A new app from a local startup aims to streamline the process of renting equipment.
Lend, which is now available for iOS and Android, as well as on desktop browsers, connects people looking to rent items they aren't currently using to individuals in need. For example, if someone needed tools to do a specific home repair, such as a floor sander, they could search the app to find someone in the nearby area that is offering it to rent.
"Instead of going to Home Depot, Rent-A-Center, these massive corporations who kind of have cartel pricing on these products, there's 100 people within five miles that have the same products and they don't have the opportunity to participate in the rental market," co-founder Michael Moran said. "We realized that there's something missing here, there's an opportunity for us to build something. So we decided that we would, we wrote our business plan, started building the app and we're here today with the finished app."
Moran, who previously led the now defunct app-based Scoobi moped service, co-founded Lend with Joshua Rudkin, whose previous business experience includes nightclub management in Arizona. The two launched Lend in Pittsburgh because they both grew up in the city, and Rudkin noted that the "sense of community and willingness to help our neighbors is stronger here than anywhere in the country." The company intends to eventually scale the platform beyond the Steel City and are pursuing a fundraising round to help marketing and scale. The platform was built by contractors and funded through a friends and family round.
"We're first just launching in the Pittsburgh area hyper locally to start to gain some traction and then our goal is to continue to expand and scale this thing kind of up the East Coast, we're going to hit Philly, Baltimore and then New York," co-founder Joshua Rudkin said. "It's a very scalable app and... we don't carry a bunch of overhead. You know, we're providing the marketplace for other individuals to put up their overhead. So it's extremely scalable."
The company will offer those operating on the renting side the ability to enroll in a protection plan for their equipment in the event that users damage it. In addition to equipment, the app will allow users to rent party supplies and gaming equipment.
