I woke up this morning and did my usual morning routine. I got some coffee, read the news, and checked my email. Today I got a special email saying something along the lines of “Congratulations, you’ve been featured on Beta List”. Sweet, I got featured. For those of you who don’t know, Beta List is a service that allows early adopters of new technology to discover the latest internet startups. It’s also a good way to get some exposure to your baby service. I clicked on through to the feature http://betali.st/startups/rentything and was surprised to find over 200 tweets, and a whackload of facebook likes to the project I’ve been working on: Rentything, a peer to peer rental marketplace allowing anybody to rent anything from anyone. That’s the punch line, I suppose it needs some work. Anyway, now that Beta List has featured it I guess it’s out in the wild now. I shared this story on my personal Twitter and Facebook and was blown away by the positive responses and love I got. And here I thought I was some weirdo loner who does shit that weirds out normal people (actually, that’s probably still true, but I digress).

 

I meant to write about Rentything here sooner, but I just never had the right moment to do so (I guess now is good…surprise!). It has been a tough year so far as I’ve tried to find my rhythm. I’m not there yet but definitely making improvements. Rentything has been a load of fun to make (most of the time) and something that I think has real value for some people. It’s a problem I personally had when I helped my parents move last summer and never had the abilities to borrow certain tools that we needed only temporarily. So in a way I built it for myself, and I am hoping it helps solve an issue other people run into as well. But it’s more than that. It’s access, it’s discovery (ever want to try canoeing or rock climbing or something else but didn’t have the equipment?), it’s convenience, and it’s money savings and earnings (people will earn money using stuff they already own… and rent stuff at hopefully competitive prices). In tough economic times, nothing will put a smile on my face more than knowing some family or individual was able to earn a little bit extra thanks to Rentything. If I hear that even once, I’ll consider it a huge success.

 

So, will it work? I don’t know. There’s a whole heck of a lot of reasons on why it will fail, and only a few reasons on why it will succeed. I’m aware of this, but I’m not too concerned about it either. I didn’t build Rentything to become an internet millionaire or something, I built it because I needed to. Rentything’s success or failure is largely irrelevant to me, but what is relevant is the skills I have picked up (javascript, what!), the skills I’m improving on (marketing, copywriting, seo, etc), the skills I’ll need to reawaken (customer support?) and the skills I will undoubtedly need soon/now/too late.

 

Life is short. I have my life’s mission to complete. Rentything is a great first step in that direction. Check it out at Rentything.com

 

P.S. With that, my blog will take on more topics now including the technical, the business, and the journey (although I was already doing that last one).