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How to Disrupt An Industry – Shneebers Unite

Patrick Green
Patrick Green
Mike "Shneebs" Kneebone
// Shneebs is a way for communities to rent, swap, share their items and services. If you want something and don't need to buy it then search shneebs for that item and lend it to your neighbour?

Shneebs is a way for communities to rent, swap, share their items and services. If you want something and don’t need to buy it then search Shneebs for that item and lend it to your neighbour?

ShneebsThis is a startup that has the potential to disrupt the incumbent rental provider marketplace, the next trailer or caravan you hire could be through Shneebs.

Startup News had a chat with the founder about how it came about and what his plans are.

 

Q: What is your startup and how did it get started:

A: The idea behind Shneebs is “how do we get communities to share the underutilised resources and chattels that they already have”. So all the stuff sitting around, gathering dust, that we don’t fully optimise ourselves, we are all going out and buying the same stuff, and then keeping it, whereas we could actually share or rent it out.

For example, I go and hire a trailer to move stuff around on the weekend, and there are business’s built on hiring trailers out. Yet, on my street alone I counted six neighbours that have trailers and they spend most of their time sitting around full of leaves. But I’m not really comfortable to go and knock on their door, I don’t know them, or I don’t know them well enough to ask, or it’s a bit awkward. And so if I draw an analogy, a lot of people now rent out holiday houses, which is a really massive investment, worth a lot of money and usually a lot of debt to the bank, yet people are happy to rent them out.

So when people say I don’t want to lend out my stuff like my trailer, then you have to look at it in context, if people are prepared to lend out their holiday house, then I am sure they would rent out their angle grinder, or their bicycle that they are not using.

Mike "Shneebs" Kneebone
Mike “Shneebs” Kneebone

We put a little bit of distance and formality to it, so that people don’t have to knock on that neighbours door. And if that neighbour has presented it on Shneebs and it’s available in my area, Shneebs has provided a legal framework for both parties so they are protected. We provide profiles so that people can write a little bit about themselves, you can see a record of Shneebs transactions, Shneebs achievements points, to see what activities they have done, and what ratings and reviews they have received from others, so we are not judging them, but other people are making comments, so you can look at that and say that person lives in my suburb, has all these reviews, I think I even recognise his face from the picture, and I like the price on that , so I am going to in-app message him, “how about I rent that trailer that you’ve listed”. He can then come back and make his decision based on your profile.

It’s about giving people the information, giving people the framework, so that they will hopefully be comfortable in lending things to others.

Q: Tell me about your background?

A: My name is Mike Kneebone, and together with my wife Chrissy, we started Shneebs about two years ago.

It started out as we wanted to rent out some of our things; we have a small family and we go caravanning, and I have lots of hobbies, scuba diving, golf, kite surfing, a lot of hobbies I’ve started, and some of them I don’t do any more, but I don’t want to get rid of my stuff.

So, we thought about how can we rent out our caravan, and we looked around, and there was no platform that was really suitable for renting, you could do it on some, but they were more geared around selling. SO we thought how about we do a website, and then it evolved from a website after talking to a lot of people, and scoping it out, it had to be instant, and we decided on an app, and we developed it for iPhone in the first instance.

If I need something now, what are my alternatives to going to the white pages and calling a known provider , I’d check Shneebs, in my pocket and see what’s available right now and message them in the app. That’s how we arrived at the idea.

If I could just comment as well, it did just start off as renting, but through the process we thought there is more to this now, because we are dealing with communities, so why should we stop at just renting stuff, how about swapping things. There’s all sorts of stuff that we’ve got that we’re bored with but we might want it back, so how about we exchange items, whether it’s the produce of our lemon tree, or veggie garden, or that sort of stuff. As well as that we now have giveaways, so items that we no longer need or don’t want, lets freecycle them or part pay them forward and prevent waste. Like the trampoline that your kids don’t use anymore, or a swing set, another kid might use that.

And then finally the last thing we are doing there is , just keep a record of the personal items that you have lent to one-another, I know I’ve lent an item to my brother and he has had it so long that he swears it’s his. And how many times have you lent a book to someone, so it’s just a case of keeping a record in Shneebs, I lent a book to Jamie on this date, and if I ever wonder who did I lend that to, I can go to Shneebs and look it up.

Q: What has the response been so far, have you launched and how is it going?

A: So we have released on the App store about ten days ago, as a soft release and in the process now of preparing some PR material, and targeting small communities that are already sharing stuff, whether its mums in mothers groups, handing down kids uniforms to other parents of the school, posting that on their Facebook, we want them to use Shneebs, and then link that to their Facebook.

We’ve got some PR coming out in the next couple of weeks, to date I haven’t even sent an email out to my friends yet, but we have a couple hundred people on Shneebs already.

Q: What regions have picked up Shneebs so far as early adopters?

A: Early adopters have been mainly in Perth, some in the rest of Australia, some in Thailand, US, Norway a bit of a funny sort of take-up. We actually had a Facebook page and did a program with UWA post grad marketing unit students, and they did some marketing, they built up some fans, twitter, Instagram and spread the word out amongst the University crowd, and so this is how some of the early Shneebers had learnt of the app. All this was before we had launched the app.

I would suggest though that if anyone was going to do a program with University students that they have their app ready for launch, it was such a shame for us that they were doing a hypothetical thing, creating all this interest, and then we released Shneebs the week before exams, so everyone had gone offline for a few weeks.

The students are really receptive to working on these projects, they are great. We asked them who do you see is going to use Shneebs, what are they going to do with it, because there is all this uncertainly, we have an idea how we would use it, but it would be really interesting to see some of the items that people are going to put on there, and what they are going to Shneebs, and what would be the most popular transaction.

One of the first items listed by our Shneebs testers was a swap item, he wanted to swap his wife and he chose a swap item of ‘surprise me’ which was quite funny.

Q: What do you think the potential for this startup is?

A: I think in terms of how we have built Shneebs, integrated with Google places and Google maps, it has the capacity to search for locations in any recognised place globally, which makes it really exciting, we can have people Shneebing anywhere, like in New York, which they are not yet, but one day!

Being introduced on the app store, and being for free, it’s not limited in distribution, so I think something like Shneebs is really going to resonate with communities that have socially progressive attitudes towards a better way to consume and that they are members of communities probably are trusting and so forth.

I look at examples like The Freecycle Network which has 10 million users at the moment and it fills me with hope, that there is a significant number of people that this will be attractive to, and I think this is a great initiative, I think the fact that we live in communities, you don’t know half the people that live around the corner from you, and I think technology and the old practises of community sharing and living together, will see a real resurgence in this collaborative consumption.

Another example is when it’s a raining night and you’re stuck and the bus is late, why not see if anyone is Shneebing a lift from the city to your suburb tonight, and carpooling and all that sort of stuff, it could be full on.

Q: Do you have any revenue at this stage?

A: No, there is no revenue, what we have removed is any barriers to people to adopt Shneebs, we don’t envisage there being any fees for using Shneebs, I think the most common way to commercialise Shneebs is if we put some advertising in there, we put a lot of time into the design trying to make it quite different and friendly, and we didn’t want to take away from that, so if we put advertising in there, we want to do it in meaningful way that contributes to the experience, so we want to put an amount of thought into that and do it properly.

I expect in time like anything it will need to cover the costs.

Q: Do you have any investors, or looking for investment?

A: What we were very conscious of doing with Shneebs, is we didn’t want to go to people and ask for money for our idea, this was our idea, we didn’t want to run with a board or committee, we had a fairly clear idea of what we wanted to do, we got some really good people to work for us on a paid engagement, and want to prove the concept.

So if it works, then at that point we would be comfortable to ask for people to come on board and help us scale. But we want to take the risk out of it at this stage. Then it’s not so much a risk a proposition, its more that we have something that’s working, and we need to spread the message and that would take some capital.

Q: Since this is not a full time startup for you, how do you juggle this with a job? What are your recommendations to people – commit or keep working?

A: A lot of people have different ideas about this – if you’re not part of the team, if you don’t own the development resources, some people are against offshoring and outsourcing, some people say if you’re not committed fully to it you’re not an entrepreneur, you’re a wantrepreneur, there’s a lot of people that comment how they would never invest in a company where there is not an technical team, but by the same token when you have a dream and its eating at you, and you have got to do it, you have to do it the only way you can do it.

For me I have a day job, a family, and I don’t see that as any different as a programmer who has existing customer but does this on the side as well, but I’m doing the juggling thing, I’m conscious I’m an employee, I work at night, my design people are based in Europe, my technical people are based in Bangalore, and the tools that we used have all been free tools, Skype, base camp, Google.

I would say to people, if you going to follow this track, then there is a real time commitment, it’s not a set and forget, its every night, its being across everything that they are doing, driving the outcomes, and it does take a lot of time but I’ve had a great sense of achievement and learnt a hell of a lot, and I would recommend it to anyone, but I’m a bit risk averse, and I would say don’t throw out everything you’ve got, hedge your bets a little bit, but if it is your dream, pursue it, don’t create huge expectations, but have a go.

Q: What’s the next step for this startup?

A: The next step for Shneebs is to conduct some PR activities, and I believe that is probably the cheapest way to get our message out in the near term. As part of our marketing, we will be trying to get some articles into community based publications, and that will be physical communities, industry communities, technical communities, as well as that we are going to do some advertising on social networks, build our presence on face book.

But because we’re not in a mad rush what we want to do is really work with our early adopters, have relationships and support them and talk to them, because part of our job is to get these people who want to share their stuff onto Shneebs, and then help them promote their listing, make it successful for them, we will be better placed to that with a slow growth.

We are targeting specific areas, we are here in Perth, our focus is here in Perth specifically, then WA and then probably go to the other states one by one, in that targeted approach, we want to make sure that when people come onto Shneebs, they are presented with something that is really helpful to them in their community.

Q: What are you most excited about at the moment?

A: Hearing other people talking about Shneebs, I love it, what started off just at our house with that silly name a couple of years ago, and now to actually hear people talking about Shneebs and having fun with it, because at the end of the day, what we are doing is for fun, and if you look at it, it’s serious terms and conditions, and infrastructure, we have presented in a cartoonish style, because we want people to engage, have conversations and have fun.

Q: Where did that name come from?

A: Well, it’s a bit of a nickname from Kneebone, Shneebone, Shneebs. Silly but we like it.

Q: Who do you see is some of your biggest competitors?

A: I think I like the saying that there is enough sun to shine on all of us, I think competition drives better outcomes, so if we are going to get into this market and compete on a zero dollar item, then we want to have an end game, and make sure it’s worth our while to do that, so I would suggest there are niche players out there already. We have Airbnb, niche player capitalised at over $10bn , but they are essentially Shneebs for peoples rooms and houses, and they do that really well, they are inspirational, there are the likes of Uber, for cars, there is Zimride which is also one for cars, there seems to be a number out there for cars.

There is other sharing sites like this, but generally they are desktop based, or web based, specifically for tools in the shed, or for sporting items, whereas what we want to do with Shneebs is to be able to put all your things on Shneebs, not just one thing, you can put your drill, or your ladder, your pet carriers, just go around your house and put anything on.

I think this has the potential to be revenue for people that can do with a bit of extra cash. SO maybe the likes of gumtree could develop into this, but I think it would be hard to do sales and rental, because it’s against the ethos of what we are doing , we don’t intend to sell anything on here, I see the freecycle movement where they give things away, so we have the giveaway option on Shneebs, but once again I can’t see why we couldn’t work with them, and cross promote because it’s the same outcome, and it might be a better way to reach people to freecycle, and it would be complementary.

So I see there are a number of competitor start-ups, but then there are the traditional, the biggest competitor is the existing providers of rental products, such as Coates Hire, Camper Trailer rentals, all those people. We are major market disruptors for them, because I can see we can erode a lot from their business, if you have caravan that you use 4 weeks a year, why wouldn’t you rent that out, whereas everyone goes to all the camper hire places, Shneebs, can do that.

So the problem with the incumbents is they dismiss startups as not profitable, and not sustainable, meanwhile the low cost startup builds a brand and takes over each market segment without them noticing.

I’d love to be able to put a value on what the rental market is right now, because it’s an existing market provided by major corporate, and they have got these newer startups starting to chip away at it.

It’s only a matter of time before this trend takes hold.

We are going out of this post-war cycle we’re it’s like – over produce, get the factories working, consume consume, cheap credit, cheap products and products that would expire the day after the warranty finished, and it’s not worth fixing, buy a new one, throw it out, maybe let’s just have better quality products that last, and lets optimise the use of them.

Q: What’s your advice to fellow startup entrepreneurs?

A: I think when you are starting out, and you talk to people, they won’t talk about it, and you have to sign an NDA and privacy agreement, and all that sort of stuff, but when you actually see how much is involved in developing something like this, its unlikely someone is going to have the interest, the motivation or the funding to go do it, until you have proven it at least, I would say be open to discuss your idea, because the more you discuss your idea, the more feedback you get, and don’t be afraid of using the local market, you don’t need to rush to San Fran Cisco.

Q: To wind up, do you have any words about the Perth startup scene?

A: I think there are a lot of people doing a lot of good things here, I think we need to be more open about who is out there, who is doing what, because to a certain extent the people that are on the way up are really open and talking, perhaps some of the people that have already made it are looking to come back in through investing and so forth, it would be great, and I don’t know how we can do it, but to have more access to the people that are involved in the startup community.

I think the future is pretty bright, I think in terms of funding, it’s probably the hardest thing at the moment, but there seems to be a lot of pitching competitions, but this hasn’t been the way we decided to go with our bootstrapping.

 

Thanks for the chat Mike, I look forward to swapping or renting something on Shneebs.

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Patrick Green

Patrick Green

Patrick is the co-founder and co-editor of Startup News. With a history in software and startups, he gets a kick out of seeing other peoples ideas come to life.
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