ABOUT

What is Roonga?

Roonga is a new site for privately sharing with friends and trusted groups. An alternative to Craigslist and Freecycle, you decide who sees your posts your friends, your friends friends, and/or any groups you're part of. Because you are sharing with trusted entities, not only can you sell or give things on Roonga, but you can also lend and rent items with confidence. Roonga allows you to specify estimated values and damage terms, setting expectations before an item is loaned out. Roonga also tracks who is currently holding what and who has held your items over time, so you always know where your things are and what has happened to them.

As your sharing circle accumulates items over time, Roonga becomes a resource of whats available in your network and community. It is a virtual inventory of assets in your network so we can all share and leverage each others resources more effectively overall, in a safe and trusted environment.

Roonga was founded in 2010 by two friends in Silicon Valley who wanted to find better alternatives for exchanging things. Since the birth of her son, Evelyn has minimized her use of Craigslist due to safety concerns. At the same time, she has lent out baby items in mass, only to lose track of things as shes needed them back. With two grown sons, Frank is well past the baby phase of life rather, he is looking forward to using Roonga to help find homes for things he no longer needs around his house.

Roonga was launched in beta in spring 2011, and is currently looking for individuals and groups to test out this service. To sign up, follow this link to our registration page. For questions, contact support@roonga.com.

How Roonga Works

Roonga is a new service for privately sharing with friends and trusted groups. An alternative to Craigslist and Freecycle, you decide who sees what, and you can track your items as they are loaned out. As your sharing circle accumulates items over time, your Roonga account becomes a virtual inventory of the resources available in your network. With Roonga, you can jobs

• Poll your network to see if they have specific items before you make an unnecessary purchase.
• Make items available to give, lend, rent, or sell (or combinations thereof).
• Specify your estimated value and damage terms before items are loaned or rented out to minimize issues.
• Track who has your items, and where they are at any given time.
• Target your postings - to high trust friends only, all friends, friends of friends, and/or any groups you are part of.
• Search for items that have been made available by your network.

Roonga's tools are a blend of the best of public posting sites and social networking tools. Following is a quick description of how Roonga works.

Getting Oriented on the Home Page

Welcome to the Roonga home page! In the left column are Needs & Wants (items people are requesting), and in the right column are Available Items (things posted and made available to you). To enter a need, type in your request in the Needs and Wants box, and click “Share.” You can decide who sees your need by selecting the appropriate radio buttons next to “My Friends” and/or “Groups” (if you belong to any).

Adding Items to Roonga

Post items quickly, or use our full feature item entry.

Try the “Quick Add” which requires only the item name, description, and type of share (give, lend, rent, sell). The Quick Add is the top right box under “Available Items.” Using this Quick Add will post your item to all your friends and group(s) in one step.

For a detailed entry, try the “Add Item” link in the right column.

• Fill out the form to explain the condition and availability of your item. You can also upload up to 5 photos in the process.
• Designate who is currently holding the item if currently in your possession.
• Set specific rules about who can see your item. For example, you may lend to friends and rent to a wider circle like your friends' friends and/or groups.

• Set expectations regarding the usage terms and how to handle damage, should it occur:

Managing Item Requests

Requests are initiated by your friends when they view an item page and click “Request Item.” View your queued requests on the Requests tab of the Item Page—and then accept or deny each request separately. Once an item request is accepted, designate when an item has been exchanged and returned. This helps track the status of your requests and the location of your item.

Inviting Friends and Starting Groups

Last but not least, expand your sharing circle! Invite friends who you would like to share with, and who may help you with your needs. Even better, create a group, and add your church members or neighbors to Roonga for local sharing!

About the Team

Evelyn Horng (Co-Founder)
Evelyn has 14 years of experience in strategy development and product management. Most recently, she was Vice President, Product Management and Data Licensing at MLSListings, Inc., where her team was responsible for overhauling the agent tools used by 20,000 real estate agents in the Bay Area. Previous to that, she held various product management positions at BroadVision and Beyond.com. Evelyn graduated from Stanford University with a bachelors degree in Public Policy. She is married, with a son and a dog. Her dog is a rescue from the Humane Society who receives the most complements of anyone in her family whenever they are out and about.

For Evelyn, Roonga is the opportunity to integrate her professional skills with her desire to promote social causes. She has been interested in the benefits of reuse for the environment and would like to help us all reduce consumption of the worlds resources. The explosion of baby items after the birth of her son was the impetus for Roonga becoming what it is today.

Frank Tadman (Co-Founder)
Frank is well steeped in the art of and science of developing products. He has had over 20 years of experience developing software and managing software engineering teams at companies such as MS2 and Rational. Frank left his most recent position as Vice President, Engineering at MLSListings to help found Roonga. Frank graduated from the University of California at Irvine, with bachelor's degrees in computer science and mathematics and a master's in computer science. Frank is married with two sons.

For Frank, Roonga is a company that uses the power of social media in a way that is focused on the local community. Having raised two grown kids, Frank recognizes that families need different things every year as their families grow up. What is useful one year becomes unused junk accumulating in the garage the following year. Frank is also interested in taking Roonga's mission to the company itself; Frank is very interested in building a company with a culture of collaboration and sharing, and personal and corporate growth for all of its employees.

What's in a Name?

Many people have asked where the name Roonga came from, what Roonga means, or what it stands for. No, Roonga is not an acronym... Nor is it a word in the English dictionary (that we are aware of). Rather, it is a term with its roots in a real word that we hope conjures up images of a small village, its members pooling resources and sharing with each other in a tight, intimate manner. With that, this is the story of how the name Roonga came to be.

When Frank and Evelyn first started looking for a name for the website, they looked at all the obvious options sharemystuff.com, sharewise.com, and others. All these names clearly conveyed what the service was about: sharing. But all these names that were unavailable for purchase. Even share translated into different languages seemed to be taken.

Around that time, Evelyn was rummaging around her house and she happened upon a long, brown stick, approx 3 feet long - tapered with two round ends. This was a staff carried by a Masai chief in a Kenyan village in African. Her husband purchased it from the chief on a trip years back. This staff is called a roonga (exact spelling unknown, as it is not an English word). Evelyn liked the way it sounded, and after batting around a few more options, the team decided to go with it Roonga was born!

When you use Roonga, Frank and Evelyn hope you think of your friends and trusted groups as your village coming together to share resources. A community brings a degree of interdependency among its members, and they hope that Roonga helps create your virtual community participating in meaningful give-and-take relationships.

Acknowledgments

• Issue tracking for Roonga is being handled by Hosted Redmine developed by BitBot Software
• Front page designed by 1010Designs