u/verifyandproceed

I was doing a fair bit of commercial work back in '22 to '24 and one thing that always annoyed me was trying to find a bloody scissor lift at short notice. Half the time I'd end up towing my own halfway across Victoria because I knew where it was, rather than trying to find one locally.

The idea's pretty simple. Instead of ringing around every hire place, you can see who's actually got machines listed nearby. Smaller hire mobs can list their gear too.

This isn't some VC startup or anything. It's literally me having a crack at building something that might get me off the tools one day.

But I'm also conscious I might've just spent a stupid amount of time trying to solve a problem that only I had.

So... be honest. Is this something you'd actually use, or am I completely off the mark?

Happy to cop the criticism.

Feeling cute, might delete later.

I'm not really doing anything new here, maketplaces like this have existed before. If anything, I'm limiting the size of the potential market, by cutting out a small niche of the construction equipment industry I suppose.

I'm telling myself i don't need validation from random strangers on the internet... but here we are.

I've offered some harsh feedback on others projects recently, so I guess I deserve this...

https://scissorhire.com

My 'idea' has been around in some shape or form since I registered the domain in 2022 to rent out my businesses scissor lift when it wasn't being used.

It is also not unique, there are other players in this space. As far as i'm aware, i'm the only "marketplace" offering a no-cost solution to list access equipment rentals.

I already took a swing at this once, but it didn't get beyond about 10 vendors in 2.5 years. I also did very little marketing/awareness. But, the site worked, my single machine in Bendigo, Victoria got regular business from it. In fact, i still get calls, and I don't live there anymore.

Anyway, i've decided to have another go, and fundamentally change how I get started. Onboarding vendors with the intention of taking a clip from the booking and paying them out 1-3 days after their equipment was picked up was never going to work.

So re-launch is 100% free.

Some things to be mindful of:

I'm probably still just "validating a market", i've received positive feedback from the few people that have already signed up.

I'm not 100% confident i'm giving an industry something that an industry actually wants.

The site is a fairly basic lead gen site, there is nothing fancy going on here (no AI!?!?!?).

There is some artificial limits i've placed, on the site (like single images on equipment listings) that are very much intentional. If the product is free, I need to make limitations like this. The features I have are basic, and they are intentionally so. I have my own feature roadmap, but i'd sooner see where (if) a market steers the project, rather than end up building anything people don't want (i'm already starting to fall into that trap)

I'm learning a bit about marketplaces, the chicken or the egg problems.

Interested in feedback - only good stuff though, fragile ego (critisim only if it's necessary)

my attempt to get off the tools "one day"

Simple access equipment marketplace