Peerby Founder Daan Weddepohl LIVE on Global Startup Report (8 July 2022)
In this Global Startup Report livestream, host Martin Martinez (with co‑host Dustin) introduces Daan Weddepohl, founder and CEO of Peerby, a European sharing‑economy platform that lets neighbors borrow and lend under‑utilized household items. The conversation begins with brief news items before Daan shares his personal backstory – a house fire and job loss that forced him to rely on others, reshaping his view of independence and inspiring the idea that communities could share resources instead of each household owning everything. He explains Peerby’s core product: a hyper‑local marketplace where items such as tools, party gear, and camping equipment can be rented for short periods, unlocking idle capacity and reducing waste. Daan discusses the difficulty of making a low‑value, low‑frequency marketplace profitable, describing the “liquidity puzzle” of needing thousands of items per neighbourhood to achieve sufficient transaction volume. He recounts early premature scaling, the decision to pull back to a single language and payment method, and how focused iteration led to breakeven and a scalable model. The pandemic’s shift to remote work boosted usage, especially for DIY tools, and the company now sees steady growth in the Netherlands. Daan outlines current operations in Amsterdam and Belgium, and his exploratory trips across U.S. cities (Austin, Boulder, Seattle) to understand cultural differences such as bicycle‑centric versus car‑centric logistics, which affect item size and borrowing distance. He differentiates Peerby from platforms like Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and Nextdoor by offering safety checks, damage warranties, and a curated inventory of items people keep rather than sell. He sees Nextdoor as a potential partner that provides the neighbourhood operating system while Peerby supplies the niche sharing layer. The interview wraps with Daan’s advice to founders – perseverance, passion, and the Founder Institute mantra that a company only fails when the founder quits – and provides contact details for listeners interested in the U.S. rollout. The episode ends with announcements of upcoming Founder Institute events.
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¡Hola!
Happy Friday, everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Global Startup Report powered by Founder Institute. My name is Martin Martinez. I'll be your host for this Friday. Happy Friday. Wherever you're at in FI land. As you all know, our amazing audience, we broadcast this across all of our socials— LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. So wherever you're at in the world, please drop in the chat or reply back. We get all of these messages from everybody, so we'll surface the best ones, questions, all that fun stuff. Um, but I hope wherever it is you find us in the world, be it this morning, this afternoon, this evening, middle of the night. Uh, we hope you're safe and well, and we got another great show for you today to ground out the second week. Friday, July 8th, middle of the summer. Oh, it's real hot down here in Austin, Texas, I'll tell you that at least. Uh, but before we get into, uh, our special guest, uh, Don Wettupole, founder and CEO of Peerbee, uh, let's bring up Dustin. Let's get to the news. Well, I got a short one. So we're gonna spend a lot of time talking to Dan right after this. Dustin, how you doing, man? I know it's a little bit cooler where you're at than I am.
It's not as oppressive as Texas heat, but yes, here in Pennsylvania, it's a nice day, I guess, overcast. But yeah, we wanna have lots of time for you to talk to our special guest, founder of PRV. So let's get right to today's network news. And yeah, we're just gonna share two stories this week, and I'll drop them in the comments if you're watching live on LinkedIn. And so the first story, it's a profile piece from innovationorigins.com, and it's profiling the founder of Visualyst. This is an FI Oslo portfolio company in Norway, and they use AI to crawl through videos to identify things, bad things like hate speech, violence, and other sort of compliance issues. And so yeah, this is just a really cool AI startup that is, you know, screening video content where a lot of this work that is still done manually. You know, there are content moderators who kind of check this, and it's a very sort of painstaking process for all digital media companies, you know, or, you know, old media and new media companies. And so, yeah, that's what Visual List, their technology helps to automate that, at least to some extent. And yeah, really cool profile. Highlighting the founder. His name is Miguel Silva. Spoke to him probably about a year or so ago, and it's a cool story to check out on Innovation Origins.
Man, I am getting flashbacks. I don't know if I ever told you, Dustin, I was a very early employee at Facebook a long time ago, back when it was still called Facebook. I still refuse to call it Meta. But here in Austin, they opened up their very first satellite office when they were still based in Palo Alto. At the time. Yeah, this was a long time ago now, but there was a whole team there. We used to do this. I mean, I didn't have to, like, I know a lot of people that did have to do the content moderation. We called it user ops. I think they probably still call it that, but they've outsourced this particular work to a lot of different people. I'm sure the processes has changed, but it's still a lot of manual stuff. And we had to sign waivers.
I think my NDA is done, so I hope I don't hear anything from them. Oh yeah, you had to have blinders basically on the screen to do this.
And, um, you know, when they had enough, because death metal would start playing at like 3 o'clock in the afternoon and they had kegerators everywhere. Uh, it's, it's not a fun job to do, uh, at all. It's, again, it's, it can be traumatizing, um, in many cases. There's a lot of bad stuff out on the internet, especially on social media feeds. So a visualist helps check, helps to weed some of that out. Yes. Yeah, remove some of this trauma out of the psyche of my friends' minds, or at least their future, uh, the people that are taking that role moving forward. It's not— yeah, there's a lot of bad stuff in the world, so let's not make that happen anymore. Good stuff, Visual List. Oh, but enough of that. Uh, next company, PetHub, coming out of Seattle, uh, uh, where I think— what's where I guess is right now. I gotta ask him again when he comes.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, all right. Um, so PetHub, um, and, uh, and pet brands They're partnering for the 9th annual Lost Pet Prevention Month. Really interesting stuff out of that. You know, pet brands. Well, what gives a little more context with PetHub and how they're and what they're doing right now with it's a smart ID tag.
Yeah. So it's like a smart pet registration. The pet sort of goes in. They partner. PetHub partners with a lot of like local municipalities. So when pets get lost, they're like in these kind of databases and they can really easily find their way home faster. And yeah, PetHub, we interviewed 2 weeks ago the founder of Betsy. So there's are two separate FI portfolio pet tech companies, uh, and, uh, and both of them, yeah, have gone on to, to raise funding. They were both in that same, uh, Mars Venture Studios, uh, accelerator program within the past year. And so, yeah, uh, so anyway, PetHub is the smart pet ID, and yeah, they're, they're partnering to, uh, put on this, um, uh, annual, 9th annual Lost Pet Prevention Month.
I love that, that's so nice. And, uh, This is also a weird week for pets. You know, everybody reads about that because, you know, if you're dialing in from, from outside the US, we just had our big, you know, Independence Day holiday. It's, you know, fireworks. It's very disruptive for pets. A lot of, a lot of things happen during, during Fourth of July. Um, so there are instances where you lose your pet because they ran away from the fireworks. This is a very, very apt application.
They gotta get— they gotta have PetHub, and then they have the smart ID tag, and your furry friend will find their way home.
So yeah, yeah, I don't know if I don't know if Alex at Vetsy knows about them, but we should make a connection. See, there might be some collaboration right there.
Yeah.
Yeah. All right. Well, without further ado, I'm going to go away so that you can introduce our special guest here and bring him on. But I'll talk to you later at the end, Martin.
I'll catch you a little bit later, my friend. Thank you, Dustin. All right. So as Dustin so eloquently mentioned, we have a very special guest. He's kind of traveling around. The country right now. I'm glad we got him to, to, to sit with us today because I know he's been busy. He's been busy the last couple weeks with a lot of stuff he's trying to do, um, with his company Peerbee. Um, so Peerbee is, uh, rekindling, shaping the sharing economy in a new way, um, coming from the EU. And, and again, he's spending some time here in the U.S., so he's on— he's, he's on Western time zones right now. So let's bring him up and have a great conversation, learn more about Peerbee. Dan Wedepohl, founder and CEO Pierre, how you doing, man?
Hey, I'm good. How are you? Great.
Oh, we're living, man. We're living. And I, again, I'm remiss that you— that I just learned that you were in Austin, but you're coming back. You're coming back. Yeah. So yeah, we'll make up for that this morning.
Yeah.
Yeah. So wait, so tell us again, where you coming from right now?
Right now I'm in Seattle, and I'm on my way to one of the partners of Loyal VC, one of the investors in our company, and we're basically going to brainstorm, uh, the, this, the, the whole next, all of next week about where to take this next. Yeah.
Oh yeah, Kamal and Michael over there at Loyal, they're, they're great, uh, they're great friends, allies of FI, strong supporters of founders that have come through the programs over the past several years. They've, they've worked a lot with us, some of our programs in Texas, some of the founders out there, so it's great. To see them continue to do what they do great and support a DeFi company. Um, but let's, let's go all the way back to the beginning, you know, before all of this was— before PeerBee was, you know, a twinkle in your eye.
I know that—
tell us a little bit about where you're coming from and then eventually kind of what led you to launch.
Sure. So the, the story begins, uh, quite a long time ago already. I was a CTO for a software company And I think I could say I led a very independent life and I thought that was, you know, a very important thing for me to do, to have everything for myself, be able to take care of everything I needed. And I was kind of forced to change that mindset from one day to another when there was a big fire in my house and basically I lost, yeah, I lost the place where I lived, I lost my stuff. At the same time that the CTO, like the company got sold that I worked for, and my job was gone. Because of the tensions of the fire, my relationship ended. So from one day to another, I was from, basically I lost everything that I, in a way that I was attached to. And so I had no other option than to learn to ask for help because I didn't have anything. I needed to borrow people's stuff, was sleeping on people's couches. And that basically what that taught me is that that independent lifestyle that I've had tried to live was in a way was isolating me. And this new sort of forced lifestyle of asking for help really connected me to the people around me. And it opened my eyes to kind of some of the weirdness in our lives, like how we kind of isolate ourselves in little boxes next to each other, and then go out and buy everything for ourselves when a lot of the stuff that we need, or that we own is like a, identical to all those other boxes, all those other houses in our neighborhood. So I started wondering, like, do we really need to be this independent, or could we be more interdependent and then basically do more with less? Because I don't think, you know, a street with 100 houses really needs 100 lawn mowers. So that's how I got started.
Interesting. So walk us through kind of I guess the beginning of it, at least with Peerbee. And of course, give us that little one-minute pitch for the audience that may not be too familiar with what the company's doing. And, and like, what was that first step? You know, again, of course you went through Founder Institute. We all kind of know how that 14-week program can really get you to focus. But did you have any other visions for what it could do versus what it's doing right now?
Sure. So the idea had been sort of developing for quite a while. So it's always hard to pinpoint when it started exactly, but what it is today is a website where people can borrow and lend household items from others nearby. And household items, it can range from like tools to party equipment, to camping gear, to sports gear. Basically everything that we own that has idle capacity. And that's a lot of stuff, because, you know, the average power drill is used no more than 30 minutes during its lifetime, but it has a capacity of 8 hours. So basically we're wasting 7.5 hours of the capacity of every power drill. And yeah, so that's what we're trying to improve, actually, and make it easier for people to share and access that idle capacity. So that we don't have to waste all these resources, produce all these— this carbon emission in for the production of these products, and, um, and, and get to know our neighbors in the, in the process.
Interesting. So yeah, yeah, but we got to stop you there, but I was, I was literally building some furniture this weekend and I was using my drill and I'm like starting to do the numbers. I'm like, yeah, I probably only push that button for like 3 seconds at a time. Okay, that adds up, but it doesn't add up a lot. Wow, 30 minutes, that's wild.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the, the average consumer power drill. It's, uh, it's kind of crazy, isn't it? And it makes sense in a way because that's, that's how we— how current business models work, right? We— the power drill manufacturer needs to sell you basically a bundle of holes, like thousands of holes for them to make this a profitable business model if they're going to sell it to you. So we would, we would like to see a shift from ownership to access and create business models also for manufacturers around access so that we can actually— they still have a strong business model, but with products that are built for communities and that are the products that last and that will last for a long time and they make their— basically, I think all products with idle capacity should become like, like SaaS software, products as a service, the PaaS.
Yeah, because, you know, we live in a place of too much abundance, uh, right now, and we need to kind of rein some of that abundance in and spread it out so that we're actually utilizing what's available to us versus just making more, making more. This vision resonates more than any other time in the world at this point. So, um, JP, wise words right there. True, my friend. We got Cindy's back in the house. Oh, Cindy was with us last couple weeks. Cindy, how you doing? Yeah, shout out to the friends over at Loyal. Um, and yeah, tell them we say hi. Tell them we say hi. Uh, so, um, so since getting through the program and now you've been building, tell us how's the team doing? You can— congrats, just recently you just closed that, that big raise. Just in May. You know, has anything changed already up to this point? You know, like, where you, where you're looking to kind of grow now that you've got a solid, solid round under your belt?
Yeah, um, so we, we've gone through quite a, a roller coaster ride already with the company because the, this type of business model, so sharing the long tail of consumer goods, is an idea that's been around for a long time. Um, I think I've even heard that it pops up in almost every founder institute program on the globe at least once. And it's a deceivingly simple idea. Like, it's very easy to explain. Everybody kind of gets it. Everybody, you know, knows, yeah, understands what it is and why it would be good to do it. But it's actually super hard to execute on it. Because it's this combination of basically combining horror business models. It's like taking a marketplace that has low order value products that are used at a low frequency and then trying to do that on a hyper-local level where you need, you know, 1,000 items, product categories per neighborhood to actually create liquidity. To actually make the marketplace work and then find, find the demand to, to go with it. So it's, it's, it's been quite a journey to try and solve that puzzle. And most of the companies I've seen out there have tried this, or basically all of them have, have failed at some point. And, uh, what I'm super excited about is that we figured out— I can now say we figured out the puzzle. We, we know, uh, how to make it this profitable business. We're currently at breakeven level, and we know how to scale this because that's one of the other challenges is like a lot of these companies might figure out how to sort of scale organically, but we can really speed up our growth and really launch in new places and bring sharing to the world. So that's, that's what we're super excited about. And at the moment, I'm exploring where we should be going next. And I think the US is a serious candidate. I think, you know, being a good neighbor is part of the American culture as far as I've been able to, you know, find out here. But America is also one of the places with, you could say, the most abundance. But that also means, you know, a lot of consumption, like a lot of resources are consumed here. So I think there's also a lot of room for improvement in terms of the efficiency. Like, what could you— I don't want to take away any abundance, but I want to enable people to do more, like even more, but with less.
Yeah, be more efficient on that respect, right? So obviously the US market is a big target for you. Where are you currently operational in?
At the moment, we are only in Amsterdam and Belgium. And we had, at some point we did scale to multiple cities across the world, but I think we suffered from something that a lot of startups do, and that is premature scaling. So we basically, this was when unit economics were less of a thing, and a lot of startup investors were still saying, well, just grow and then we'll figure out the business model. So that's kind of how we got started after our first raise years ago. We just started growing, started launching in cities all across the world, and the sharing was working, but actually finding a business model that would cover all the, you know, the cost of the business and enable the business to scale, we didn't have one at the moment, so at that moment. So at some point, we kind of scaled back to just one language and one payment method so that we could iterate a lot quicker on figuring out that business model. So if I can give any advice to, you know, anybody building a startup, you know, keep it simple while you're still doing a lot of iterations because I know it's tempting to try and find growth in adding more countries and more channels and more apps, you know, and more like an app or a website or etc. But it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's been so helpful for us to really keep it as, as small as possible in a way so that we could iterate really quickly on, on all these different things that we needed to figure out.
Yeah, I mean, that you put a— you pose a good point, you know. And Founder Institute is, is, you know, we've— we always try to encourage focus, like, at the beginning of the journey, right? Not trying to do too much too quickly because of you know, those blitzscaling methodologies that you mentioned. All respect to Reid Hoffman and his perspectives on that. However, it's just not— it doesn't work for everybody, you know. It doesn't work for most companies. And again, you can just end up just setting money on fire, which most, most of those companies do. And they don't end up having the best stories at the end. I don't— most of those founders don't even run those companies when it's all said and done. So, so good, good on you kind of recalibrating, going back to that focus. So right now, you know, are you noticing anything, at least in the current market trends? Are you seeing an uptick in kind of the usage of the platform given people are tightening their belts? Are you seeing any interesting behaviors on, since we are working with these long tail kind of consumer products, is there something intriguing or interesting on how people are working with each other and sharing with each other?
I would definitely say that ever, basically since the beginning of Corona, we've seen a change and we weren't sure what was gonna happen after things would sort of settle back in. At least things aren't fully settled back to the normal situation, I guess. But I would say in the Netherlands, its situation is pretty pretty much back to normal. And we're still seeing increased growth. So I think at first there was the corona crisis, which basically made people— made it easier for people to share because a lot of people are— but when neighbors are sharing, they need to be home to be able to interact with each other. So actually the working from home has been a big, you know, help for us in terms of making it easier for people to meet up and share. Obviously, party gear didn't do so well in the last few years, but a lot of people started doing a lot of DIY, so we saw a big uptick in that. And currently, we're seeing really good growth, and it's always hard to exactly pinpoint why that is, but we We're pretty sure that we are, you know, an anti-cyclical, I guess is the word, company. So when, you know, when the economy is not doing great and people really start to think about what, you know, what do I spend my money on, I think then sharing is a great way to still be able to do everything that you want to do, but not have to spend a fortune to be able to do it. Because if you buy a power drill, you can only, drill, you know, make holes. If you get a Peerbee membership, then you can be a member for 5 years for the same price as one power drill, pretty much. And you can have that power, all the power tools you need, all the camping gear you need, all the, you know, so you can do basically, you can do a lot more with the same budget. So yeah, we're seeing great growth at the moment.
Interesting. So yeah, to get on that, like, do you see like common products that get more demand than others or certain segments of consumer products that are most requested? I'm curious, what do you currently have available that people are just constantly picking up?
We could clearly see sort of a— people going back to partying in the, I would say, the last few months. So a lot of DJ equipment, but also I guess trying to stay a bit more safe, like doing outside parties and stuff. And yeah, so the DJ equipment and stuff like that was down for a long time and now it's back up. So I think people have gone back to celebrating a bit more. So that's nice to see. And I hope they're staying safe while they're doing that. And yeah, in terms of, seeing trends in, uh, um, in what's happening. It's so— the, the range of items that we, that we help people borrow is so broad that it's, it's often quite hard to really see trends without doing elaborate data analysis. So it's— there's over 1,000 different types of like products on the, on the, on the platform, and there's seasonality, there's like different differences per location, per neighborhood. It's all one, it's such a giant lake of data that it's often hard for me to tell you what's going on right now. I'd probably, you know, have to ask our data analyst to sit down and spend a day and then tell me, okay, this seems to be something that is happening at the moment. We try to automate these types of analysis as much as possible because it's so much data. Just if you would have to manage supply and demand for just a single neighborhood, I don't think a human being would be able to keep it in their mind. So we really try to create these automated balancing mechanisms where we— basically the system is just looking at the data and trying to make sure that everything comes together and is working because it's too much. We tried wrapping our heads around all the data and at some point you just it just stops. Like, I can't bring this all together, it's too much.
Well, I'll ask you this question then too. We do have some people that have used it. Katie, when she used to live in Amsterdam, was a Groovebee user.
Oh wow.
Looks like she's— oh, she's asking you now, are you coming to the US?
I would love that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would. So one of the reasons I'm in the US right now is that I'm trying to experience American neighborhood life. So I'm spending a month at a time in different cities in the US. In May, I was in Boulder. This month, I'm mostly in Austin with a little trip to Seattle. And I'm— I just, I go and try and live in an actual neighborhood to really see what is life like here and what are the differences between Amsterdam, which is, I think, a very specific lifestyle, and the US, and how might that influence sharing.
So, yeah.
What are you discovering right now, Elise? Austin's one place, Colorado's a whole nother. Is there anything that you're starting to already pick up that might be common with everyone?
Well, there's observations. There's no conclusions yet, But in Amsterdam, we have a very strong bicycle culture. And basically, using a bicycle is the quickest way to get around in the city. And that is probably creating a certain maximum distance where people want to borrow something. But also it depends, it changes the types of products that you are going to be able to borrow, 'cause if you have to bring something on a bike, you're obviously not gonna be able to carry this huge power washer. That's like one thing we discovered in Amsterdam. We were trying to figure out what's the best power washer. The best one is actually, is like a small model that you can carry like a little suitcase, so you can easily take it places. That's the best. Best one for sharing. I guess in the US, it's either— it's probably gonna be a pickup by car, or you're gonna walk somewhere. So this is gonna probably change the types of products that are best for sharing. It might— I wonder if it's gonna increase the distance over which people share, that they— like, it doesn't have to be as close. So what— who do you consider a neighbor? I guess it's gonna be an interesting question. That I'm gonna need to ask to the people here and figure out, yeah, what are the differences. But yeah, it's very, I think what I'm really trying to understand is almost not from an analytical standpoint, not something I can explain to you in a story, but I think what I'm trying to, to really grasp is what does it feel like to live here? So that when we go back and we start adjusting the product and we see certain, like we try to run all kinds of experiments and see how people behave on the platform. What I'm hoping to get is a sort of a general like gut feel for, oh, why might this not work the way we, expected it to work if we start seeing certain numbers. It's like, oh, it's probably because of some people need to go somewhere by car, or it's maybe because these kinds of things, or it's because mailboxes are in a different position, 'cause we like to use invitation letters to sign people up for the platform. So there's probably 1,000 little things that are different and some might have an influence and some, might, you know, have zero influence. So it's really about, I think, trying to feel, trying to get a real feel for it before we start trying to analyze the behavior on the platform.
That makes a lot of sense. But yeah, don't hold it all against us. It's a big, big country. So actually, this leads into another question. Katie's having a fun time. She's excited. Hey, Katie Williams, she's watching us on LinkedIn right now. Um, but I also had a similar question too. She's asking, you know, how are you differentiating from like Facebook Marketplace to like the Craigslist free section? I was thinking like Nextdoor, you know, if you're familiar with, you know, if you're familiar with Nextdoor, which is, you know, the neighborhood app. But, you know, I, I never use Nextdoor for the most part just because there's so much clutter, there's so many things. But it does have kind of these like sharing like investing system. So, um, you know, do you have any kind of differentiation in place that's really kind of going to separate y'all, especially as you're looking to enter into the US markets?
Sure. Yeah, I think one important thing is that we provide a safety check and we provide warranties, so we make sure that the, the person that's borrowing, uh, you know, is who they say they are. And we We provide a warranty against damages and other kinds of accidents that might happen. So it's— people feel a lot safer sharing their items on our platform, also the more expensive items, so it's going to be easier to borrow something. What we also have that these other platforms don't have is an inventory of all the stuff that's available in your neighborhood. And most, like the other marketplaces out there have inventory that's for sale, but this is about basically all the stuff that people don't want to get rid of, but that is useful. And so we enable you to browse all those things and we're developing ways to get as much of that data and understand who might have what. So that's, I think that's a big differentiator. And when I look at Nextdoor, I actually, I don't necessarily see them as a competitor, I see them as a partner. I was talking to the head of product of Nextdoor the other day, and we talked about how Nextdoor basically can be an operating system for the neighborhood. There's so many applications for a local network, And it's really hard and really expensive to have to set up a network like that if each individual company has to go out and do that. On the other hand, it's too, you know, probably too much, it's gonna require too much capital and too much work, too much understanding of all these different types of value propositions for Nextdoor to open up every type of angle that is possible within that local network. So I think what we're doing is a sort of a perfect match for— we have a very specific offering that we can bring to that local network, and they have that local network, but they don't have the time or the expertise to really focus on the niche that we're in.
Uh, yeah, yeah. So, uh, so here's one before— I know we're kind of hitting up on time a little bit, so I thank you for joining us for a little bit more. Um, and I want to be respectful for the rest of the day. I'm sure you got going as we head into the weekend. But, um, you know, and I want to bring you back in a year, you know, especially once you get into the US, because I want to ask you this question again as you get more products on the platform. But what's the most peculiar item you currently have on the marketplace right now that's just like, why would— how do they put that on there? Would people want this? Oh my God, somebody picked it up! Yeah, that's—
oh, that's such a— that's— I should do more digging because the examples I have are— but yeah, I have some examples. Like, what I specifically remember is somebody looking for a bee suit, as in not a— not as like a— like a suit to dress up as a bee.
Oh, like a bumblebee, not like a beekeeper.
Like a bumblebee, yeah. So I saw that request, I was like, this is you know, this is not gonna work. Who the heck would have a suit like that? And within minutes, somebody actually offered it and they could dress up like a bee. So there's some— yeah, that was unexpected. So yeah, I see a lot of surprises like that coming by. I have to say that the suits, the specific types of suits, those are usually the most crazy ones that I'll be— I'll think this is going to be impossible. And then yeah, people have loads of suits out there.
Apparently somebody's, somebody's out there with a warehouse full of costumes just for people to rent out. That makes perfect sense on there. Now I might give you an idea where to start, at least here in the US. Uh, a whole culture that's probably for another, another podcast on another day. Uh, uh, but yeah, This has been awesome. And just a couple more things before, you know, we let you go for the weekend ahead. One, how can people follow you along with the journey, especially for people that are watching us here in the US that want to get that first look into Peerbee as you're looking to enter into new markets? So what's a great way to get in touch or at least, you know, keep following on the journey?
Yeah, well, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. And if you're in the US, or some other city or country and you feel like, you know, you live in a great location for sharing, so for the next Peerby location, then do reach out to me. And people can send me an email, shoot me an email at dan@peerby.com, and I'd love to hear, you know, about people's neighborhood experiences and sharing culture and why they think it might be a good fit for where they live or a terrible fit. I mean, I'm happy to hear that too, then I'll try to avoid those places. But yeah, and I'm very curious about the people's idea around sharing in America. Yeah, if they have ideas, like, or experiences, like, what does that look like? How might that be different if they, you know, or yeah, I'm super curious. So yeah, love to hear from Americans about that.
Awesome. Well, you heard Don yourself. Reach out, tell them if you want to bring this to your city, you want to bring this to your neighborhood because you got a great community, please do so. This would be amazing. I'd love to use the service myself once we can get you here in Austin. I think Austin would be a good market for you. A lot of friendly people here in Texas, a lot of great people here in Austin. Claudia is already, uh, on LinkedIn. She's looking for this as well. Um, last question. This is a question I ask every single founder that comes on to the Global Startup Report, and you're— this is no different, but I always love hearing the answer. So if there's somebody in the audience right now, they want to start the next big thing, they want to quit their job and build an enduring company, uh, what would be the first piece of advice you'd give First piece of advice for building an enduring company.
I think the one thing that has— the one advice that has pulled me through is something that Adeo, the founder of the Founder Institute, told me. And he said, a company hasn't failed until the founder gives up. And I think that is very, very true. And I think the way I interpret that is also find a way for your— find a topic that you really care about, because that's going to help you to persevere. And, and find a way to, to keep going at it every, every day for a little bit and It took us way more time than we initially thought it would take us to get to a viable business. And at some point, we started questioning ourselves, like, is this even possible? Because there were no other examples out there. But don't be discouraged. If you just keep trying to solve the puzzle, then I think at some point, most puzzles can be solved. You have to find something that you're passionate about. Otherwise, you know, you're not going to last for the 10 years that it could take to do that.
I love that, man. Yeah, and Adeo, if you're watching, Adeo, your words of transcend and just go everywhere, because I take that advice too. Yeah, startup fails when the founder quits, plain and simple. When you give up, so does that dream, though. So does that vision. Wise words, my friend. Any final things you want to share with the audience before we let you go for the weekend?
Wow. Any final words? Well, thank you. Keep going, whatever problem you're solving. Keep up the good work. Just keep chugging along. You'll get there.
I appreciate it, Dan. Thank you for joining us again. Dan Whitpole, founder and CEO of Peerbee. Hope you continue to enjoy your time here stateside. And when you get back to Austin, give me a ring, man. Well, let's catch up in person. Let's grab a beverage. Uh, we'll do— let's plug in a little bit more with the FI Austin community. We're a good, good group. Been doing it for the last 5 years, and we'll keep doing it until I, I can't stand up anymore.
I'd love that. I love that. I'm looking forward to it.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Let's make it happen. But thank you, Dan. Until then, we appreciate you joining the show. We're gonna bring Dustin back up for those final words. And then we're gonna close it out and send y'all off for the weekend. Dustin.
Yeah, that was awesome. I feel yeah, that's a great, great, uh, a day of kind of wisdom there, or that at the end. And yeah, I just feel like it's so interesting what you talked about with Dan. And the cultures around different life sharing cultures. And yeah, so it's so interesting what he's doing as a founder, like visiting the different cities. And yeah, just really, I feel that the sharing economy, you know, it has a momentum that has been building very slowly, but it feels unstoppable to me. The themes that you guys were talking earlier on about reasonable, you know, consumption levels and what do we have too many of in our consumer-driven economy. Anyway, great, great, very interesting. And yeah, I love that.
We definitely got to bring him back, uh, at least in a year, just once he's in this US market. I want to ask that same question again. What's the weirdest thing that's been requested so far? I have a feeling, you know, I would wear a bee suit.
I've had occasions in the past where I could have used a bee suit, I'm going to be honest, but that's another side story. So, uh, yeah, we're getting here to our closing announcement segment, uh, instead. And, uh, and, uh, yeah, we have We'll of course have FounderX. It's now coming up in less than a month, but if you want to join FI no matter where you are in the world for an online event before then, next week we have a global event here that should be super interesting for people to join. So it's Startup Pricing 101. We've had Finmark CEO Rami Assad join for other kind of finance-related webinars in the past, and we're bringing him back. He's an awesome speaker. This time to talk all about startup pricing, which is super, super important. Especially for these early-stage products where there's a lot of big question marks around, you know, what really can I charge my customer. So that's the link down there for people. You can go find it at fi.co/events, and you can see it there in the events listing. But that's next Wednesday, and I will be hosting that one.
Actually, I'm hosting a bunch of stuff next week. So we got Ramy on Wednesday. We have an event— we're actually kicking off a new event series, going to be our pilot run on Stonk. The Stonks platform featuring 6 founders the following day, Thursday the 14th, I believe. Uh, Thursday the 14th, uh, same time as now, you know, noon, noon Central, uh, 10 AM Pacific, uh, featuring 6 FI grads that are currently in the fundraising process. I'm really intrigued by this Stonks platform. Uh, we've been kind of working behind the scenes with that team over there for a couple months, try to get this one off ground. And for, you know, if we like the experience, we'd love to have you all in. Um, it's not just for accredited investors, but if you are an accredited investor, you can make commitments, you can get introductions and expressed interest. New whole level on how founders can really leverage the virtual world and generate interest and fundraise without having to go and pound Sand Hill Road in person or just travel all around the country before they get that money in the bank, before they do what Dan— what Don's doing right now and being able to actually scale up that way. So really interested to see that. Um, we're gonna have a good, great amount of founders that are in that fundraising.
It's up on the home page now. Yeah, so if you go to stonks.com and you just scroll right below the, the fold there, yeah, the Thursday event is up on the page.
Oh yeah, yeah, we're getting promoted by them too. I guess they like us a little bit. And I don't know if any of them watching, they're using— we use Restream to kind of get this stuff out. You know, if it wasn't for our recommendations, they'd probably be using another less thorough platform for that. So you'll be familiar with kind of all that aesthetics that you see here on the Global Startup Report on that show too. Final, on Friday next week, got a dear friend of mine, Ashley Connell, on the Global Startup Report with Prowess Project. Really excited about having her. I haven't really— I haven't even seen her in person. I saw her in person like once over the last 2 and a half years since the pandemic began, but She looks just the same, just as eager, just as brilliant as she always has been. We're going to be talking about what she's doing with Prowess Project, helping women reenter the workforce after having a family. That's been the whole vision of hers for the last several years, and she's really turned it into something that's magical. And also is a loyal VC portfolio company as well. So we got all the loyal grads in the house right now coming through. Uh, the Global Startup Report. So big week next week heading into the final stretch for Founder X. Uh, I'm looking forward to, uh, to talking to all these amazing people in the FI community next week. I hope y'all don't get sick of hearing me. I hope I still have my voice by Friday.
Yeah, that's true. You know, we got events a day. Yeah, 3 events in a row, one each day in the second half of last week. But, um, yeah, we're excited to have Ashley on for Global Startup Report next week. And if you are part of the FI community and you have not yet signed up for Founder X, you gotta check your inbox because, uh, yeah, we've been sending out, uh, invites. But you can go check out founderx.com, send us an email if you don't have the, uh, special password to sign up and get your ticket. But that's going to be 3 days, it's now less than a month away. Yeah, we're excited about that as well.
So yeah, awesome. Any other final things, Dustin, before we let our our awesome audience down for the day. We had a good crowd today, had a great—
yeah, a lot of great questions. Uh, yeah, so super happy to see— yeah, from, uh, Cindy, Claudia, Katie was asking questions in here, right? There was ones I didn't put on screen from, uh, Yamicani who was watching from Malawi, people watching from Kenya. Yeah, so, uh, yeah, great, great to see people, uh, tuning in for Global Startup Report. And yeah, Yeah, here again next week.
We'll see y'all again next week. For all of us here in FI land, we hope you're safe, hope you're well. Take care of yourself, take care of each other, keep building the future, and we'll see you next time.
Have a great weekend.
