[jsankey]

Indeed, Freecycle have been operating in Australia for a long time. There are several other competitors too, the article doesn't make clear what Curbit's advantage/angle is. I'm all for the general idea and wish them well regardless, the amount of cheap stuff we buy and waste is astonishing.

[sien]

Freecycle is pretty terrible in Australia.

Gumtree (craigslist equivalent in AU) 'for free' works far better.

[danieltillett]

That is until you get some idiot ringing you 20 times asking you to deliver the free item to them. They seem surprised when you say no that you aren’t going to spend 2 hour driving to give them the item for free.

[dean_mcpherson]

Hey jsankey, the advantage of Curbit is simplicity. All existing solutions require a fair amount of effort of the person wanting to get rid of something. Freecycle is solving the exact same issue, but I feel that the burden that comes from having to manage pickup / messaging / condition reports all from a very rough web UI deters a huge portion of the population. We shouldn't have to work to get rid of something for free :)

Compared to classifieds in general, it can be much simpler to use, because money isn't changing hands.

[jsankey]

Thanks for the reply Dean. It seems there is room to make this easier, although it can be hard to find and convince the market of that when there is something "good enough" out there. Hope you have some luck.

An idea, to take or leave: a very active niche for this kind of thing is parents of young children. Very young kids (babies/toddlers) in particular churn through a lot of "stuff" by growing out of it before it wears out. Parents are very active on a range of Facebook groups trading this stuff (though not usually for free, just cheap). In fact the groups are so active that I know people using them daily, and the biggest issue with offloading stuff is posting are lost in the noise. If you're looking for a nice to focus on this is a strong one.

[dean_mcpherson]

Thanks jsankey, I agree. One of our key target demographics are parents home with children. From anecdotal experience, they are a good fit to both the supply and demand of temporary use items, and also more likely to be working on restoration projects or DIY that will benefit from free materials.