Tim Jackson has had a colorful career. He is a former journalist (Financial Times, Independent, Economist and Red Herring) and was the managing director of the $700 million Carlyle Internet Partners Europe Fund. He founded QXL in 1997, a UK-based eBay-like online auction site that went public in 1999 at a valuation of around $400 million. And he’s also written three books. In other words, he seems to keep busy.
Now he’s on to his next challenge, launching and growing a U.S. based DVD lending site called LendAround. The core idea of swapping DVDs isn’t new – services like Peerflix gave in an honest try and eventually gave up. Another service we’ve covered is Swaptree, which is still going and recently raised a fresh round of funding.
LendAround is taking a slightly different approach. First, the site is focusing on loaners, not outright permanent trades. And the goal is to let your friends browse your DVD collection and borrow what they want, and LendAround keeps track of who has what. That removes the issue of people forgetting who borrowed what.
Jackson also believes that the quality of available movies will be much higher with a lending service vs. a swap/barter site. When people consider what DVDs they are willing to swap, they tend to choose the worst 10% on their shelves, he says. That explains why services like Peerflix tended to have masses of unwanted titles and few popular ones. When you are lending to friends, you’ll include all of your DVDs, knowing you’ll get them back.
There are 2 billion DVDs in U.S. homes, Jackson says, and 80% of those are watched just twice a year. Jackson envisions people swapping DVDs with neighbors, work colleagues, church members and sports clubs, where people already know and trust each other and for the most part can hand over the DVDs in person, skipping the mail.
Eventually Jackson wants to expand the service to include other items.
LendAround is currently in private beta but you can sign up for it on the home page. Users are given fifty invites each, and we’ll be adding it to inviteshare tomorrow to help users get into the service. I’ve tried it out – it’s still a little rough around the edges but I found it easy to add titles via a title search or bar code. And I can now peruse Jackson’s 234 DVDs (I’ve requested a loaner of Fight Club). The service is free to use, and the company hopes to make revenue from DVD purchases and future paid services.
Update: If you don’t want to wait for inviteshare, you can get into LendAround right away. The first few hundred people that email techcrunch@lendaround.com will get immediate invitations.
I want in! looks cool.
what’s the revenue model? advertisements? and does it not erode DVD/CD sales business?
marvin
http://www.latticepurple.com
wats the revenue model? n does it not offend/erode the sale of CDs/DVDs…blatantly?
cheers,
marvin
It is probably just a political statement…
QXL had alot of potential, shame he wasnt able to make it into something really big . Could of been on same scale as Ebay but lack of vision.
There are a hell lot of DVD swapping services. Here is one big list for example,
http://www.inst...s-and-dvds.html
The more the merrier.
It doesn’t seem to be about swapping just lending. You just lend it but you can get it back whenever you want to.
Bibale, http://www.bibale.com/, which I launched earlier this month is also in the DVD lending business, even though it allows to lend more than DVDs with CDs, videogames and books too.
Your webapp bibale.com is just amazingly powerful. It’s sober, no blablas… I like it…
there’s maybe a lack, beside loans, why not to add a donation offer by item ?
Really promising ! more than lendaround to me
Ok, here is another “great” campy 90’s NYC Village style service that feels good and works in concept of having a niche community where everyone knows everyone type thing…
Then the MPAA gets wind of this thriving community, and quickly goes in for the assertion of rental fees of titles and everyone down to the RIAA will assert that royalties are owed and due…
Its so sad that the MPAA and RIAA will not simply work with these guys but will try to bully them first, back them in a corner, then demand outrageous fees that will simply pillage this good company to its core.
I really hope this doesn’t happen, but in today’s vicious and desperate economic climate, hope went away with the 90’s itself.
-Will
CEO
Kordor Electronics
Will, you’ve raised a really important issue.
However, we took some serious legal advice in advance, and we’re completely confident that the US Copyright Act allows you to lend DVDs to your friends without fear of breaching anyone’s rights.
(It would be kind of weird if it didn’t, right?)
Check out the relevant Wikipedia page at http://en.wikip...Consumer_Rights for what we think is a summary of what the law actually says, as opposed to what the industry might want it to be!
Hey Tim,
Don’t get me wrong, I totally feel you guys are dead on correct and within full rights of operation!
As you say, “what the industry might want it to be” is where my perspective is coming from.
I know these guys all too well and it amazes me every time how they are always coming up with scenarios to back their madness.
Here, they may say “Well how are these people connected? How do we know they are all friends?”.
While in beta, consider this: tying in something like Facebook Connect (and API) would be an easy way to avoid this bully tactic as likely everyone using your service has an active Facebook account and for the most part, FB friends can prove that the service is mainly upholding the same law the groups may look to exploit.
I have just seen too many times these guys predator the good guys all but to loose the opportunity to advertise new stuff on a site like LendAround to people that are clearly looking for entertainment.
I really hope this works out as I am looking to use the service
In case the FB Connect idea stick:
(Disclaimer: I and my companies waive any claims to mere open opinion given in this post)
i don’t see this as an issue. rights holders are focused on P2P and other illegal downloads. Physical copies being loaned out just doesn’t have the opportunity cost to justify a real legal effort that they would almost certainly lose.
The law grants you the right to share your CDs and DVDs with your relatioves for free, not to rent your material for a fee. The “For private use only, no rent allowed” statement is written on any DVD box and displayed at the beginning of the movie
Videoclubs pay their DVD far more than the price paid by an individual, exactly for that reason.
So, really, I do not understand the business model for this new service.
Im not sure how they can improve on what Swaptree is already doing. Ive been using it since TechCrunch wrote about it and its fantastic.
Great you can borrow from friends…but isnt that just a simple groups feature that a site like swaptree could add in a week of coding?
Wish all entrepreneurs luck, but not sure i see the difference maker here.
see paragraph 4 of the post. I think Jackson has a good point there on how the quality on swapping sites won’t ever be that great.
Mike – Thanks for replying. I agree with that point, when you look at the point swapping sites, since there you have to give up an item, before you can get an item.
So your hesitant to give up an oscar winner before you are positive you can get an oscar winner back. Since trades dont happen simultaneously, you never are, and therefore never list that oscar winner.
On true trading sites like swaptree, this is a non issue since you give and get at the same time. You are not hesitant to list an oscar winner, since you only have to part with it when you are getting an oscar winner back, at the same time.
But my larger point, is that cant any swapping site, ad on a groups section, so that you can swap with the general public, but borrow from a smaller group you’ve defined – be that family, neighbors or co-workers. I mean its really a basic groups feature with a few bells and whistles necessary to indicate – this item is borrowed.
I dont think a swapping site has to be one and not the other.
Idiot. One is swapping and one is lending. Neither idea is very good but they are different enough to be discussed.
Agree with RubyRun on Swaptree and disagree with Arrington on the quality statement.
I can get pretty much anything I want on Swaptree (I’ve been in since the beta). And once I watch it, or read it, why wouldn’t I trade it for something I haven’t watched or read? I don’t need to own the item if I can always trade for other items I haven’t watched or read.
Maybe there’s a short list of items I want to own and not give away.
Doesn’t the lending model have the same quality issue: If all my ‘new friends’ want to borrow my copy of the latest movie, what good is owning it when I can’t watch it because it’s in circulation? The demand /supply quality issue is the same from what I can tell.
There’s also
http://neighborrow.com/
I think they target apartment buildings and dorms where people can share books, dvds, etc.
try http://www.switchplanet.com/
Swaptree is a pretty good startup in this space already and maybe it’s just me but is LendAround a good name for the business?
haha reminds me of an old project I had worked on years ago.
http://wareseek...d-03.zip/203674
Never thought the concept was still interesting to people.
And I never thought that thing had more than 6000 downloads!
Yikes! Read the story, got all excited bout signing up, then baffled by the presentation of the wedsite. Looks like a wack tumblr page.
Failed the “do I have to spend too much time trying to understand this test”, I’m afraid.
I would have just sent that comment direct to the site, but you have to register to contact them…
This is such an old thing…. so many have tried and failed
I think the LendAround idea is great. I wanted the same thing but I wanted to be able to monetize the things I have so I created Crowd Rent. Not DVDs really in this case, but your lawnmower, your step ladder, your Xbox, or caper trailer, or anything else you might have laying around. I have a nail gun and compressor that has seen very little action in it’s life.
We allow customer to pay with their credit cards for the protection of both parties. The renter can release payment to the owner once it’s all done. It’s a safer way to do peer-2-peer rentals in our opinion.
Hi,
I would have just sent that comment direct to the site, but you have to register to contact them…
Bye…..
a message to Tim Jackson: I have a question regarding your book “Inside Intel”. I would very much appreciate if you could give me your contact info so I can ask the question directly.
Regards,
Tom