Hire Things – things for hire!

From myself and on behalf of the Let Use It team, I would like to thank the many people that have helped us get this far, and thank in advance the many people that will help us make this a worldwide success. To name a few, but I apologise if I miss someone off the list (just give me a nudge and I’ll make amends for sure!):

• My parents Jeannette and Andrew, and my partner, Letizia, for giving me the support to give up the day job to focus on the business.
• Martin Kay for helping me work through some of the early “business model” concepts, and encouraging me to “just do it!”
• Colin Bevan for being a great mentor at eCentric, and for taking the time over a beer or a game of pool to talk hard cold realities of succeeding in the internet space.
• Tony Stewart and Intergen for giving us our first office space and just being there to bounce ideas off.
• All my friends at Intergen for being so encouraging as I took on a brave new world!
• Mauricio for being a good friend, helping out on the email front, and for leading the way in going solo in the world of the web.
• Tim Haines and Andy for helping us get things going in the Ruby on Rails re-write.
• JB for the helping hand and encouraging tips
• Alex Johnson and Engine for getting excited about what I was doing, encouraging me to go with “Let Use It”, and for pulling together the first Let Use It branding

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• Ulf Berggren for selling us letsuseit.com so we could proceed with the business and branding comfortably, and for his advice and support.  We look forward to meeting you one day Ulf.
• Nahum for seeing the same “big picture” and being the first to join me full-time on the quest (and Dierdre for her support of him).
• Mike Greenlees (out there in the UK somewhere now I believe) for spending his sunday doing some screen mockups when he should have been packing to leave the country the next day!
• Ed for for suggesting we give Creative HQ a go.
• John Clegg from Project X and Zoom In for meeting up with me to discuss being a start-up, the opportunities in web 2.0, and about Creative HQ.
• Creative HQ and Positively Wellington Business for seeing the business in our plan and inviting us in.
• Paul F for being the next brave one to join us on this quest full-time (and Sally for her part in all that).
• Paul Gold for being such a good mate, and for helping with the infrastructure and network, and everything else!
• Sally & John for world class web design and usability.
• Koz for his world of experience
• Tim Robertson with the Escalator Programme for taking a proactive interest and getting me in to spend time with David Caselli from I Grow when we needed it
• Our first round of “usability testers”
• Ben for his enthusiasm and viewpoints
• John Clegg again for being such a great colleague – it’s an honour to work along side him and Project X.
• Tim Phillips from RND Group for getting us going (and keeping us going) on linux
• Alick Wilson for his mentoring and guidance
• Murray & Shona for testing (and more testing, and, well, yep, there’s more to come!)
• Morrison Kent (thanks Andrew Stewart) for good legal guidance.
• Bruce Earle and Simple Accounting Services for professional accounting and financial advice.
• Mark Robotham and Creative HQ for hosting the Summer of Code programme which we are spearheading with ProjectX
• Joseph Stuart and FRST / Technology New Zealand for enabling us to take on our great students Nik and Eddie for the Summer of Code.
• And I thank my friends and colleagues at eCentric and AMR for the inspiration and experience I gained working on eCargo and alongside the Trade Me blossoming.  It is because of this that I have the courage to take on this challenge to build something useful and meaningful.

and I’m sure there’s more! Thanks for all your support so far… now it’s nearly time for the show to begin!

Peter