Friends Dan Pinto and Dmitriy Rokhfeld go way back. The two met in middle school playing video games and eventually became co-founders of the company Machino.com—an online search engine where you can buy and sell used industrial equipment. They recognized a gap in the marketplace when Pinto was looking for a used printing press in 2012. He realized that there was no easy-to-use search engine that specialized in used equipment. There was kayak for hotels and indeed for jobs so he created Machinio for machinery.
This new search engine has revolutionized the way people buy and sell used machinery. It is the fastest growing global search engine in its category with 550,000 buyers from more than 190 countries. The service has opened new markets in all parts of the world that were previously unavailable. They have raised $4 million dollars from a number of investors and opened their second office in early 2017. Their solution saves users time by making it easy to buy and sell used equipment while putting all its users on an equal playing field. Their story showcases an important lesson. Learn to look for gaps in the marketplace that already come from good ideas.
This is interesting. I don’t many people who want to buy used equipment, but this seems to be a very helpful place for those who do want to purchase used equipment.
I think that this is a problem that needed to be solved and would be very useful to farmers and other companies. Most people would not buy used machinery because of the liabilities that wouldn’t be there is the product was bought new.
This is a great Idea. I know farmers especially depending on the season can be really crunched for cash and need to repair machinery to harvest products in time. My grandparents could defiantly use something like this. I think currently half of my grandparents farm equipment is held together by duck tape.
This is a very exciting story of how these two young entrepreneurs found a gap in the market. This is definitely a niche market, but used machinery is needed by farmers and factories. These purchases will be much more expensive, so I think the company will be successful even though they are in a niche market.
This is a really great example of using existing technology to fill a gap in the market. This definitely fills a need for specialization in the machinery area, but I’m sure this also drastically increases reach for when you are buying or selling machinery. They definitely saw a great opportunity and took it.
Very interesting to see how this technology fills the niche market of used machinery, but has still become so profitable. My only question is what property differentiates this product from Craigslist or Ebay?