Show HN: List stuff to borrow for your people, anonymously

Show HN: List stuff to borrow for your people, anonymously(toolpool.garden)

5 points by oliviasculley 54 days ago | 5 comments

Hey yall, I built this for my makerspace. We wanted to let each other borrow things, but also didn't want to put up a big shiny sign saying "hey everyone, my garage has a super fancy oscilloscope just sitting there" and also didn't want to necessarily always need to say yes to everything.

However, when I show it to people, they've been suggesting using it for other things like board games, or wedding equipment, etc. I'm still trying to find PMF, so please let me know what you think!

For the stack, it's all Elixir + LiveView which is really nice, and then Fly.io, Fly's MPG, Tigris Data, Cloudflare, Sentry, Mailjet, and Gitlab + self-hosted runners.

Also, if you'd like a refrigerator magnet, please let me know :)

pavel_lishin 54 days ago |

> Anonymous by default, Reveal button on purpose

It feels that something like this should run on trust above all else. If I'm letting my neighbors borrow my stuff - or asking to borrow their stuff - I don't think I'd particularly want anonymity on either end. (Not the least because maybe I probably don't want to borrow a tool from Richie the Racist who lives down the block.)

oliviasculley 54 days ago | |

I think the copy definitely still needs some work. But that's how it works currently: all the groups are invite-only, and then the lender can always view the potential borrower's username, profile with reviews, and system-level rankings to build that trust. I definitely need to communicate this better in the copy I think!

Edit: I think I misread your comment originally, so I want to try again. At the moment, all the groups are invite only because that filtering needs to happen before someone joins a group, the platform isn't really meant to digest a stranger into a trusted community member, but instead enable existing communities, if that makes sense. I have the feeling that I will need to add features that platforms like Discord added to have people agree to rules, optional admin confirmation from people who use invite links, etc. But for now, invite links and QR codes are private. I hope this reply is a little better than the previous one!

WiFlag 54 days ago | |

For sure based on trust! But I like the anonymity. Socially, I'd like to decline requests without revealing to the requestor who it was that had the tool. I don't want Richie the Racist knocking on my door asking why I said no to his request ;)

SummSolutions 54 days ago |

Cool idea. I’m curious how that pricing structure is working for you - one person paying monthly for unlimited members in a group? I could see an HOA taking that on for a neighborhood though, and a place where this would be very useful.

oliviasculley 54 days ago | |

My reasoning on this is only allowing one fixed location per-pool, as I'm guessing that the value for most pools is inversely proportional to the distance they are from the other members. Maybe some people will operate some virtual pools that mail stuff to each other, but I think groups will naturally begin to feel pressure if their pool members are more spread out than reasonable. I can imagine this happening for a group in a major city with huge suburbs, where they might all be less than an hour from the central group, but going from the very northmost suburb to the southernest suburb could require going through town and take hours just to drop something off. In cases like that, I think the solution would be to create a north group, and a southern group, etc.

But this is all theoretical, I'm still looking to see how people start using the platform! At the end of the day, I'd much rather that more groups would be able to use it rather than focusing/depending/needing on less but bigger ones.

I also have a pet theory of how AI in software development speeding up commodification of software will play out, and I think involves less prevalence of large-customer/contract-centric company models in favor of others, but that's just my theory. Maybe there's just a bit more appetite for trying new platforms and things at the moment