A new website can help you earn extra cash while making use of your seemingly useless items. The Richmond based company Rent Llama gives people the opportunity to rent their stuff out for a short time with the ease and convenience similar to apps like Uber and Airbnb.
A new website can help you earn extra cash while making use of your seemingly useless items. The Richmond based company Rent Llama gives people the opportunity to rent their stuff out for a short time with the ease and convenience similar to apps like Uber and Airbnb.
Morgan Porter, Co-Founder of Rent LLama, said the idea came to him in his garage.
“I was cleaning out my garage for the millionth time,” said Porter. “I have a portable generator that I bought about five years ago to help with power outages and since purchasing it the power never went out again so it was just sitting there, but I didn’t really want to sell it so I thought I would post it up for rent.”
While searching for places to put his items up for rent the only place he could find to fit his needs was Craigslist. That’s when the idea to come up with a site that would be more reliable and safe to easily rent out your things was born.
“I’ve used Airbnb and Uber,” said Porter. “And they show that a lot of people are open to the whole sharing economy so my business partners and I decided to create a site that would let you rent things like you would real estate.”
Items listed for rent on the site vary from everything from tents, to tools, to electronics to a carnival bounce house priced anywhere from $8 to $39 a day. Unfortunately, no llamas or exotic animals of any kind are available at this time.
Porter, who is a managing partner at left + right, a freelance web design company,who put the site together in three months.
Since launching the site last Friday, Rent Llama has received great feedback from the community, according to Porter.
“We’ve just been going out and telling people about the site,” said Porter. “We’ve been trying to get the word out through social media and stuff like that, but overall everyone that we’ve talked to about it loved the idea and is really excited about using it.”
Having just taken off, Porter said that the next step is to speak with potential investors over the next few months to try to get some seed capital to gain advertising.
Porter told RVA Mag that Rent Llama is a better alternative to the classified advertisements website Craigslist because they do for their users what Craigslist can’t.
“Craigslist isn’t really a competitor for what we’re doing,” said Porter. “We originally tested out the idea for our site by using Craigslist first and we found that the anonymity of Craigslist may not make it the best place to rent out your things because you never really know what could happen.”
Rent Llama offers multiple features that are supposed to make the user feel safe and ultimately generate more use because of that. One of the features the company offers is to become a verified user by linking your Facebook profile and sharing personal information.
“Unlike craigslist is that it’s not completely anonymous,” said Porter. “When you have the verified account it makes the process more comfortable when renting out valuable items that other person is not hidden so it’s safer.”
The company will also serve as a mediator for renters and owners if there are any issues, eliminating as many bad outcomes as possible. Rent Llama also gives users the ability to rate each other, much like Uber allows you to rate drivers.
While the company is solely renting out products, Porter said they hope to expand the company to allow people to rent out event space and large vehicles. They also have plans on developing the company outside of Richmond.
To find things you would like to rent or post things you don’t use for a little extra money, check Rent Llama out. And let us know when they get llamas.
