LendAroundwhat goes around, comes around
We're sharing over 42,000 DVDs.
LendAround is a project to encourage us all to stop hoarding stuff we own, and start lending it to each other. This page tells you what it is, why we're doing it, how it works, who created it, and the story behind it.
LendAround is a free web tool that helps people to borrow things from their friends -- starting with DVDs.
It lets you keep track of what you own, what you've borrowed, and who from.
You choose who you trust, and you choose what to list.
You're in control all the time. If a friend asks to borrow something of yours, saying yes is always optional.
To learn more, take the tour.
It's good to bring friends, neighbours, families and colleagues together.
The world is drowning in stuff. We can get more fun out of life without consuming more.
It makes sense at a time when people are worried about the economy.
Make quick lists of stuff you own, and stuff you'd like to borrow, starting with DVDs.
Name the friends and contacts you trust, and we send them email for you. Or invite friends using our Facebook app.
When your wish matches someone else's stuff, we send them your request - automatically.
We even provide downloadable, preaddressed wrappers with your friend's address on them.
LendAround was created by Tim Jackson and David Heath, with a lot of help from our friends Richard Pope, Daniel Jackson, David Pearson, Leisa Reichelt, David O'Dwyer and Mark Boulton.
Tim Jackson, who had the idea, is a former journalist with the Economist and columnist for the Financial Times, who founded a web company in 1997 that had an IPO in 1999 and was sold in 2007. He also helped to run a venture capital fund created by one of the world's largest private equity firms. Nowadays, he stays at home, writes a bit, and helps to run a small charitable foundation.
David Heath, who designed the LendAround architecture and wrote the code, is one of the few software engineers who combines a first-class degree from Cambridge, a talent for dancing and for singing in Brazilian Portuguese, and the ability to milk a goat. He also has a track record of innovative software engineering at an international range of not-for-profits including LeapLocal and OneWorld.net.
Richard Pope, who designed our UI and developed wireframes, is a former chief UI designer at Moo.com and a leading expert on user interfaces.
David Pearson, who produced some cool logo designs for us, is one of the world's leading book designers. He is particularly famous for his work at Penguin, and now runs a design studio of his own.
Leisa Reichelt, who tried out the alpha version of our site on some carefully chosen sample users, is a specialist in user testing and usability research. One of the inspirations behind the Silverback app for the Mac, she's more recently become renowned for her UI work on Drupal.
David O'Dowd is a talented syadmin who specializes in high-availability web services, Linux systems architecture and internet technologies. He helped ease our journey to Amazon's EC2 platform, and is an owner of the T4 Partnership.
The idea for the project came about when Tim returned home to London after visiting a network of community groups helping vulnerable children in Africa. Looking around his home, Tim noticed how much stuff we all seem to have that doesn’t get used very much -- at a time when there are a billion people in the world who have not very much at all, and when it would be good to use a bit less of the earth’s resources.