OSU Cascades alum launches

By HALEY STARK News Reporter

During his time living in the dorms as a business administration student at Oregon State University Cascades, the college’s branch in Bend, Michael Boles developed a system. He had snowboarding equipment, his friend had climbing gear and another resident had mountain bikes. They began trading and loaning out their gear in order to experience a variety of different outdoor activities.

This system would continue to grow even after Boles and his friends moved out of the dorms, ultimately culminating in the creation of an app to expand the system: Seekqua, which aims to foster the same sense of community he experienced during his time at OSU.

“We want to be organic, we want to uplift communities and create communities on campuses,” Boles said. “We want to be somewhat of a party alternative, to provide students with an avenue where they can go and find fulfillment in real memories.”

Recently launched in December 2022, Seekqua is a peer-to-peer outdoor gear rental app where equipment owners can rent out their gear to other users. The app is primarily targeted towards tourists, students or those looking to find a new outdoor hobby.

The process of creating Seekqua began in November 2021.

In order to develop the app’s software, Boles contacted the creators of a similar Utah-based service called Kalana and obtained the code from them. The other member of Seekqua’s team, Kyle Bates, has since redesigned the software while Boles worked on the user interface. OSU student Nicolas Ettel is not an official member of the Seekqua team, but has aided Boles and Bates in marketing the app and acts as a sort of brand ambassador for it.

Seekqua has found moderate success in the month since its release, already receiving a few hundred downloads. Moving forward, Boles wants to work out the bugs within the app and help gear owners insure the equipment they rent out.

“We’re still working with insurance companies to get insurance for the gear renters and the gear owners,” Boles said. “But for now the system that we’ve come up with is we use Stripe to secure all the payments and have it backed through our system. And so, when people post their gear for rent, they’re obligated to fill out a market value price for that piece of equipment, so the idea is that if somebody were to damage it or steal it, then we can charge that person that rented it out on their credit card.”

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