To stay up to date checkout ⁠thestartupproject.io⁠ & follow Nataraj on twitter: @natarajsindamIn this episode Nataraj spoke to Marius Ciocirlan who co-founded ShareGrid, a marketplace for filmmakers and photographers to rent and sell their equipment. It was ⁠acquired⁠ by Backstage and is now Managing Director of Techstars Seattle. Techstars expanded to Seattle in 2010, and since then more than 130 companies have gone through the program & collectively gone on to raise more than $2.5 billion in capital. Full Transcript:

[00:00:00] So you decided youwant to be in tech. Then how did, uh, your, uh, company start, uh, share grid?

[00:00:06] Yeah, so shestarted, um, actually the idea was kind of originated while I was, was workingour group on both my co-founder and I, Raj. He was, he was, he went to film,well he went to photography school. I, uh, uh, I believe it was more of like amedia communication, uh, background.

[00:00:24] But he ended up intech as well. He was a designer and front end developer and um, he was alongtime photographer and we would take walks all the time and. , he, he soldhis previous company to Groupon, so he's been very entrepreneurial himself andwe were always kicking around ideas of potential startups that we could start.

[00:00:47] And one of the ideaswas, uh, it derived from him trying to sell some of his equipment. He was like,I really want this new lens, but I already have so many lenses. How do Ijustify kind. [00:01:00] Investing more moneyinto more equipment when I'm not even using the equipment I already have. Sothat was kind of the thread that we started to talk about the idea, andessentially the idea was a lot of filmmakers, photographers invest.

[00:01:15] Quite a bit ofcapital into, uh, equipment, into, into different, uh, cameras, lenses, audioequipment, lighting equipment, and it's very, very expensive. I mean, we'retalking thousands of dollars for a camera or lens. Sometimes for filmequipment, you're looking at 40, $50,000 for cinema camera, and that doesn'tcount all the additional accessories and, and everything else you need.

[00:01:41] I knew about thisfrom my prior film years, and I had a lot of friends who after school, their,their thinking was, if I invest a bit of money into equipment, the chances ofme being hired, uh, will increase. Because the film world is actually a verymuch [00:02:00] a gig economy, freelance typeof world. So they were thinking, if we invest in, in this equipment, uh, I willstand amongst the rest and like be hired more frequently.

[00:02:10] That doesn't alwayshappen. So you invest all this money, but your monthly payments are coming inevery day, every, every month. , but you're not always getting hired. Thatequipment's not always being used. So Arra and I saw that opportunity of like,there's all this idle equipment. What if you were to rent that equipment out,similar to other pure tope economies, like, uh, like u you know, like Airbnb,um, So we had the idea and we essentially wanted to validate if this issomething that other people would be interested in First.

[00:02:43] I spoke to a lot ofmy friends from Phil School and everybody said, It's a great idea, but whatabout if somebody steals my equipment while they're renting it? They don't comeback with the equipment. So that was always kind of the big challenge that wehad to face. But, but that's how the [00:03:00]idea, just to answer your question, that's how the idea kind of derived is justfrom a personal need and also just a brainstorm of ideas.

[00:03:07] So it wasessentially a marketplace for renting, uh, camera and other high-end equipmentfor production.

[00:03:14] Exactly. Exactly.

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