Surely this is just an app, not a startup?
Sydney startup Curbit lets users pick up someone’s unwanted goods from the kerb
11–20 of 42 posts
Re: Sydney startup Curbit lets users pick up someone’s unwanted goods from the kerb
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed, Freecycle have been operating in Australia for a long time. There are several other competitors too, the article doesn't make clear what Curbit's advantage/angle is. I'm all for the general idea and wish them well regardless, the amount of cheap stuff we buy and waste is astonishing.
Freecycle is pretty terrible in Australia. Gumtree (craigslist equivalent in AU) 'for free' works far better.
That is until you get some idiot ringing you 20 times asking you to deliver the free item to them. They seem surprised when you say no that you aren’t going to spend 2 hour driving to give them the item for free.
Re: Sydney startup Curbit lets users pick up someone’s unwanted goods from the kerb
#13Careful. Putting stuff on the kerb outside of official kerbside collections is considered illegal dumping in many Australian cities. It's hard to prosecute though, as the council generally needs to catch the offender in action ("not my stuff on the footpath guv"). Unless the law changes, it seems like a bad idea to dump something on the kerb, then post proof of your actions to a website. Councils will potentially vie…
Hey femto, I'm Dean McPherson (@dean_mcpherson), the dev making Curbit. Our current plan is exactly that, if the user is posting their own stuff, we ask them to place it in a legal, accessible location. This is accomplished by asking them for special pickup instructions (e.g. "On the porch", or "On top of the mailbox").
The other big use case though is reporting stuff that others have dumped. Using the app makes no statement that you put the stuff there, and we in no way are trying to encourage people to break the law :)
Re: Sydney startup Curbit lets users pick up someone’s unwanted goods from the kerb
#14In Melbourne people seem to leave stuff out on the curb all the time and people just come and grab what they want, after its been there a week or so the council comes round and picks it up (I assume).
Re: Sydney startup Curbit lets users pick up someone’s unwanted goods from the kerb
#15Careful. Putting stuff on the kerb outside of official kerbside collections is considered illegal dumping in many Australian cities. It's hard to prosecute though, as the council generally needs to catch the offender in action ("not my stuff on the footpath guv"). Unless the law changes, it seems like a bad idea to dump something on the kerb, then post proof of your actions to a website. Councils will potentially vie…
Yes it is illegal, but if my council is anything to go by the chance of anyone using curbit’s data to prosecute anyone is close to zero. This basically happens organically anyway. There are teams of pickers who come around just before council pickups and take away anything of value (and lots of stuff of no value too). All that gets left to be collected by the council is the absolute rubbish (rotting mattresses, etc).…
At the moment, we're not really interested in monetising. We're treating this as infrastructure that we wish existed that doesn't. However, if it does turn out to solve a problem for people, I'm confident that we will be able to generate enough small methods of monetisation to keep the doors open.
Re: Sydney startup Curbit lets users pick up someone’s unwanted goods from the kerb
#16http://www.freecycle.org https://www.freecycle.org/about/background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Freecycle_Network
Indeed, Freecycle have been operating in Australia for a long time. There are several other competitors too, the article doesn't make clear what Curbit's advantage/angle is. I'm all for the general idea and wish them well regardless, the amount of cheap stuff we buy and waste is astonishing.
Hey jsankey, the advantage of Curbit is simplicity. All existing solutions require a fair amount of effort of the person wanting to get rid of something. Freecycle is solving the exact same issue, but I feel that the burden that comes from having to manage pickup / messaging / condition reports all from a very rough web UI deters a huge portion of the population. We shouldn't have to work to get rid of something for free :)
Compared to classifieds in general, it can be much simpler to use, because money isn't changing hands.
Re: Sydney startup Curbit lets users pick up someone’s unwanted goods from the kerb
#17Surely this is just an app, not a startup?
Curbit is my side project, I work for travel startup townske.com.
Re: Sydney startup Curbit lets users pick up someone’s unwanted goods from the kerb
#18Careful. Putting stuff on the kerb outside of official kerbside collections is considered illegal dumping in many Australian cities. It's hard to prosecute though, as the council generally needs to catch the offender in action ("not my stuff on the footpath guv"). Unless the law changes, it seems like a bad idea to dump something on the kerb, then post proof of your actions to a website. Councils will potentially vie…
Yes it is illegal, but if my council is anything to go by the chance of anyone using curbit’s data to prosecute anyone is close to zero. This basically happens organically anyway. There are teams of pickers who come around just before council pickups and take away anything of value (and lots of stuff of no value too). All that gets left to be collected by the council is the absolute rubbish (rotting mattresses, etc).…
> There are teams of pickers who come around just before council pickups and take away anything of value
That's illegal too, someone was recently prosecuted for this. Councils own anything put out for council cleanup. They make money selling and recycling this stuff.
EDIT: My council (like many others) don't enforce this rule. They do come down hard on illegal dumping though.
Re: Sydney startup Curbit lets users pick up someone’s unwanted goods from the kerb
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes it is illegal, but if my council is anything to go by the chance of anyone using curbit’s data to prosecute anyone is close to zero. This basically happens organically anyway. There are teams of pickers who come around just before council pickups and take away anything of value (and lots of stuff of no value too). All that gets left to be collected by the council is the absolute rubbish (rotting mattresses, etc).…
At the moment, we're not really interested in monetising. We're treating this as infrastructure that we wish existed that doesn't. However, if it does turn out to solve a problem for people, I'm confident that we will be able to generate enough small methods of monetisation to keep the doors open.
Might be related to your current venture, but I'd use an app whereby neighbours notified each other of any spare bin space they had that week. I could often use extra recycling or green waste space, but hate being the guy roaming the street at night trying to stuff garbage in random bins.
Re: Sydney startup Curbit lets users pick up someone’s unwanted goods from the kerb
#20Nice to see someone organizing the re-purposing of perfectly re-usable items... Not sure what's in play in Australia, but in the U.S. there are more than a few individuals (entrepreneurs) who drive around looking for "curbed" articles... These are gathered and added to second-hand shop inventories, for resale... If that's true in Australia it's something you might want to be aware of...you might consider a way of ens…
Yes, the same happens in Australia. Typically councils have "hard refuse" opportunities for disposal of larger items.
I'm in South Australia. In my home area, I can call for one pick-up per financial year, totalling 2 cubic metres. In my office area, there's a period once per quarter where you can put items out for collection.
There are people who drive around with a cage trailer grabbing recyclable items, some for personal use, some for resale.
Besides these "official" options, a few people use Freecycle (mailing list, bit annoying) and others use Gumtree (like Craigslist).