Freebs.io - A classifieds marketplace for free things only

We seem to have made great strides at improving our product manufacturing by using renewable and recyclable materials. We have also done a good job of improving our recycling technologies. However, we have done a poor job at keeping things in circulation much longer because that part of the circular economy concept is more consumer-driven. Consumers have not fully been enabled to participate in the circular economy which makes it seem like we are rushing to manufacture and recycle but not maximizing the full use of what we make. This has promoted a consumerist culture that replaces rather than one that repairs or reuses. 

We built Freebs a marketplace dedicated to posting and finding free things. This is the best way for consumers to be involved in the circular economy. We hope to negatively feedback to supply chains which will eventually translate into fewer resources being used and less waste being generated.

Each year nations generate 1.3 billion tons of waste which is expected to sore to 4 billion by 2100. The U.S generates the most at 624,700 metric tons/day while only recycling less than 35% of that every year. We need better ways to enable consumers to keep items in use for much longer. 

Our market is quite broad since this is a horizontal marketplace. We are targeting artists, upcyclers, repairers and generally environmentally conscious consumers. These could be men and women of all ages above 13.

We have talked to multiple groups and some of the points have been articulated as below:

• A need to post things for free so that the individual does not throw away a perfectly useable item. Marketplaces are cumbersome and a poster competes with paying categories. In addition, items may be posted much longer than on a dedicated marketplace for free things.

·       A maker looking for material for a project but must drive around to see what materials have been curbed.

Freebs aims to connect such people so that they can post and find items on a dedicated marketplace for free things.

Freebs is a horizontal marketplace accessible as a web platform https://www.freebs.io. It is also accessible as a mobile application:

iOS App: https://apple.co/31jLy Android: https://bit.ly/2K6hgmU

Freebs works by providing a platform for users to post any useful everyday items they no longer need instead of placing them on curbs or in the dumpster. Once posts are made, Freebs curates them by categories and location where other users can search for things to “grab” in a well curated manner that makes the experience easy. Once something has been picked up, both users are awarded points which we hope they can redeem soon.

Our solution changes the consumer’s mindset from that of replacing to that of reusing. We make it easy because we are dedicated to posting and finding free things only as a result, any items posted may go faster than on other marketplaces. More importantly, users that post are not competing with paying categories like on other marketplaces. Users that “grab” are worry-free because of the free non obligatory approach. We hope this creates less user  and adoption friction and allows for more people use our platform and if not, to adopt circular economy principles through other channels.

Php, Laravel, React Native, MSQL, AWS, Digital Ocean, Heroku, SendGrid

Our solution offers a non-obligatory environment to post and find free things. We believe that we have very minimal barriers to entry for new users. By increasing the community, we hope that this will have a negative feedback on supply chains which ultimately will mean less waste produced as more and more people keep things in circulation much longer. Our solution may also alter how product manufacturers make products by having them make more user - relevant products that allow for repair, reuse or repurposing in addition to being recyclable.

100

In 1 year: 50,000 in 5 years 3 million

Year 1 Goals:

-       Scale the web platform and mobile applications

-       Add AI capability to allow for image recognition and pre-filling of text fields

-       Partner with institutions to help spread the word and create content

• Add AI to create an artificial scale that will classify and weigh images so we can estimate how much mass we have saved from going to the landfills
• Partner with product manufacturers to have us manage their free samples on our platform. This will allow us to distribute samples and let product manufacturers get feedback from environmentally conscious users.

Year 5 Goals:

-       Scale to 25 more countries

-       Improve user interfaces and possibly create applications for other platforms

1. Recognition – we just launched our Open-Beta 1 month ago and have not yet reached the adoption rate we would want.

2. Content – because we have fewer users at the moment, we are also struggling to create content. We have ideas on how to solve this, but it will require funding.

3. Platform Stability

– We built our platform using a combination of React-Native and Laravel. These work fine but we would like to develop natively and with better web frameworks so scaling is done easily and also results in a stable platform.

1. We can solve the Recognition and Content issues by partnering with institutions such as colleges where students can sign up. Freebs will become quite useful at the end of the semester when a lot of students are looking to get rid of useful items. It also works at the beginning of the semester when students are looking to furnish dorms and common rooms. We also hope to partner with municipal governments so that they can save money on picking up curbed items. By broadcasting to residents and promoting sharing and re-sue using the Freebs platform, Governments can save on average $75/ton and $50.30/ton to incinerate or send items to landfills respectively. We also hope to use any monetary resources and connections we make from MIT Solve to increase awareness of our platform and circular economy principles in general.

2. Platform stability – we hope to use any monetary resources and technical connections we make at MIT Solve to build a more stable platform as well as learn better development operations, technical skills and technology.

4

We have the technical ability to get digital products out into the market. We are also very passionate about pollution, consumerism and its social-economic effects on many societies. Being from developing nations where resources are extracted to make some of the items that are casually thrown away when they still have utility motivates us more to create conscious consumers. We also have determined through market research that this is the right time to do it; other marketplaces are very saturated, and more people are becoming aware of their consumer patterns and their effects on the environment and other societies.

We have no partnerships.

We hope that once we have enough daily users about 20,00-30,000, we can partner with product manufacturers to manage their sample campaigns. We will take a management fee to distribute the samples and obtain product feedback. This way we not only have feedback influenced by conscious consumers, but we also allow users to try items for free without having to purchase larger quantities that they may end up not using. On the other hand, this service may give product manufacturers a similar level of insight with their physical products much like in their digital campaigns. From our end, it will require more robust profiling capability from our platform in order to generate the right product-user recommendations. We anticipate that between the ads and the product sample management service we can become financially sustainable.

Our business model is currently supported by ads. We have two models 1. In house ad-server, where we source our own leads and create campaigns for businesses that we think are socially responsible

2. Google-Ad network, where we tap into Google’s AdSense network for ads. We heavily promote service-based businesses that emphasize experiences instead of product manufacturers at the moment.

We hope that once we have enough daily users about 20,00-30,000, we can partner with product manufacturers to manage their sample campaigns. We will take a management fee to distribute the samples and obtain product feedback. This way we not only have feedback influenced by conscious consumers, but we also allow users to try items for free without having to purchase larger quantities that they may end up not using. On the other hand, this service may give product manufacturers a similar level of insight with their physical products much like in their digital campaigns. From our end, it will require more robust profiling capability from our platform in order to generate the right product-user recommendations. We anticipate that between the ads and the product sample management service we can become financially sustainable.

We hope that our solution could gain some recognition for powering forward the circular economy concept. We hope the publicity will translate to more users. Also, we want to network and learn from other entrepreneurs and advisors how we can do things better and MIT Solve seems like a great place to get feedback. In addition, we would like to demonstrate to other entrepreneurs that starting enterprises that address social and environmental issues can be profitable. We always felt that most causes in our problem space tend to operate as non-profits or cooperatives with the assumption that the ideals of the organization do not mix with market principles. We think that the more companies that register as corporations, while solving such problems, the faster we can get more solutions out the door and into the world.

HP has a great circular economy initiative that we can learn from and improve on. HP may have insight into how we may reach corporate users to partner with. We also believe we can benefit from Google’s AI capability and technical guidance since this is the direction we desperately need to head towards.

HP has a great circular economy initiative that we can learn from and improve on. HP may have insight into how we may reach corporate users to partner with. We also believe we can benefit from Google’s AI capability and technical guidance since this is the direction we desperately need to head towards.

Adding AI will allow us to make a better recommendation system where users may be suggested items on Freebs before they purchase something from a store or from other paying marketplaces. In addition, it will allow us to classify images so we can have a better estimate at how much we are saving from the landfills and ultimately how that affects the supply chains. This may help quantify and document the evolving consumer behavior which may be helpful for regulatory and for product development purposes. We would love to automate a lot of user actions using AI as well.

We would promote neighborhood re-use, repair and share programs using the Freebs platform. That way the zero-waste initiative can be approached from a local grass-roots level but still retaining a larger scale capability to incorporate other grass-root level initiatives.

We would love to but have limited AI implementation on our platform.