Could web rental efficiency gut DIY chains?

If specialized do-it-yourself tools can be rented, easily and efficiently, for two hours, will that start to hurt Lowe's and Home Depot?

Of the many startups that materialize on the U.S. business landscape every year, most enter an existing space, with very few offering a product/service that no one has yet seen. When entering an established market, most have a differentiator, such as a way to price lower or a patent that allows them to ship much faster.

But when Elias Chavando launched his startup, Rentus.com, last year, his sole major differentiator was simply technology. He knew that there are many businesses in the rental business, but they're overwhelmingly antiquated, with many still using paper and pencil to track inventory and revenue. Even worse (or, from Chavando's perspective, better), these rental stores have a hyper-local mentality, selling only to a handful of nearby neighborhoods. The rental business is a vertical that the web forgot.

Read the entire article: http://www.computerworld.com/article/3161840/retail-it/could-web-rental-efficiency-gut-diy-chains.html

Shared Economy Start-up Uses AI-based Compatibility Testing for Online Rental Marketplace

Seeking the next big idea in the “shared economy” pioneered by Uber and Airbnb – while also incorporating compatibility matching capabilities of dating and social media sites – an AI newbie has put forth an online business model based on renting items many of us own – party supplies, power tools, wheelchairs, lawn equipment, video gear – to those who’d rather rent than buy.

It’s been observed that a power drill, to take a common example, is only used by its owner for 12 minutes per year. So it makes eminent sense to rent a drill for a few dollars rather than buying one, right? Actually, maybe not. While a rental marketplace seems like an obvious business model, getting it to work in the real world has been another matter. For one thing, if renting a drill involves traveling any significant distance then many people would just as soon buy one and be done with it. For another, if the owner and renter don’t get along it lessens the chances that either one will become return customers.

Rntus.com is attempting to overcome these challenges by developing a data-driven infrastructure that combines AWS’s auto-scaling compute and storage infrastructure with a home-grown, inference-based AI capability that makes using the site seem like signing up for Match.com or eHarmony. The idea, according to founder and CEO Elias Chavando, is to avoid the fraction-of-a-penny-per-query that Rntus.com would otherwise pay AWS for AI functionality, charges that would add up quickly when the start-up processes the hundreds of thousands of queries per hour it expects – and hopes – come its way.

Continue reading: http://www.enterprisetech.com/2017/01/12/shared-economy-start-uses-ai-based-compatibility-testing-online-rental-marketplace/