#52: What is Sharegrid & how it got started?

<p> To stay up to date checkout <a href="thestartupproject.io">⁠thestartupproject.io⁠</a> &amp; follow Nataraj on twitter: @natarajsindam In 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 <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2022/freelancer-marketplace-backstage-acquires-seattle-content-creation-gear-rental-startup-sharegrid/">⁠acquired⁠</a> 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 &amp; collectively gone on to raise more than $2.5 billion in capital.  <strong> Full Transcript:</strong></p> <p>[00:00:00] So you decided you want to be in tech. Then how did, uh, your, uh, company start, uh, share grid? </p> <p>[00:00:06] Yeah, so she started, um, actually the idea was kind of originated while I was, was working our 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 a media communication, uh, background.</p> <p>[00:00:24] But he ended up in tech as well. He was a designer and front end developer and um, he was a longtime photographer and we would take walks all the time and. , he, he sold his previous company to Groupon, so he&#39;s been very entrepreneurial himself and we were always kicking around ideas of potential startups that we could start.</p> <p>[00:00:47] And one of the ideas was, 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 I justify kind. [00:01:00] Investing more money into more equipment when I&#39;m not even using the equipment I already have. So that was kind of the thread that we started to talk about the idea, and essentially the idea was a lot of filmmakers, photographers invest.</p> <p>[00:01:15] Quite a bit of capital into, uh, equipment, into, into different,