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Former Red Hat intern is gonna rent out the world

Published October 13, 2009 community 4 Comments
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From the we’ll-all-be-working-for-him-someday files:

rentcycleFormer Red Hat intern and project manager Tim Hyer has been working on a new startup company named Rentcycle. Last night, Techcrunch picked up their story here. Tim worked for us here in the Brand Communications + Design group at Red Hat from 2005 to 2007 and then moved out to the west coast. He is the person most responsible for the hard work of making David Burney’s design thinking vision come true at Red Hat.

Rentcycle a pretty neat idea– sign up rental businesses around the country, and then let people rent stuff from one website. See what is in stock at many stores at once, without having to run around a dusty warehouse looking in rusty bins full of candelabras and fine silverware.

Some other folks have tried similar things, but many have tried the Craigslist style approach of one consumer renting to another. Tim’s approach is more B2C (in non-marketing-speak, that means he wants to partner with businesses selling to regular folks), which should make it easier for him to achieve scale without as much pain. My view? Someone’s going to do this right, and knowing Tim, it’s a pretty good bet it will be him.

Follow them on Twitter here or watch their video pitch of the concept (nice stick figure, Tim):

4 Responses to “Former Red Hat intern is gonna rent out the world”

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  1. 1 Todd October 13, 2009 at 9:08 am

    Great idea for a service. As a sideline beekeeper, I would love it if folks could rent our bees for pollination easily and use service like this to manage the transactions. Sadly, the agricultural world is still relatively unconnected. Regardless, will give it a whirl…

    -todd
    http://www.carolinabees.com/

    Reply
  2. 2 Tim Hyer October 13, 2009 at 10:07 am

    Thanks for the shout out, Chris! It’s been a fun ride so far but lots of challenges ahead. Glad to know I have your support.

    I’m sure you noticed my rental manager stick man is a close cousin to Red Hat’s beloved sysadmin stick figure. Guess that simple Red Hat communication style really stuck with me. Say hey to the BC+D group for me!

    Cheers,

    Tim

    Reply

  1. 1 Twitter Trackbacks for Former Red Hat intern is gonna rent out the world « Dark Matter Matters [darkmattermatters.com] on Topsy.com Trackback on October 13, 2009 at 5:41 pm

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