When I bought my house, I was at first excited to have an excuse to buy new tools. But as my project list grew, and I learned new skills to repair and maintian my aging house, I had to keep buying more and more specialty tools for the jobs I wanted to take on. Thankfully, some of my friends and neighbors had tools that they let me borrow when I needed something for just a short while. This was an immense help, and it saved me a lot of time and money. At a certain point in every project, you get sick of making extra trips to the hardware store for the one piece you forgot, the tool you didn't know you needed, or the part you accidentally broke while working on finishing up your work. My neighbor across the street saved me on more than one occasion and kept me from going insane. His generosity was something I appreciate more than can be put into words.
I wanted to be able to offer the same kind of help to my friends and neighbors, but it is difficult for them to know what tools I have that they can borrow. Some friends bought large tools for a single project, and I was bummed that they didn't know that I already had the tool and they could have borrowed it instead.I also have had times where I forget who borrowed my tools, and I wanted to use them for an urgent repair or project. Trying to track them down in a timely manner was stressfull, both for me and for the friend who forgot they had borrowed them.
I am a solo developer with a background in DevOps. I started building this for one of my friends as a project to grow my skills, and it has grown into a full passion project. I started building it for my own community, but I am excited to see it grow into a community of its own.
I believe that community is going to become more and more important as time goes on. This is another tool that can help us to build stronger, more resilient communities, and I am happy to be able to help in that way.
I am building FriendsWithTools to help people to share with each other in a simple, private, and secure way. The main features will always be free, and I hope to build a sustainable business model that allows me to keep the service free for everyone.
Please join me in building a stronger, more interconnected community, one tool at a time.
Gabriel
Founder, FriendsWithTools