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eHub Interviews lendmonkey

Thanks to Chris Lee and Bryan Wood, creators of lendmonkey, for this email interview posted May 8, 2006.

eHub: What is your web application/service about?

lendmonkey: Bryan - Peer-to-peer trading of real media. By adding your media to the lendmonkey virtual library you gain access to the library of everyone else that has joined. Give someone something and you’ll get a media credit for that type of media. You can use the credit to get something of the same type from anyone else in the community.

Chris - We’re a little bit of flickr, a little bit of Netflix, a little p2p with some new things thrown into the mix such as Places which extend the boundaries of peer-to-peer media trading into the real world.

eHub: Why did you start this project?

lendmonkey: Bryan - I had all these $30-$40 video games that I was done with and game stores wanted to give me around $8 for them. So I decided to make this site where you could trade game for game. Much better than trading in 4 games for 1 new one. While we were at it we went ahead and threw in books, movies, and CDs.

Chris - I traded media online in a peer-to-peer community called WinMX.  WinMX was innovative in that it was more about the people than the files.  When you found the right person, you had access to a great deal of media specifically in line with your own interests.  After a time, the problems with the software and the time investment of managing and attempting to organize so many files, and the inefficiency of finding new things I enjoyed led me to quit using the system.  I created lendmonkey in order to have this same experience with the convenience of real media.

eHub: How much time do you devote to its growth?  Do you have a day job?

lendmonkey: Chris - Bryan worked full-time for the first year of lendmonkey’s development, and I am still working full-time.  Bryan’s day-job was taking him in a different direction for what we desired in Lendmonkey, so he left and is developing with Rails full-time now.  I’m learning things of high value as a consultant at my day-job, so that is inline with our goals.  We are also committed to being self-funded, so we both have several other projects where we devote secondary time.

eHub: How large is your team and what are your backgrounds?

lendmonkey: Lendmonkey was created by 2 people. Chris Lee and Bryan Wood.  We have a special thanks page on the site where we highlight people and groups who have helped us, please visit it when you check us out.

Chris Lee - Handles business development, project management, requirements, and user acceptance testing.
Bryan Wood - Handles design, development, and IT related tasks.

eHub: What is your design philosophy?

lendmonkey: Chris - I attended one of the early Building Basecamp workshops with 37 Signals and feel our philosophy became polished by theirs.

eHub: What technologies are you currently using?

lendmonkey: Ruby on Rails, Ajax, Amazon Web API, Google Maps, RSS

eHub: What are the most requested features from your users/community?

lendmonkey: A challenge we are currently overcoming is in regard to easily adding your physical media to your online library.  It is not as efficient as we desire.  We are also using the Amazon API for finding media and it is more limited than the vision that we have for lendmonkey.  If you go see a local band and get their CD and it’s great, we want you to be able to share it with everyone on lendmonkey.  We also have many out of print books which are not available via Amazon. We’re working on fixing this now by allowing users to add arbitrary media and upload their own cover art and searching more media databases.

eHub: Does your user base reside in a primary geographic location or is it distributed?

lendmonkey: Distributed.  Places and trades handled directly by users allow people to get together anywhere to share media.  We will offer mailers in countries where they make sense to make sharing over a distance convenient.  It is important for us to be useful for people of any country.

eHub: Where do you see the project heading in the next 6 months?  The next 2 years?

lendmonkey: We have features and fixes planned that will keep us occupied for the next few months. Our users will determine how the project evolves in the future.  This model was attempted and failed in the dot.com bust, but that was before the prevalence of peer-to-peer file sharing.  We believe this is an idea who’s time has come.

eHub: What is the greatest challenge to your success?

lendmonkey: People have never had the opportunity to easily share their media legally.  The concept of sharing gets lost at some point when we grow up and it can be a challenge to describe something as unique as lendmonkey.  I’ve often heard, “Well, I’ll put the things I don’t want on lendmonkey...” It should be no surprise that if you don’t want those things, most other people will not want them.  The message we’re trying to voice is put all your movies, music, games, and books on lendmonkey and let the Long Tail find people who want those items; then use your credits to get the media you want.  I just bought a new movie(Walk the Line) at Walmart for $20 and will put it on lendmonkey tonight.  My next new movie from lendmonkey will cost a dollar. The challenge will be to convey this idea clearly.

eHub: What is the one thing you need to get to the next phase of the project?

lendmonkey: People interested in trying out something new.

eHub: Do you have a business model?  If so, what is it?

lendmonkey: We charge $1 for each trade as a trade fee.  We also sell mailing containers that have pre-paid postage attached. Our mailing containers and postage are cheaper than buying it yourself at the post office, plus you don’t have to wait in line. Acquiring media through most other outlets is far more expensive in both time and money.

eHub: If you’re able to disclose this information, how much traffic or usage do you see on an average day?

lendmonkey: Not much. We are starting promotion this month to change that. This interview is the first step.

eHub: What is the one thing you’re most proud of about the project?

lendmonkey: Bryan - The code that I was able to extract and give back to the community. A few additions to the cartographer library, location.rb, and a few other things.

Chris - Providing something of value to the marketplace is the thing that will truly give me fulfillment with lendmonkey.

eHub: How would you describe the shift that’s occurring with the web right now to future generations?

lendmonkey: Bryan - I think I’ve been too close to the shift to notice it as a big change. It seems like things have been headed in this direction all along.

Chris - Decentralization, peer-to-peer, customization, information accuracy, trust, personalization, connecting on a personal basis, people care more about their eBay score than their credit rating.  The web changed when people with a voice were given simple tools to express their opinions.

eHub: What site(s) do you visit everyday other than your own?

lendmonkey: Bryan - 4colorrebellion.com, api.rubyonrails.com, joystiq.com, and about 40 feeds in netnewswire.

Chris - Basecamp, google, lendmonkey live and test sites, and when I have time to myself I catch up on everything else worth reading.  It’s nice that by the time I’m able to catch up I find mostly quality reading.  Over Christmas I read some of Paul Graham’s excellent essays.

eHub: How many hours of sleep do you get a night?

lendmonkey: Bryan - ~7

Chris - My wife, Mitsuko, and I had our first baby on March 27 and her name is Grace Hatsumi Lee, so my answer is much less.

Thanks to Chris Lee and Bryan Wood, creators of lendmonkey, for this email interview posted May 8, 2006.

Visit LendMonkey
Originally added to eHub on Oct 12, 05

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eHub Interviews is a series with the creators of Web 2.0 applications and services by Emily Chang, author of eHub, designer, and co-founder and principal of Ideacodes, a strategic web consultancy in San Francisco that she co-founded with Max Kiesler.

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