[coglethorpe]

My first (only) startup was a rental site. RentHop already has more traction than I ever did. At the time I knew little about funding or how startups worked. Heck, I didn't really even know much PHP or CSS, but got a site up and running. With little to no funding, I decided to close up shop, which was sad, because we did have real listings coming in, just not enough revenue to cover costs.

I will say that I learned a LOT about coding, which has helped me on my day job and a lot about startups which will help me enormously, should I do it again.

What would I do differently?

- Try to get more seed money. I was working with about a $100 total. I would go with one like Shotput Ventures in my current Atlanta home, or YC if I could swing living in SV for three months. I could use the funds for stuff like the PR that got them this article. I'd get advice and connections to hopefully get that next round of funding, if I need it.

- Take a city-based approach. I tried to to the whole USA at once. It's a lot of territory to cover.

- Get a technical co-founder. I partnered with someone who had a little real-estate experience, but couldn't help out on the tech side. I personally need someone who could really handle the UI design and make something that looks pretty and is dead-simple to use.

- Pick a better name. Seriously. I'm not even going to tell you the name we picked because it was unmemorable, unpronounceable, difficult to spell, and lacked even a hint of SEO-keyword-mojo.

All those lessons, and the tech skills I picked up will help me greatly If I try this again. You know I wouldn't be here if I wasn't thinking about it. ;-)

If PG is reading, what made you/YC decide to fund yet another rental listing site? I'm kind of surprised to be honest. It's been done and has the biggest competitor out there.

[ordinaryman]

..It's been done and has the biggest competitor out there.

The following is item #25 from http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html

25. A Craigslist competitor. Craiglist is ambivalent about being a business. This is both a strength and a weakness. If you focus on the areas where it's a weakness, you may find there are better ways to solve some of the problems Craigslist solves.

[look_lookatme]

I appreciate what RentHop is doing and I really hope they succeed, but there is going to come a point where ad QA is going to become a concern and then they will really start to feel the pain of building a rental site, especially in NYC.

[coglethorpe]

Heh, I knew my site was on the map when spammers found it. :-)

I learned about scams that hit renters and landlords, but thankfully I got rid of them fast.

Also, people posting would either not capitalize anything or leave the CAPS LOCK key on. Spell checking their own ads was just too much to ask. That struck me as very odd, because I thought they would try their best to make it right to get a unit rented. I just let them post what they wanted as long as it seemed like a legit listing.

[JacobAldridge]

I thought they would try their best to make it right

I'm a real estate addict (worked in the industry 9+ years, just about to buy my third house / first investment) - nothing surprises me any more.

I've seen agent-taken and client-approved photos that include nude glamour shots on the wall, sex toys on display etc. Formatting and spelling in ads drives me to distraction - I had an agent when I sold my first place actually mis-spell the suburb it was in!

[iron_ball]

Strikes me as obvious. Everyone says Craiglist is the triumph of "worse is better," but the fact is that Craigslist is pretty bad. Maybe its competitors just haven't been offering the right kind of better.

[coglethorpe]

You make a good point there. I've had my problems with selling items on CL. The thing is, it's got so much traffic, that it is hard to get even a sliver of it to go my way. CL also may be ugly in one sense, but I get the impression that they really do listen to their users.

Then there's the whole second tier of rental sites, such as eBay's rent.com, apartments.com, rentals.com and more. They are usually pretty to look at, but I found all their UIs to be difficult to use. That's where I took a simpler approach to search that I thought users would like better. Still, they get hits and engage in fierce search engine battles.

I still think there has to be a way to connect renters with rentals that's easier than what's out there. I do like rentHop's design at first glance as well. I do wish the rentHop team success. Anything that makes life easier is great.