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Show HN: Rentify – Build your rental empire today
- dsp 6y agoI thought this was going to be a slumlord starter pack.
- chris140957 6y agoMaybe I should pivot...
- mandelbrotwurst 6y agoTiny bit of feedback from first 10 seconds looking at this, hope it helps: 1. Text on "START NOW FOR FREE" CTA isn't fitting in its container 2. I'd remove the "Q. " bit of the FAQ headers 3. Would also remove the "Screenshots" header 4. Log in button disappears on narrow viewport
- chris140957 6y agoThanks - will take a look
- awillen 6y agoI assumed this would be about real estate as well - the tagline feels somewhat misleading. Much as I hate "X for Y" descriptions of products, calling this "Shopify for rental businesses" would definitely communicate what it does more clearly.
- chris140957 6y agoIt probably needs updating, think this is a UK vs US English thing
- qubex 6y agoMaybe it doesn’t need ‘updating’, because British English isn’t a deprecated anachronism that needs to be patched and brought up to date, thank you very much.
- chris140957 6y agoI need to change the tag line to make it clearer internationally, and the product name because, as someone has pointed out, it’s actually already taken
- vonmoltke 6y agoI don't think it's a language thing so much as dedicated "hire shops" not being much of a thing in the US outside of certain touristy areas. Even then, they tend to be really low-budget operations that rely on foot traffic or hotel partnerships.
- User23 6y agoWould like to echo this feedback. To US residents the name strongly implies real estate.
- dfxm12 6y agoFor me, it was more the tagline than the name. "Rental empire" brings up ideas of acquiring more and more land to rent to peasants. "Rentify" alone could be AirBNB, but it could also be Rent-a-Center. The right tagline would remove the ambiguity.
- yowlingcat 6y agoSame. Have you ever been to the BiggerPockets.com forum? I thought to myself "huh, looks like they made a consumer product"
- saddestcatever 6y agoAgreed! I was expecting some "Slumlord Saas" tool (with featured such as automated denial of maintenance requests, and the immediate investment of security deposits into long term CDs)
- btown 6y agoYou joke but https://www.realpage.com/ https://www.realpage.com/ ($6B market cap) advertises on its front page "precision revenue management through proven, cycle-tested, disciplined analytics that balance supply and demand to maximize revenue growth" and "The new RealPage® Waste Management Solution is a multifamily first, leveraging AI to optimize waste capacity and contamination levels, and cut costs by up to 40%."
- ManBlanket 6y agoThat site reads like dystopian satire.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y agoSo you're rich and want to get richer but the poor people you're exploiting are starting to hurt your margins? We're here to help you legally discriminate against MPoCs! /sarcasm
- mrguyorama 6y agoThat's not sarcasm, that's legitimately what products like this are designed for, sold for, and used for
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y agoIf I said this to a customer of such a company I would, almost certainly, come across as very offensive and sarcastic. My rationale is that's it's the same type of logic I see with highly paid desk jockeys complaining about the gruff they from their grunts that make about 1/6 what they do. Or complain that they can't find people to work for 30-40k gross with mandatory ot out off cities where the cost of living for a family of three is at least triple that with amazing health insurance. It's the they got theirs and those who didn't are obviously deadbeat junkies -- not deserving of: wages that would allow them to live reasonably close to their jobs, or have kids, or hobbies, or fun, or healthcare -- mentality.
- chansiky 6y agoThis is actually a great idea, if a good one doesn't already exist. I only clicked because I've been thinking about what a good one might look like.
- ketzo 6y agoI actually worked on one as part of a school project -- there are many, many, many pieces of landlord software. More than I would have thought possible.
- felixr 6y agoYou are confusing it with https://www.rentify.com/ https://www.rentify.com/
- chris140957 6y agoYeah I know, I plan to rebrand, I had no idea that existed
- xur17 6y agoIs this intended for rentals where the item is shipped, or for instore pickup / dropoff?
- chris140957 6y agoInstore primarily for now, there’s a delivery feature in the backlog
- rootsudo 6y agoHad a similar idea with sharetribe, but building your own marketplace is really hard for public consumption.
- oisino 6y agoYou should be charging a % of revenue as people scale. That way you align with taking value as more value is driven. If you look at companies like Shopify over half of their revenue comes from processing fees. Maybe price is a good place to start to get people in but probably not best model long run.
- chris140957 6y agoThanks for the feedback. Pricing it still WIP at the moment, haven’t quite decided the best way to handle it in the long run
- rtx 6y agoYou don't always, ethical companies should not charge a percentage.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoThere's a lot of justification for ethical percentage-based businesses. Particularly if the service provided is provided on each transaction. It also means they don't make any money if their customers don't make any money. It's a good incentive for providing a quality product, over say, a single lump sum purchase price.
- qubex 6y agoVariabilising all a company’s costs is every CFO’s dream: it makes all projections perfectly linear and totally eliminates any risk as zero revenue doesn’t create a loss because all costs also go to zero. At least, in the start-up phase of operations. Later, when economies of scale kick in and break-even has been far overcome, one seeks to negotiate smaller unit charges, primarily to capture more of the added value for oneself, and partially to reduce visibility of one’s revenue.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoThat's all definitely true. I think the cloud is a terrible value proposition for anything that's not a startup, for instance: You will safe a crud-ton of money paying your own IT staff instead of paying Amazon's IT staff, provided you have a stable business with relatively predictable needs. Arguably, once you are a big player in a space, you should ideally have the clout to negotiate a better deal too.
- rcurry 6y agoI really like the UI, nice work.
- chris140957 6y agoThanks, it’s all built in Vuetify which makes it stupidly easy
- billconan 6y agohow to handle tax?
- chris140957 6y agoThere’s a ticket in the backlog for that. For now the price is assumed to be inclusive
- bt3 6y agoCan you explain the market for this? Is this meant to be a consumer-driven replacement to (predatory) chains like Rent-a-Center?
- dhagz 6y agoI think it's more for equipment rentals - think renting skis or a snowboard. Less rent-to-own and more try-this-hobby.
- mellosouls 6y agoRecently discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24597748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24597748
- jordannoble 6y agoNice idea and design, best of luck! Seems like this is mainly for businesses, but presumably there's also a market for individuals renting equipment (e.g. tools/lawnmowers to neighbours)? Small issue: was reading the FAQ and every time the screenshots carousel resets it automatically scrolls me up to the screenshots carousel.
- chris140957 6y agoMy initial target market was small bike/ski hire shops but I’ve had a lot of enquiries from individuals wanting to hire out their gym kit, so this is something I’m also exploring
- JamesAdir 6y agoLooks great. As a novice programmer could you share more about the stack and tools you've used to create this? Thanks.
- chris140957 6y agoBackend is django with graphene, frontend is vuejs with vuetify and Apollo. DB is Postgres. DB and backend is hosted in AWS, frontend is netlify
- JamesAdir 6y agothanks for the details!
- mattl 6y agoVisual Bug on Firefox on Ubuntu: https://i.imgur.com/zbRCkWN.png https://i.imgur.com/zbRCkWN.png
- willyg123 6y agoAnd here was about to opine about the benefits of a 1031 exchange you can't get from real estate crowdfunding.
- quickthrower2 6y agoSome funky JS scroll stuff is going on. Really not smooth on iPhone 6. Just letting you know!