If you ever wondered the same, or happen to actually be in need of a crane, or a tractor, or a mill, you’d be pleased to know that there’s indeed now a company that helps you find one in the same user-friendly and cost-effective manner that you have gotten used to when it comes to buying a plane ticket or a juice blender. Machinio, a Chicago-based search engine for used industrial machinery, has recently secured a seed investment totaling $1M from Elevation Investors, Maxfield Capital, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, and a group of high-profile angels including Rony Kahan, co-founder of Indeed. Since launching in early 2013, Machinio has grown to become one of the most visited online resources for used machinery, seeing 300,000 unique visitors each month. The founders, Dmitriy Rokhfeld and Dan Pinto, describe Machinio as the “Kayak of used machinery,” allowing users to compare machines ranging from forklifts to lathes to boilers ( and many, many others) – from multiple sellers in one location. In fact, Ritchie Bros. (the largest standalone marketplace of used equipment in the world, maintains) only a 2% share of the $200B global market for used machinery. Machinio’s solution is to aggregate listings from thousands of dealer and broker websites using their proprietary crawler technology. They have created the most comprehensive and rapidly growing database of machinery listings with over 1.25M listings. In testament to its global nature, Machinio has already facilitated transactions in 17 countries. The majority of those transactions have taken place between buyers and sellers from separate countries. The company plans to use the funding to improve the search experience and continue building out partner relationships. With construction booms continuing in many US cities and emerging markets, Machinio is surely tapping an exciting market and will continue adding countries and new types of equipment to its roster for a very long time.
