention we have gotten for that. What seems a bit strange to me is that the whole time we have been fighting neck and neck with Bart Simpson. What do I mean?

Bart Simpson and His Prius?

If you take another look at the Hugg page, you will find that right above us is another post about Matt Groening driving a Prius. The article is very creatively title “Bart Simpson Drives a Prius”, and if you read the source you will see it details Matt Groening’s entire life, from the perspective of which car he owned. (yawn)

Here is a screen shot of that darned Bart Simpson article:

I know I am biased, but to me a new podcast that is focused on praising and publishing all the incredible new technologies that scientists and entrepreneurs are creating is more interesting than the fact that a famous cartoonist now drives a Prius. But I guess I can only leave that up to the readers at Hugg to decide.

Either way we are happy with our Huggs. This makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and so we wanted to say thank you.

Oh yeah, and if you wanted to help us beat out Bart Simpson, we wouldn’t mind.

Please go to this link here. http://www.hugg.com/node/529 Create an account, and click the little plus symbol underneath the Counter that shows how many Huggs we have recieved.

Thanks for your support!

This week we have gotten a lot of reports of strange rentals happening in Germany.

Apparently the Germans are leaders in this global revolution for rentals, but it is taking some strange twists and turns that you may not have expected. Of course we are here to tell you all about it. =^)

Want to tell us what you like to rent? Take our survey here…

The most recent story came from BusinessPundit.com, where they discovered the practice of renting farm animals for yard work is on the rise. Huh?

Yes, I am a bit confused myself. Feel free to read the article here. http://www.businesspundit.com/50226711/weird_business_ideas_rent_a_duck.php

Apparently people are renting animals like ducks and sheep to do such things as “mow” the lawn (eat the grass, for anyone who didn’t catch it). They even comment that they are happy with the fertilizer!? This seems strange to me as one of my most hated jobs when I was young was cleaning up the “fertilizer” that my dog left in the backyard. Not fun.

We have actually been hearing about strange rentals from Germany for a while now. They got a lot of press earlier this year for a website where people can rent protesters. http://www.psfk.com/2007/01/rentaprotester.html We think this could be a much more popular service in France, but perhaps they are so willing to protest there that they don’t need to offer to pay. =^) View the original story here. http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,460449,00.html

Of course every once in a while we all need a German to help us out. We all know they are hard workers, and know how to take a mean 6-week vacation. Well the next time you need a hand making Streusel or trying to sing Edelweiss, you can rent your own German here! http://www.rentagerman.de/

Der Spiegel, the big German publication, tells us about how German schools are renting visiting American students to help them understand us better. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,496731,00.html Apparently in some countries being American is not necessarily considered a good thing. I think it has something to do with some war, or pollution or something. Something about a big Bush? Yeah, I didn’t get it either, but I guess these German students were upset enough they needed some real Americans to come in and prove we aren’t all the great white devil they hear about.

Neighbors driving you crazy speeding around in the neighborhood? Well strap on your plastic citizen McGruff badge and give them a good scare with your rented radar gun! http://www.radargunrentals.com/ Unfortunately you can’t give out tickets yet, and could be arrested for impersonating an officer if you do it in your Halloween costume, but for only $150 a week it could all be worth it to see the look on your neighbors face as you pop out from behind his trash gun and show him he was going 40 in a 25.

Checking out ebay, we see that there is a real need for our rental service. Looks like all sorts of fun things are being offered. Unfortunately the bidding is closed on both of these auctions, but I bet if you ask real nice they will consider listing again.

You have your choice of two interesting eBay auctions. You can either rent-a-family, or you can rent-a-phone-friend.

Rent-a-family This lovely family from Atlanta is willing to offer the whole family, complete with cheafuer service, graphic design services, web design, posters, plus DJ services and even a minister for weddings. Thats quite a package!

Rent-a-phone-friend Maybe you need to talk to someone about the family you already have. Here is the answer to your needs. This young gentleman is offering his services as your new best friend, complete with four hours of phone conversation over the next month. Just what I wanted, a new best friend in Kalamazoo, Michigan! I may do it just so that I can say I have a friend there. People will think I am cool.

A couple not-so-strange rental ideas were presented in blogs this very morning! AutoBelles blog gave a great post about how to make money renting out sports cars. You can read it here.Let me just reiterate, that if anyone wants to rent me that Ferrari I have been talking about, feel free. I might even give you a ride around the block with me.

One last post was made this morning on http://nylusmilk.wordpress.com Regarding the opportunity to rent books instead of buying them. This makes great sense to us, unless you like to pile up all your books and use them to show off to your friends like I do.

Well thats it for our crazy rental roundup. Keep checking back for more crazy rental items, updates on our progress (things are really moving over here), and any other interesting thing that pops up.

iRent2u.com - the Online Rental Marketplace

With our impending press release for my new podcast, GreenTech.fM, I am sure we are going to see some fresh visitors to this site. For all of you let me appease your curiosity by explaining what iRent2u is.

What is iRent2u.com?

iRent2u.com is “The Online Rental Marketplace”. A place that allows everyone to get more from what they already have. It is recycling on steroids. It is a concept long overdue.

In the most simple terms possible, iRent2u.com is a new website, set to launch this fall, which will allow everyone to rent and borrow their private belongings from their neighbors. Imagine if eBay did a site for rentals, this would be it.

This is revolutionary because everyone has valuable things they own that just sit around most of the time. If we can find a way to help people get more out of what they already own, the world will be a better place. People will save money by not buying things they don’t need. Others will make money by lending out things they already have.

More money + Less trash = Happy People & Happy World.

Read more about what we are doing here…

Why Are We Doing it? We want to make the world a better place. We want to use the internet for what it was created for, to change the world. We want to do our part to stop pollution & waste. And oh yeah, we also want to get back all that money we spent on our expensive educations. =^)

So Much Potential

There really is incredible potential in making the world more efficient. If we can help out just a little bit, we can make a dramatic difference in many peoples lives. We offer some people a new way to make money, while offering others a way to reduce storage space. We help people get more from less, and others get things they could never before afford.

And the best part about it, is that we are having a blast doing it!

Tell us what you think in our quick survey here!

So enjoy the site!

Check out some screen shots on this page. http://irent2u.com/blog/how/

Get up close and personal with us, and see who has helped us out on this page. http://irent2u.com/blog/about/

Find out where & when we are launching on either of these pages

• where http://irent2u.com/blog/where/
• when http://irent2u.com/blog/when/

Read all my rantings about rentals and our company by just scrolling down the page.

Or shoot us an email and tell us what you think here http://irent2u.com/blog/contact/

Either way, we would like to welcome you to our site, invite you to sign up for our newsletter to be informed when we launch in your area (over in the blue box on the right), and have an all around great time.

Sincerely,

Tim McCormack
Co-Founder iRent2u.com

GreenTech.fM, a podcast series with entrepreneur & co-founder of iRent2u.com, Tim McCormack, and renowned green architect Robert Mechielsen, is now available online. So far 3 shows have been published (shows zero, one and two), with new shows to be announced every second Tuesday.

The series focuses on current and future environmentally friendly technologies that have the potential to correct and prevent issues created by pollution, overpopulation and energy dependency.

When asked why he was doing a podcast on green technologies, at the same time he was starting an ecommerce site for rentals, Tim McCormack said “We all have to pay attention to what is happening in the world. At iRent2u.com we believe strongly in creating systems that support positive environmental stewardship. Our business model at iRent2u is focused on helping people be more efficient, save money, and reduce waste; but we are far from the only company doing this. I wanted to help everyone become aware of all the incredible things entrepreneurs are doing to make the world a better, safer, & cleaner place.”

Robert Mechielsen, a “green” architect from Holland who now lives in Topanga, CA. had this to say. “This is so exciting. Every day we find new companies and technologies that are breaking all the rules. From the zero emission Tesla motor car, to the enormous growth in wind energy, and the incredible breakthroughs in construction that create homes with 80% to 90% less energy use, it is truly a revolution. As I have dedicated the last 25 years of my life towards building homes that are both beautiful and have low emissions, this is a topic that is very important to me. I love looking at all the new technologies, and can’t wait to start interviewing all the wonderful people who are making these breakthroughs.”

What is a podcast?

A podcast is like a radio show, except instead of turning on your radio, you go to a website and download it (for free). Many people then put these shows onto their iPods (hence the name “pod”cast) and listen to them when convenient. One nice feature of podcasts is that you can subscribe, using programs like iTunes (free from apple.com). Once you subscribe they download automatically to your computer, making it easy to stay current.

“On this show we focus 100% on the heroic efforts of inventors, engineers and investors to create technologies that will counter Global Warming,” Tim also mentioned. ” Many green publications spend all their time trying to scare people. Of course informing people of the dangers is important, but this is not our focus. We start the show with the assumption that people know something needs to be done, and then go from there. We see such incredible potential, and are truly excited to share that with the world. It is a very different message.”

To this Robert added “the Green movement is no longer just for hippies and extremists. Finally green has gone mainstream. Millions of entrepreneurs, scientists, and investors all over the world now realize there is big money to be made in efficiency, cleanliness, and in sustainable economic systems. It is a very exciting time!”

The Shows:

The first 11 shows are conversational style between Tim and Robert, with Robert the expert on current green technologies and Tim asking the questions that anyone new to the field would ask. From show #11 on, there will be interviews with leading scientists, entrepreneurs, & investors regarding the current trends and advances.

The first show, show zero, gives an introduction of the hosts and the show. The following ten shows cover such topics as:

0001 – What are Green Technologies?
0002 – 20 Emerging Green Technologies (the Rapid 20 Show)
0003 – Sustainability, Issues and Progress
0004 – Solar Power, How Does it Work?
0005 – SCIP Construction, A Revolution in Building Technology
0006 – Toxicity in Everyday Living
0007 – Using Nature to Reduce Energy Consumption
0008 – Bio Mimicry, What is it & Why?
0009 – Ecotourism, How Sexy is Green?
0010 – Land Restoration & Preservation Techniques

Don’t get left behind. Find out what is happening in the Green revolution.

GreenTech.fM is committed to quality and studies every topic before publication. The site lists links to show notes and the topics discussed for verification and further research. GreenTech.fM is dedicated to bringing green technologies to the forefront of future development.

Listen for free at www.GreenTech.fM today!

You all know who I am talking about. Often it is some guy you know, or maybe someone you don’t know. How do you buy a gift for someone who has everything?

Recently we have had a lot of people contacting us about the option of giving rentals away as presents. Some of our readers have had great comments, and we thought it was worthy of a whole post.

Rentals can often be the perfect present, for many reasons. We will cover a few of them here.

Buying a present for someone can be tough. You are always trying to come up with something original and interesting, but how do you know they will like it? If they really wanted it then they would probably buy it for themselves, right?

Really you want to buy something for them that they cannot buy for themselves. The problem with this of course is that we aren’t made of money. If they cannot afford to buy it, how are you going to be able to?

The alternative to this is a rental. Think of something they would love, and get it for them for a day, or a weekend. There are many things people would love try. Here I will list a few great options.

Top 5 Rental Gifts for Guys:

1. Ferrari! - Ok, so I shot for the moon on the first one, but there is nothing wrong with dreaming big. I can’t think of a single guy who wouldn’t love to drive a Ferrari for a day. Even my 98 year old Grandfather would probably appreciate a crack at one. Sure they rent of over $1,000 a day, but he won’t mind - unless you just paid with his money.
2. Vacation Rental for a week in the Virgin Islands - Ok, so I am still shooting for the moon. But no one can disagree that a week in the sun next to some of the most fabulous beaches in the world would be a dream present for most anyone.
3. Boat/Yacht/Sailboat - Who doesn’t enjoy spending the day on a boat, having fun with their friends, getting some sun, drinking too much and then getting sea sick? Well maybe not the last bit there, but a boat rental can be a blast. Careful with the sailboat option. If they don’t know how to sail one, it will be a long unhappy experience, believe me. Still, days on the water can be some of the most memorable experiences you will have.
4. Plane or Helicopter Ride - Noticing a theme here? Guys tend to like loud moving machines. Pushing the boundaries a bit by heading to the skies can be a real blast, and not something they are likely to already own 5 of in different colors (including paisley).
5. Red Dawn/Rocky/the Godfather - A bit on the cheaper side, most any guy enjoys the chance to curl up with a nice mellow action movie full of explosions and blood. Don’t like to watch these movies? Pretend like you do for one night, let him enjoy it, and be happy you just got away with paying $1!

Top 5 Rental Gifts for the Ladies:

1. Jewelry - A newer concept that has been sweeping the country, jewelry rentals are a hit! Apparently women like jewelry, even when it is too expensive to buy… how strange. Renting some of the crown jewels will not be possible, but it is doable to rent enough bling to make your lady feel like a princess for the evening.
2. Vacation Rental for a week in the Virgin Islands - Did I already say that one? This one definitely works for both genders.
3. Hot Air Balloon Ride - You, your Lady, a bottle of champagne, and nothing but fresh air, bright sunlight, romance… and the funny guy working the hot air… This one always seems to be a hit, just make sure she isn’t deathly afraid of heights or it will be a long ride home (or a very lonely hot air balloon ride).
4. Wine Tasting Trip - This one is a very safe bet. Rent a mini-van or small bus with a driver, gather up 10 to 30 of her best friends, eat a big breakfast, and head out for a day of sniffing, sipping and wining… Be careful what type of bus you rent though, some of them come with flashing lights and a pole in the back. People either end up dancing or with their heads spinning from the lights, and either one can turn a great trip into an embarrassing memory. Don’t live near some wineries? Get a van and take all the women shopping. Throw in a few stops for wine and you can get an almost frenzied effect similar to shark feeding frenzies.
5. Beaches/Ya-Ya Sisterhood/the Wedding Planner - Just like men love their action movies, women appreciate a good substantive, heart warming, connect-with-your-mother type of movie. Not sure you can take all the jibber-jabber? Imagine in each scene they are about to duke it out in some jello. That should keep you occupied enough to ignore that your arm just went dead from all your happy cuddling.

So rentals can be a great alternative. They key is to figure out what they want, but can’t afford to have all the time. By doing this you can create your own “Shock-and-Awe” gift celebration.

This is the question we asked ourselves last October when we began putting this company together.

How many things do you own that you don’t really need? In our survey many people told us they own multiple items that for most of the time just sit around collecting dust. Maybe its a stationary bike that you bought during a healthy kick, but now hardly use because you go jogging instead (or not).
Maybe its a tent, or a bookcase, a punching bag, some specialty tools for a one-time job, a pet carrier, a set of golf clubs, old books you have already read, your parents old furniture that is sitting in your garage… anything!

Haven’t taken the survey yet? Go here now…

The fact is, we all own things that are valuable, but are providing zero value to us. What can you do?

The first option is to just sell them. Of course you will be lucky to get half of what they cost, and then you will not have them anymore. Most people don’t want to sell their golf clubs because they only use them three times a year.

We propose a simple alternative. List your items on our site, let your neighbors borrow them, and sit back and collect the money. Everyone wins!

Your neighbors get to borrow something instead of buying it - saving money - they win.

You get to lend your items that are sitting around - making money - you win.

Together we make the world more efficient - people are buying less and thus they are throwing away less trash - all of society wins!

Together we have more. That is what we believe at iRent2u.com, and this September we will prove it to you.

Yesterday a visitor to the blog made an interesting comment, and I thought I would create an entire post about it in case other people had similar concerns.

Erik said:

It’s a neat concept on renting stuff… although what I’ve seen of the business model thus far involving renting of items is that they just end up cheating “poor” people.

This is a valid concern that Erik has, as there are definitely some types of rentals that just plain do not make sense.

I think what Erik is referring to though are the “Rent-to-Own” models. These are probably the most common models where people get a bad deal. This doesn’t mean though that all rent-to-own is bad. It just happens that people can lose a lot of money on it, and it generally tends to be people with less money to lose. Let me explain why.

Rent To Own Example

The rent-to-own model works like this. Let’s say you want to rent-to-own something for your house, like a new refrigerator. In fact, lets say you want to rent this refrigerator from Rent-A-Center. This is the Whirlpool ED2CHQXKQ.

Now you could buy this exact refrigerator from BestBuy here for $1,199. So now we know how much one costs. I called up Rent-A-Center to see how much they rent-to-own for. I was surprised to find that they charge over $138 a month for the same unit! This is quite expensive, but lets see how expensive this really is.

So if you rent this refrigerator for 81 weeks then you own it outright. Add all that up and you just spent almost $2,600 for a refrigerator that would have cost you $1,200 brand new. So this is very expensive, but why would this be worse for poor people? Isn’t it the same ripoff regardless of who rents it?

The Problem

The problem with a rent-to-own situation is this. If you rent the item for 12 months and then all of a sudden can’t keep up the payments, then you lose the item. But you also lose all the money you spent renting the item. This would be fine if you paid a normal rental amount, but with rent-to-own you are normally paying a much higher monthly rate. So you just lost a lot of money!

And don’t think these companies are shy in taking away the item. Miss a payment or two and you better believe they will be making a house call to reclaim their goods. So yes, this is worse for people who have less money, because they are more likely to rent it for a while and then lose all the money. When you consider that you can easily rent a refrigerator for $45 a month or less from a normal rental company, this can end up creating big losses.

Breakdown of Losses

12 Months Rent-A-Center = $1,656

12 Months Normal at $45 = $540

Money lost due to Rent-to-Own system = $1,116… Ouch!

Is This Evil?

So these systems exist. For some people who have really bad credit, this may be the only way to get a new refrigerator. So we aren’t saying that the system should be abolished, but it is definitely dangerous. Especially if you have bad credit, meaning you have a history of not making your payments on time.

Is All Renting Bad?

So how is that different from iRent2u.com? Our goal here is to make renting affordable for everyone. We want to make rentals as cheap as possible. You won’t find any confusing and tricky schemes here, just honest and simple rental plans for people who need things on a limited basis.

We fully recognize that some items are not made for renting. If you need a fridge for a long time, then you should probably buy it. But if you are living in an apartment for only three months during a summer internship, then it may make a lot of sense to rent it and save 5 or 6 hundred dollars.

To continue the same example, if you rented a refrigerator for $46 a month, over 3 months you would have paid less than $150. That is big savings over buying it brand new for $1,000. Then afterwards you don’t have to worry about selling it or moving it, because the company will take it back. Everyone wins!

Renting Can Be Great For Everyone!

So renting is not bad for “poor” people. Renting is a tool that is great in some circumstances, and can be a poor choice in others. The key is to pay attention to your costs and figure out when it makes sense to buy and when it is better to rent. Often times when you look at a real comparison you will find you are buying things that you should rent, and other times you are renting things you should buy.

A quick example: I recently bought a new tuxedo for $200. I could have rented it for $110, but the next time I needed it I would have to pay again and would have wasted money. Now I have a tuxedo for the rest of my life, or until I grow out of it. But if the rental had been around $50 I would have just rented it, because I don’t know if there will be four occasions in the next 5 years where I will need a tux.

Renting is great, but you have to do the math. Lucky for you we will build easy tools to help you do the math every time!

One of the neat things about creating an open platform where people can rent out anything they want, is watching what people have to rent out. Of course we are a bit early to start telling you what people are renting, since we haven’t even launched yet, but we can tell you about some of the more interesting requests and comments we have seen.

Below is a listing of some of the items recommended to us by people who took the survey. Not everyone was completely serious when making suggestions, and we were a bit concerned by how many Americans today enjoy entertaining the idea of renting women, but for the most part we got a great response.
Some Interesting Suggested Items to Rent:

• Being able to “borrow” the use of expensive computer software, like Adobe CS3, would be great. I don’t do enough graphic design to want to buy this software, but I would love to be able to rent some time to use it.
• Table saw, circular saw, hot glue gun, weed wacker, hedge trimmer, electric blower, steam cleaner, tile saw
• I have found a real need to rent baby items (car seat, stroller, pack and play) when friends come in town or if I go out of town.
• What about borrow “help”? Like to fix a door, special garden work or similar?
• We might do a rental of art for corporations
• One of the biggest things on this list is the books…University book stores rip off students. This is a good way for owners of books to get the value they paid for it.
• Are you going to do things like cup of sugar? What about favors, I water your plants you water mine?

Do you have any ideas of your own? If so, take the survey and let us know. We are always interested to hear your comments. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=0S3pPYxkR6S0eGbiQVlZ7A_3d_3d

Unique Rental Company Items:

Besides what we have seen on our survey, there are other interesting things being rented these days.

One new option is renting handbags & jewelry. A popular site for doing this is www.BagBorrowOrSteal.com This is something that I personally would never even look at, but my wife was quite taken with the idea. Unfortunately we had serious problems with the service when we tried it out, but the concept is great. Rent expensive handbags instead of purchasing them, and then you can trade in for new ones and always have a fun new bag! Be careful with the mail though, send it incorrectly and you will pay for the whole bag, which is what happened to us on our first one.
Another thing I NEVER would have thought of is renting pets! Believe it or not, www.FlexPetz.com already exists, and is helping people enjoy pets who don’t have the time to care for one all by themselves. Now how this works I cannot say, since we are talking about living animals. This does seem strange, but then again there must be situations where this works really well. Perhaps this is good for elderly folks who just are not able to care for a pet all by themselves. As a pet lover myself I am glad to know that this service exists to help out those who have had to go without in the past.

Something a bit in the future is a service called Riot & Return http://www.riotandreturn.co.uk/. This is children’s clothing from the label Keep & Share. Apparently people will pay by subscription, and then return the clothes after they have been used. This seems brilliant to me, as children’s clothing costs a lot for such a short use cycle.

Rent Everything!

We love to see new companies making rentals a more acceptable alternative. Renting increases the use of an item, decreases waste, and is an all around better options for many different things. Hopefully we can provide an abundance of new items for rent on our website once we launch. Our goal is to have at least a little of everything, with hopefully a lot of most.

Once we all start renting more, we are all going to get more from what we already have. That works perfect for us, because we strongly believe that “Together We Have More”.

iRent2u.com, the Online Rental Marketplace - What do you want to rent?

If so, then please come to Starbucks on Orange street in Redlands on Wednesday the 15th of August. We would love to meet you, especially if you know how to do web design or web programming!

Hope to see you there!

This weekend, after Pepperdine university so kindly sent out the survey to a bunch of our old graduating classes, the survey blasted by 500 all the way up to hitting 544 responses. Once again the responses have been great. Here are a few fun statistics that we have taken out of it.

But for anyone who hasn’t taken it yet, here is the link. Don’t peak at what other people said, take the survey yourself first! http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=0S3pPYxkR6S0eGbiQVlZ7A_3d_3d

Now On to the results. I don’t want to give away the whole survey here, but I will give you five of some of the more interesting statistics we pulled from it.

• 86.2% would be willing to lend their personal items to their neighbors
• 82.3% would be willing to rent items from their neighbors
• 85.1% feel comfortable paying to borrow items they need
• 52.1% would be willing to lend items even if they were only rented once or twice a year
• For most items questioned, between 5 and 6 times as many people were willing to borrow items than lend them, which provides an excellent value proposition to lenders
• 94.8% of our respondents would be willing to either lend or borrow items. Out of 500 people surveyed, only 26 said they would not be willing to do one of the two options

So as you can tell, we have been getting very positive responses. This of course bodes very well for our business model, and we look forward to getting everyone on the site and giving them a chance to prove their bold statements. =^)

Speaking of the site, it is coming along very well. We have made tremendous project, in part thanks to some great effort on our web development team, A Small Orange. We are very very excited to give you a chance to run amok on the site, but first we want to work out some of the little bugs.

We will be posting new screen shots soon though, so make sure to keep checking back. It is looking great, working well, and getting us all pumped to launch as soon as possible. I can’t wait to show you have far it has come.

Look for new shots to be up within the week. For now, thanks for visiting, thanks for taking the survey, and thanks to all our die hard fans who voted for us on the Eventful box below. We appreciate it.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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!

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!

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.