A new app is looking to provide smaller communities with access to sharable products.
Pocahontas-based Koloni was started in 2016 by Bryan Dewey and Kate Lyon, with the hopes of bringing sharable products to communities that otherwise would not have access to them.
Through the Koloni app, a city can come in and lease on a monthly basis. Currently, the app offers two products, bike-shares
“Our primary market is non-major markets. We’re not trying to compete with these billion dollar unicorn companies,” said Kate Lyon, co-founder of Koloni. “We focus on areas that are heavily tourists. There are a lot of towns that may only have 10k people in them, but get a lot of visitors each year.”
The app has now been around for over two years and offers products in 13 locations.
“We started in Iowa and have expanded throughout the Midwest and the South,” Lyon said. “We have some locations in Kentucky and Georgia and we’ll be launching in Northwestern University this spring as well.”
Lyon says that Koloni plans to expand into other sharable products as well, including kayak and canoe rentals.
“Our long-term vision is to be a sharable economy platform,” Lyon said. “As long as you’re using our system, you can rent anything.”
Koloni was recently chosen as one of ten companies to present at the 2019 Shared Mobility Summit in Chicago.