Brooke and Mark » Business

Winter, already?

mark — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:06:31 +0000

Since the last time I posted was about how it was summer I’m a little shocked that this post is about how it’s winter! Well it’s fall, but it’s very cold out and no snow. So, what have we been up to since the last post? A quick recap for those who haven’t been paying attention:

Brooke graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Technical Management.
She’s thinking about getting her PMP.
Brooke got a new Honda CR-V with all wheel drive so no more getting stuck in the snow.
Brooke turned 27 or so and I think each one is getting a little harder to admit to.

Mark is still in school with four more classes to go.
He took the fall semester off and if Brooke wouldn’t make him do it, he’d never go back to school as it’s a waste of his time in his opinion.
He’s been busy helping Mike with race4myplace.com, working on his own creation crowdrent.com, talking about continued help with gauto.com, coming up with new ideas.
Mark got a Honda Civic which is affectionately known as the vomit comet since Max gets car sick and it’s not all wheel drive so it should be a fun winter.
Mark is officially a full-time teleworker so we’ll see how that goes.
Mark turned 31 and really couldn’t care less. I think 31 was harder than 30.
Crowd Rent did it’s first transaction and I made my first three dollars in business. Doesn’t make me rich, just happy.
Mark is a serial “wantrepreneur“ but has yet to quit his job and make a fortune on any of the many ideas floating around his head.

Our puppies are a year old and entertaining as always.
We still live in the same house now just passing the two year mark. Longest I’ve ever lived in one spot since I’ve lived on my own.
Our company, CH2M Hill sold our division, EMS, to Golden Gate Capital and we’re now called Critigen.
We’re going to the southern Caribbean this winter for a week.

Oh, and it’s winter again. It has snowed, it’s been literally freezing, never over 32F/0C all day yesterday, lather, rinse, repeat.

Your Saturday double does of puppy

mark — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 14:39:02 +0000

Although since there are two puppies and two videos I’d say this is your quadruple does of puppy!

Puppies in snow!

Puppies playing fetch

Stumbleupon and Crowd Rent

mark — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:21:46 +0000

So I was trying to think of ideas to increase traffic to Crowd Rent and I remember Stumble Upon. I signed up for SU back in August of 2005. It was a lot of fun and a great way to waste all day at a job I didn’t want to be at anymore. I quit U-Haul in October of that same year and move to Colorado. Well I submitted Crowd Rent and at the same time I’m tailing the log files on the server. It’s been pretty stagnent today as my Criagslist postings have fallen out of the first few pages. About three minutes after I said I liked it on SU the logs starting flying by. I have no idea if anyone is staying on the site, if it’ll translate into signups, or even rentals but the traffic is impressive.

Crowd Rent

mark — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:41:10 +0000

So I’ve been working on an idea to allow “peer-2-peer” rentals. Imagine being able to find people in your area renting the things they don’t use. Not just tools in the garage, but their camper trailer, their kayaks, their bread maker, even their cars. American people are voracious consumers, well they were. The times are changing, we’re realizing we can’t keep spending and consuming. It affects the environment and it leaves us with no money. So if we aggregate the “stuff” we all have and offer it up to the community for a daily rate we’d be able to find what we need without needing to buy more. Reduce packaging, reduce transportation costs, and save some money for things that matter.
Now I came up with the idea on my own, I have hundreds of them bouncing around in my head to tell you the truth. While it was my own original idea, I wasn’t the first person. There are two other major sites out there that allow you to do the same thing basically. Zilok and iRent2U both offer the same thing, both are substantially more advanced at the moment, and both are seemingly infinitely more complicated. What I was trying to accomplish in Crowd Rent was a simple process. Reduce the forms, the questions, and process to what it is, renting your things to people in your area. I also wanted to make it safe to pay. So I used a system that charges the customer up front when the rental is confirmed and allows them to give the owner a payment code to redeem. This could be a pain if people don’t know how it works but it protects people and allows them to use their credit card. So in a way, we’re ahead of the competition.

Yesterday I finally opened it up to the public and the response was good. I got three new users but only one new item listed. This was from one ad on Craigslist that generated quite a bit of traffic. So I was excited but also dissappointed. I know full well this is a long process to build a viable business but that’s what I like about it. Sure I want to work for myself, set my own hours, and be filthy rich but more importantly I wasn’t to build something. I developed the U-Haul reservations site so I know the technical aspect of these things but the thing we took for granted was the traffic. We’d work up something new, flip a switch and overwhelm ourselves with our success. With good reason, the reservations site was generating over a million dollars a day in rental revenue and that was three years ago or so. It something I’ve seen with gAuto.com, another venture with a few former coworkers. It’s a great idea and we have great talent but we need customers. They’re coming but it’s always slow.