An entrepreneur on Sci-Tech Daresbury’s Future Club who once supported Take That says her latest startup could be magic.
RentAbout founder Selina Kirkham says that having access to mentors and gold partners in specialised areas has already been ‘incredibly beneficial’ just two weeks after the fifth cohort for Future Club was revealed.
The former gospel singer, who once supported the 90s boy band at Manchester Arena as part of a choir, worked at RSM then EY before co-founding Totus Environmental, which she helped build into an £18m turnover business over 11 years before shifting her full-time focus to RentAbout last year.
Selina Kirkham of RentAbout at SciTech Daresbury
Totus diverts 100,000 tonnes of waste annually for use in energy plants across Europe or for recycling. Kirkham says she founded bootstrapped platform RentAbout, a platform facilitating peer-to-peer rental transactions of equipment, during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“At the time, I wanted to cycle in my local area to get out of the house, as there were few places to go,” Kirkham tells BusinessCloud. “The problem was that I didn’t have a bike. When I tried to rent one online, the available options were too far away or too expensive.
“It made me wonder – how many people locally might have a bike I could borrow that day, which they weren’t using?
“This sparked the idea – people could help others while earning passive income.”
RentAbout’s platform allows people to rent almost anything from their neighbours, including DIY tools, gardening equipment, household items, holiday gear and hobby-related equipment.
Renters are verified using facial recognition, government ID, and proof of address.
Kirkham adds: “Rather than focusing solely on improving how waste is disposed of and deriving value from it, I wanted to move further up the chain.
“I wanted to build a business centred on the core principles of the circular economy – ensuring assets are not purchased only to be used once or twice and left to clutter up garages.”
The business is currently supported by around 15 fractional experts and plans to recruit a new team member in the second quarter of this year.
The platform will remain fee-free until April 2025 to encourage early adoption, with the goal being to reach 10,000 users in the first year, 1 million within two years, and 10 million users within three years.
Kirkham will be looking for investors in the future. “Once we validate the platform’s performance locally and collect proof of concept data, we plan to seek investment to scale across the UK and internationally,” she says.
RentAbout’s official launch will begin in Stockton Heath, Warrington, before expanding to other areas to further test the platform.