Two Internet Entrepreneurs and Their Yet-to-be-Named Online Resale Marketplace

The best description of the San Diego Web-based business that Jan Anton and Brendan Boyd have developed may be a symbolic cloud that includes the corporate logos for eBay, Amazon, Craigslist, and other online markets.

For the time being, that image also happens to be the current logo for their startup, which was known until last week as iSelfStore.com. Now the two Internet entrepreneurs are searching for a new name because iSelfStore really only exemplifies half of the online business they have conceived.

The website they created is both an online hub that helps users to keep an inventory of their belongings—and enables them to list items for sale on multiple online markets at the same time. “The real value of our application is not in the self-storage, or the inventory part of it,” Boyd says. “The value is in having the ability to sell your stuff across multiple market places.”

Their beta-stage software makes it easy for users to create a home page where they can easily upload images of their favorite surfboard, a wedding dress, gas barbecue, and other items—and to share those images with friends and relatives. It also enables users to simultaneously list items for sale with online classifieds, auction sites, and social networking sites. Using the website to inventory items would be free, but the yet-to-be-named website would charge a premium fee to those who want to use it as a sales platform.

“Users are provided one-click access to sell items across eBay, Amazon, Craigslist, Oodle, iList, Facebook, MySpace, AOL, and more,” Boyd told me. “Users are provided with marketplace and pricing recommendation tools, the ability to maintain a personal online inventory, full functionality from mobile devices, and even the ability to share, trade or give away items to their personal network of family and friends. We maximize your exposure to the marketplace, decrease the sales cycle time, and improve profit margins for online selling—all while saving you time.”

Anton and Boyd explained the concept originated as a Web-based inventory service for their third partner, Eric Jacobson, a former pharmaceutical executive who acquired a San Diego moving and storage business four years ago.

“What he wanted was something he could use to help keep track of the stuff that goes into the storage warehouse,” Boyd said. “He was saying, ‘Wouldn’t it be neat if

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.