From their main headquarters, aka their two-bedroom apartment near the beaches of Santa Monica, two tech-minded friends ventured out to renovate the world as they sought fit. Having acquired the right artillery against the boundaries of boredom, ignorance and laziness, they used what they had learned from academia and decided to make a move.
That move would become the UCLA community’s latest DVD rental site, flixoncampus.com.
“Having interned and worked in the whole nexus of start-ups in the past, we obtained the tools that enabled us to build ideas into software applications; problems all of a sudden took on a different turn,” said Temitope Sonuy, one of the site’s cofounders.
After graduating from MIT in 2006 with a hybrid master’s degree in electronic engineering and computer science, Sonuy joined forces with his longtime comrade, 2008 UCLA electrical engineering graduate, Sepehr Vakihl, and thus flixoncampus.com was born.
Originally launched at UCLA, this medium has expanded its force with more than 1,600 DVDs and video games of all kinds, at schools such as MIT, University of Texas, Harvard University and Northeastern University.
Flixoncampus.com is simply a virtual community that enables its members to securely rent out student-owned films and video games, and to make money.
“We assess whether the campus is conducive to this service. Size of the student body and proximity of living quarters are some of the things that are considered before choosing a campus,” Sonuy said.
An operation of certain level of rigor, it requires expenditure of human and financial capital. For Sonuy and Vakihl, this move toward increasing the social and financial capital of academic communities, is seen as an unpaid hobby.
Even though it may look as though such apparatus needs constant care, the system runs with little interference from the inventors.
“All we had to do was create the database with a user interface capability that turns inputted and outputted data around, then just put it online.”
This self-run system addresses the concerns of the owners of the titles, by providing the owners with user ratings, school e-mail, phone number and comments about the renter. “Texting is also part of our security apparatus. We also use that to send text messages for notifications of offers.”
A year and a half later, flixoncampus.com has been the catalyst for more than 3,000 transactions on the various participating campuses.
The default price for such transactions is set at $1 for 5 days; however, it is negotiable on the part of the owner, who has the option of accepting a potential renter’s bid.
Although the system runs fairly well on its own, the founders do step in on certain case-by-case situations in order to protect media owners.
The only time the founders get involved, according to Sonuy, “is in those rare, not-yet-occurring cases when the system alerts us about a theft or damage to an item.”
In this case, the company will redeem the owner of any lost, stolen or damaged items up to $40.
Economics 101: Opportunity cost is the basic relationship between scarcity and choice. It is to ensure that scarce resources are used efficiently. Fortunately ““ or for some “residents” on Hilgard, unfortunately ““ shoes, though perhaps scarce, can’t contribute to your finances other than in the form of frequent flyer miles on your card when you buy them.
“Some owners have hundreds of CDs and DVDs sitting on their shelves as potential cash,” Sonuy said. “This could be a legitimate business for them.” Flixoncampus.com is an inherently “Laissez faire” economy.
After searching by genre or title, an interested renter can notify the owner of the acceptance of the offer and arrange a location of exchange ““ for example, in front of Bruin Café.
Aside from flixoncampus.com, both Sonuy and Vakihl are also working hard on individual projects of different natures. Vakihl is now sharpening his electrical engineering skills at UC Berkeley, working with professionals in the field of artificial vision, a complex field of its own.
On the other hand, Sonuy is also busy helping to launch two other start-up companies.
Idealistic thinking is an important attribute when it comes to launching ambitious new projects. This is something Sonuy obtained during his time on campus as both an undergraduate and graduate student.
“I loved MIT. I met brilliant people who were smarter at the time than I would ever be in my life. But it was good for me,” Sonuy said. “It was a very humbling experience. All the people there are thinkers, so being able to sit and talk to those people and being able to realize these ideas into actual products was beautiful. It was a great time.”
Inventor, entrepreneur and renovator of the world of media rentals, Sonuy still has time to just sit back and hold the remote every once in a while. He lists “The Usual Suspects” and “City of God” as his absolute favorite movies.
Said Sonuy, “It’s really amazing how this technology is so attached to the underlying human element and how we influence our technology so much.”