Thank-you to Sean from Rockbox Party Hire who wrote us a great referral / thank-you letter. Rockbox Party Hire were one of the first hire/service suppliers to list things on the site, and so far we have generated him an almost constant flow of new business.
It’s great to get this sort of feedback, and we promise you, this is just the beginning of Hire Things being a buzz of people and businesses working together to make things happen and people happy.
As part of our participation in the NZ Summer of Code, we have been fortunate enough to have Shoaib Ali join us over his summer break from his studies.
Shoaib is a talented and enthusiastic developer who worked last summer (as part of the first Summer of Code) with Browser CRM.
We welcome him onboard as he works with us to scale Hire Things out into new markets.
Here he is with last year’s Summer of Codies…
Well, yesterday was a blast. At 10am, Darryl & I presented HireThings.com in a 7-minute pitch going up the Wellington Cable Car to some of Wellingtons most respected innovation, business experts.
We were one of nine finalists from an original list of 360 applicants to make it through the selection rounds through to the final. The Cable Car Challenge is a twist on the “Elevator Pitch” where you should be able communicate the essence of your business value to someone in the brief time you may have with someone in an elevator.
On the Cable Car listening to us pitch was Sam Morgan from Trade Me, Mark Dossor from Endeavour Capital, Dion Mortenson from Movac, and Gowan Pickering (ex CEO of IBM, FRST, and now working with the Commerce Comission). Also onboard was Cable Car Challenge front-man Rob Acton.
I am proud to say I think we did a good job, and put our best foot forward. The judges had already read through a 6 page business plan summary and were mainly interested in the viability / investability of the business and the potential / likely impact the business will have on the Wellington Region. They judges then used the 7 minutes coming back down on the Cable Car to pose a number of questions to us about the challenges and assumptions behind our business.
The winner was announced at a ceremony last night in the Council Chamber of Wellington Town Hall, hosted by re-appointed mayer Kerry Prendergast. All the 9 finalists did a 2-minute pitch to the audience so they got to know a bit abut the contestants, and then the runner-up place getters were announced.
HireThings.com was one of 6 runner up place getters, which we are pretty proud of. We go a framed award, a hand-signed copy of GUy Kawasaki’s excellent book, The Art of the Start, plus $2,000 seed funding.
The winner, Eye Magnet, won the grand prize of $30,000 seed funding, and $20,000 of professional services in kind. You can see the article here on Stuff.co.nz at http://www.stuff.co.nz/4240035a13.html
It was a great experience, and good timing for us as we are seeking investment now and there were a number of potential investors and leads in the audience, many of which I talked to before and after the prize giving.
So getting to the top 7 out of 360 I think is a good sign that others see the potential of Hire Things just as we do.
A while back, John Luke, from Wellington Boat Charters put his catamaran, the “Lady Julie”, in the boating section of Hire Things. He put up a couple of listings that he thought described what he could offer, and what he thought people will be looking for.
A short while ago John received a booking enquiry for a work function for his 3 Hour Harbour Cruise & Gourmet BBQ for 45 people!! This has now been confirmed and deposit paid, and to express his happiness, John wrote these kind words about his experience so far with Hire Things.
I first met Peter when he joined our BNI business breakfast group several months back. He told us all about Hire Things and after finding out about my business suggested that his website would be a good way to get some new business. Peter has visited me on the boat and helped me get my business on the website, and I was very impressed with his reliability – what he says he will do he does.
I highly recommend doing business with Peter and using his website as he is an honest man and the website is great.
I have already got a charter booking worth $3,000 through the website!!! That’s one of the biggest ever for us.
John Luke
Skipper, Lady Julie
Wellington Boat Charters
The actual letter can be seen here 
.
That’s what Hire Things is all about…. helping people find and book the things they need from time to time, and helping small businesses and traders get access to the power of the internet – to generate more business!!
Last year, John Clegg (ProjectX, ZoomIn) & I pulled together the first New Zealand “Summer of Code”. With the help of grant funding from FRST, we put about 14 smart IT students from Victoria University into summer internship positions with 7 smart Wellington startup companies (Spikefin, Silverstripe, PlanHQ.com, ProjectX/ZoomIn, BrowserCRM, Chaos Dimention, and Hire Things).
Well, we’re back again for more this year with Summer of Code 2.0! And this time it’s grown up a tad! Yesterday, along with the help of database guru Paul Gold, and Thong Kuah from ProjectX, we brought together about 20 companies and 50 students for about 200 quick-fire 10-15 minute interviews in one day! Most of last year’s companies were there, plus a whole lot more of cool up and coming Wellington IT companies, and some of the more well known successes such as Trade Me, Weta Digital, and Xero.com (the great online accounting service that we use).
Here’s just a few of the budding IT whizzes waiting at Creative HQ for their next interview.
We will now help those companies that wish to apply for some grant funding to get that sorted, and will help out throughout the programme with seminars and workshops for the students.
Why do we do it? We’ll, as a start-up business, it’s a win-win situtation where we can get smart students working for us with the help of FRST grant funding, and it’s a good feeling to help the next generation of IT whizzes get some real world experience.
Here’s Peter having a look through the CV and interview notes from our 14 interviews we did yesterday!
We are hoping, like last year, to take on 2 smart students to help us drive HireThings.com forward into new territories.
It also helps us keep in touch with the other great companies here in Silicon Welly, and help other start-ups like us to get ahead.
You can read more about it and see some photos of the full-on day of interviews here.
We have just received notification that we are one of nine companies selected to pitch on the Cable Car to an entrepreneurial judging panel on October 16.
The Cable Car Challenge is a business plan competition to search for up and coming businesses in Wellington that have the potential to bring substantial economic and other benefits to the Wellington region. We most certainly will do that, by helping organisations and individuals throughout the country increase business hiring out their goods, places, and services, and by saving people from having the buy, store, insure, and maintain everything the need all the time. Plus, it is and always has been our goal to take Hire Things international, into a number of offshore markets, to help boost hire activities there and generate revenues for New Zealand.
We are pretty proud of what Hire Things stands for and the benefits it can bring communities. We’ll be putting our best foot forward on October 16 to win this competition, not just for the prize money and professional services (a significant boost indeed), but for the publicity and backing it will generate to help us make Hire Things all it can be for New Zealand and take it out to the World.
Thank you for your support.
Peter & the Hire Things team.
It was a successful couple of days at the HIANZ Conference & Trade Show in Takapuna, Auckland last week! As a member of the Hire Industry Association of New Zealand, we participated in and sponsored part of the conference.
We networked, got to know a lot of key players in the hire industry, and did a fair bit of promoting of the benefits of listing on Hire Things, too. One of the highlights of the event was having HIANZ president, Wayne Hood, of Rangiora Hire register and start listing some of his company’s offerings on Hire Things, followed shortly afterwards by several other HIANZ member businesses.
It was nice to see that the small private hire businesses see the value the Hire Things marketplace can bring them, in terms of their own online hire storefront, online bookings, and most of all, the power of the marketplace to get good search engine results over time. All these companies went for our new “Pre-pay” plans, which apart from having no success fees, allow the companies to have their phone, address, email, and website details on each of their listings and their hire storefront.
Overall, the show proved a great success: we met and exceeded our objectives for the conference and look forward to participating in the trade show again in two year’s time.
Our winner last week was Jennifer Looman from Wild about Wellington Tours, these are small group tours that cater for all from children, the chocolate lover to the conniseur beer drinker, the winning listing was the Boutique Beer Tour.
We have had many new listings over the last week and we welcome you all. We would like to point out that as listings are free it would pay, where you have multiple items that vary to actually list all the items, that way your customers can make a more informed choice. The team at HireThings.co.nz are happy to help with your listings so please if you do want help contact us, and we will help talk you through the process or get it started.
Many of you will be gearing up for the HIANZ conference in September, we will be there, so please come and say “hi”. We would like to meet those of you we haven’t had a chance to meet or even speak to yet.
This weeks winner is Margarita Owen, who found out about Hire Things.co.nz through a BNI meeting and realised it could be used for her Homestay Accomodation and also their Tour Business, the actual winning listing.
This is an example how sharing those new things you find, like the Hire Things website, with others can be useful to them and their business.
Welcome aboard to all our other new BNI members.
Also don’t forget that you can choose service areas that are different to your location and if you wish, you can service the whole of New Zealand. The fees for extra areas and categories have been reduced. We give you the initial $40 sign up credit, so you can put your goods into the categories and service areas that you actually cover.
Keep the listings coming and if you want to know anything or are unsure if your business can fit the Hire Things model, please contact us and we will see whether we can work together.
Have a safe weekend and we will update you next week with the 2nd last winner, thats right only two more prize draws left, so keep those listings coming.
Last weeks winner was Rosemary Archibald from the far north of our beautiful country with her accomodation in Cable Bay.
Rosemary has also listed Car hire and 4×4 Hire all also in the far north.
Last week saw the release of a new feature on the site Q and A on the listing so a potential customer can actually ask a question before entering the booking scree. This should result in quality bookings and gives the potential for upsell or add-on sales.
Listings are growing we now have cell phones for those heading off to Japan, this company is actually American and is offering a service to those New Zealander’s going to Japan. We also have some whiteware on the site, this is an area along with DIY goods that we would like to see grow, so if you have something or can recommend us to some one, then email to referred@hirethings.com and we will credit your account with $10 to use to pay sucess fees or for optional extras on your listing.
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Hire Things - things for hire! 
