Yoodlize Founder/CEO interviewed on Silicon Slopes Show

Yoodlize Founder/CEO Jason Fairbourne was interviewed live on the Silicon Slopes Show recently and had a lot to say about consumption, community and the current consumer mindset. 

“Why does every home own a lawnmower?,” Fairbourne asked. “We only use it half an hour a week, maybe. It’s a lot of steel and production, maybe farmed in China and shipped and produced in Korea – the carbon footprint and the storage needed in your home is just not very economical. So we’re trying to create a more efficient way of owning items.”

This more efficient way is through the sharing economy, namely through platforms like Yoodlize.

“Yoodlize is a peer-to-peer rental platform, meaning that we’re a platform that allows you to list items that you have in your home, that you already own, and rent them to your neighbor, so that we all don’t have to own everything,” Fairbourne explained from the suite that, ironically, he remodeled 15 years ago as his own first office space and which now serves as the Silicon Slopes studio. “If you think about remodeling this space, we had to buy certain tools or borrow them from people, where on Yoodlize, we could have rented everything, used it for the time period, and then given it back to our neighbor. Our neighbor makes a little extra cash off of things they own already that may be sitting idle or less used in their home, and we benefit by having low-cost access to those tools.”

The idea of renting what you need makes a lot of sense, but most consumers have a buy-first mentality that has resulted in a gross consumption problem worldwide. 

“What we’re trying to do is really difficult,” Fairbourne admitted. “We’re trying to change the way people consume. At the end of the day, I hope that Amazon’s our largest competitor—that if you need a power drill, you come onto our platform, you order it, somebody delivers it to you, you use it for three hours, and it goes away. That’s a different way of consuming. 

“If we do our job right, we’re going to change the way people consume and human behavior about the way we use our items.” 

It’s the right thing to do for the environment, and it’s also good for communities. 

“A big part of what we talk about is building community,” Fairbourne said. “Like you show up at your neighbor’s door, you’ll have a good conversation with them, they’ll say, ‘Oh, you’re renting a mountain bike,’ they probably know the good trails to go on. We see a lot of great relationships being built.”

He went on to explain that when he and his co-founder wife Natalie started Yoodlize, “we thought that one of our biggest hurdles would be insurance and people damaging or stealing things, and we found that this sense of community has alleviated almost all of it. We’ve had thousands and thousands of transactions and rentals; we’ve had three claims filed. And it’s because you show up at someone’s door, you meet and you talk to them, you meet their dogs, their kids, and you build this one-on-one community relationship, and you tend to treat that stuff that you’re renting from them with greater care than you would your own stuff.”

Jason also talked about his entrepreneurial journey, from selling tootsie rolls door to door as a six-year-old to building businesses in emerging markets to alleviate poverty (30 businesses in 15 countries to be precise). He discussed the challenges of building a two-sided marketplace, why he always starts with the supply side, and the strategy Yoodlize uses that has given it a leg up over the competition. 

Watch the full 40-minute segment of Jason Fairbourne on the Silicon Slopes Show here.