Watching from behind bars

The elusive friend-to-friend sharing market

Project Borrow has always been about the friend-to-friend market (for reasons I have talked about here)—how to make it easier for people to share with their friends without feeling any social awkwardness or sense of guilt.

But of course, it’s nearly impossible to start with friend-to-friend as your early adopters, because that would severely limit use cases and the potential for me to test other concepts of Project Borrow with a wider audience.

After a few months of testing the peer-to-peer concept, I’m more convinced that there is a sizable audience for friend-to-friend sharing. (Note, this is not to say that that audience forms a viable business segment.) Two reasons:

1. In the survey that borrowers take after the fact, nearly 100% of people have said that they would rather borrow from a friend first, and a stranger last. Reasons vary from greater trust to greater convenience. This astounded me because when I did my initial customer interviews, I found that there was roughly a 50-50 split. Many people cited the same reasons to preference friends, but others just as strongly believed in borrowing from strangers to avoid any awkwardness especially if there are damages. Now to be fair, I of all people am aware of the limitations on consumer responses, and I certainly don’t have enough data points to draw any statistically significant conclusions, but I’ll combine this with point two.
2. About 40% of borrowers cancel their initial request. This is sadly a higher rate than expected, but the cancellation rate on “free” goods/ services is expected to be high (I don’t have a link to a study, but I feel like I know one has been done). But anyways, the point is when someone cancels or doesn’t respond to me, I follow up with a survey asking them why. Of those who respond, a clear majority tell me they borrowed the items from someone else. Family members, friends, co-workers.

People are indeed borrowing from those they know, but the fact that they came to me first indicates that there are challenges in that space. Challenges that I would love to solve… if only I could get there.

I feel like I’m watching from behind bars. I see friend-to-friend interactions and connections to share stuff, but I can’t get in the middle of those interactions, not even to help. As it turns out, people are immensely protective of their friends (a good thing to be sure, though in this case, one of those good things that alas may not be the best thing). You see, I’d hoped that by incentivizing borrowers with free delivery in exchange for getting one other friend to use Project Borrow, I’d slowly grow a network of friends who know each other and can share amongst each other.

Well, this is false. When given the option, all but 3 of my ~150 users opted to pick up the items themselves. (Mind you, this is to the extent that people put down their friends as a referral, which is the only way for me to track this.) Certainly, I haven’t been promoting on friend-to-friend channels like Facebook, but that number really shocked me. When I used to offer three options: paid delivery, free delivery if friends are brought on, versus DIY, 1 person got a friend on board. When I offered two options: free deliver if friends are brought on, versus DIY (thereby removing the value comparison*, and asking people to decide for themselves the value of delivery versus getting their friends on board versus their time), I got two people to sign their friends up. (This happened back to back so for a brief moment, I thought I was onto something!)

In one instance, a borrower was borrowing for a group camping event and needed 10 different items scattered around San Francisco. The cost of delivery/ return (car rental + gas) not including time would easily be $60-70. I offered to do it all for free if I were just allowed to get everyone’s email addresses to take my short survey. No dice.

In another instance, a borrower mentioned that I really should offer delivery. I pounced and said I would if he could get just one friend to borrow something. He passed and did it himself anyways.

Now, it is true that I’m asking for a lot. I’m asking you to not just sign up a friend, but actually get them to borrow something. Signups actually mean very little to me since I’m focused on testing the service and flow, not just getting a huge list of potential users, of which few will actually return or care. (Think about how many times you “sign up” for something because a friend asked nicely, and then never cared again.) This means you as an individual have to convince someone to borrow something. Therefore, it could be that people don’t care about their friends, they’re just lazy.

But I think the answer is somewhat of a mix of laziness and protectiveness. Because heck, even if the friend were to make a fake request, that would have passed my validation. Going forward I’m going to lower the threshold a bit. You can now get free delivery by getting a friend to borrow OR lend something. I’ve gotten feedback that it’s much easier to convince your friends to lend something out rather than think of something they need.

We’ll see. But I do see the light. There are people who are sharing with people they know and want a way to do it better. Now if only I could open the cage doors and tell them that I might have just the solution they’re looking for.

*Value comparisons (i.e., money) presents its own problems even as it solves others (e.g., a familiar transaction medium). There was a study about a school that imposed a late pick-up fee on parents who didn’t show up on time. The fee was small enough that it made parents feel better about being late and actually increased tardiness. Also reminds me of the studies that show people consume more plastic when they can recycle because they feel like they’re offsetting the purchases (with an obvious net negative impact, since plastic recycling is not a closed loop and the plastic inevitably ends up in a landfill)

This blarticle was written in the context of building a product that helps people borrow occasional-use items (e.g., camping tents, electric drills) from their friends & neighbors. Check out the prototype at www.ProjectBorrow.com