Vision
The big idea — what Bounce stands for and why it exists.
Y'all know the vision… this is just where I add my fun realizations as I dive deeper into the mission!
Fun stats I came across
(which you've probably already know)
- Mercari's 2023 Reuse Report estimated that American households are sitting on 21.1B unused items, worth $559.8B, or about $4,267 per household. It also found that 2.9B usable items, worth $76.3B, were thrown away or recycled despite being fit for resale.
- Mercari's family resale report found American households have 272.6M unused kids' and baby items, worth $13B, and that the top storage places are closets, garages, and basements. It also found 38.4% of parents keep unused kids' and baby items for sentimental reasons, while parents sell to earn extra cash and declutter.
- The biggest issue with most resale sites in the reselling community is people who ask for phone numbers, passwords, verification codes, suspicious links, off-platform payments, fake/stolen items, no-shows, rude messages, and harassment. OfferUp also specifically warns about fake links to "get paid" or "verify your info," and verification-code scams. WIRED reported that scams are common across selling platforms and cited survey data that 62% of U.S. respondents had encountered a scam on Facebook.
- eBay's 2025 Recommerce Report frames recommerce as mainstream and cross-generational, with nearly 9 in 10 surveyed global consumers and eBay sellers planning to maintain or increase pre-loved spending; it identifies the core drivers as passion, purpose, and financial practicality.
- Mercari estimated that 2.9B products fit for sale were thrown away or recycled in 2022, worth $76.3B. eBay also reports that 68% of surveyed consumers feel good about giving items a second life, and frames recommerce as joyful, expressive, and community-oriented in addition to financial.
- OfferUp's 2025 report says 93% of shoppers bought at least one pre-owned item in the past year, and 54% also sold a secondhand item. It also says the U.S. recommerce market is projected to reach $306.5B by 2030, with 75% of resale happening outside apparel.
Thoughts on your biggest customer segments
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[Obvious] Busy people with unused goods…
- They have stuff, limited time, and enough disposable income that they will pay a premium to avoid hassle.
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Parents with outgrown kids' items
- High frequency, high clutter, clear emotional trigger, strong need for needing someone else to handle busy work.
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Moving / life-transition users
- People moving!
- Have end of the month promotions!!
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People who want to donate and do no work!
- Right now donating still requires looking something up. If selling and donating is in the same place with the same amount of no work, it's done.
★ Big idea!
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For anything that doesn't hit a monetary threshold, you should donate!!!
- For users: they could see something like "estimated value: $4… This product might be difficult to sell, would you like to donate it?"
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Also btw, there might be a cool tax/receipt play here you can offer.
- For everything that someone's donated you can assess/confirm the value, then provide them with a receipt that is usable in taxes.
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This is big for so many reasons for the brand
- "$x millions donated last year."
- Partnerships, and charities that would pick up goods for free!
- Do good grants.
- PLUS it solves the problem of someone taking a photo of something that isn't valuable enough for you to sell. Now you have something to show them instead of "this item is too cheap to sell."
Craigslist
You already know I think craigslist is a dangerous platform to rely a large part of your business on… BUT if you do solve all the Craigslist problems, then you'll have solved a giant barrier to entry for people, bypassing the buying/selling need for business interactions between strangers. Identified as "the worst part of peer-to-peer selling."
- Lowballing, ghosting, no-shows, rude messages, endless questions, fake interest.
- Fake payment links, verification-code scams, off-platform payment requests, suspicious accounts, stolen/fake goods, and stranger-meetup anxiety.
- Bad UI…
Specificity over polish
- Real numbers/data ($4,267, etc.). Specificity is the easiest/cheapest trust signal.
- As soon as we can, we should show/aggressively highlight real results/testimonials from using the app: receipts, actual listings, actual payouts, etc.
? Brandon question: how do you transfer cash to people…?
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I think a big line you can state is:
- We will never ask for your credit card…
- Also any penalties for listing something for sale then changing your mind at some point and pulling out…?
Mascot
The Bounce brand mascot — traditional mark and anthropomorphic guide.
Show human fingerprints
- I know our first thought was using the kangaroo to communicate "proof of work" to the user in moments of the user journey where they have questions. But we should also think of some element of communicating to users that a human is a part of the transaction.
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An AI query on the top 10 human interests that yield the highest online engagement.
And if you don't count boobs… our main marketing elements make up half of the top 6:
- cute animals (#6)
- life hacks/innovations (#3)
- money-making opportunities (#5)
- Which is perfect for marketing and brand awareness. We are set up well to leverage each of these categories.
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But if we're going to get people to use this product after they get to the website, what we need to communicate is trust.
- And the trust rankings on animals, innovation, and money-making opportunities are low as fuck.
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The AI query on the top 10 things that people "trust" the most online: literally the top 6 answers are all some version of "other humans."
- Humans they know, humans they can relate to, humans with provable information, human experts, and other humans who "have the same wants/needs as me."
- So maybe instead of the kangaroo communicating "proof of work," can we "assign" a human to each person's account/sale effort?
→ Suggestion: split communication between the kangaroo and "real" people
- Similar to that super interesting behavior study NYC subway/MTA did, where they learned that people listen more to information from a female voice and to direction from a male voice. Which is why "Stand clear of the closing doors" is a male voice, and "Next stop is…" is a female voice.
Which gives us more flexibility on the design of the kangaroo!
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I can show you all the versions of the kangaroo that serve well as the voice of the company speaking to the user.
- These versions all lean closer to an anthropomorphic version of the mascot.
- But if we make all the "trust-based" communication to the app users come from a proxy human, then the mascot has more flexibility in design. It doesn't need to lead with "trustworthy," and can contribute more to the "unique" and "warmth" brand traits.
A traditional brand mascot that serves as a standout visual identifier for the brand.
An anthropomorphic version of the brand mascot that serves as the front-of-house face of the brand, appearing throughout advertising and the product flow to give users direction, advice, and encouragement.
Type
The colored-U rule, plus 11 typography pairings from the rebrand exploration.
The rule
Every lowercase u in Bounce-branded titles and headers is set in the brand's primary color. Body copy stays in normal ink — the rule lives in headlines, where it reads cleanly. When the surrounding text is already in the primary color, the u flips to ink.
Why it works
- It turns headlines into brand. Most identity systems live in the logo and disappear everywhere else. This rule means every headline, caption, push notification, and email subject line carries the brand. The reader doesn't need the logo to know it's Bounce.
- It says "you" out loud. "You" and "your" are the most common pronouns in customer-facing copy, and Bounce's pitch is about you — your stuff, your space, your cash. Every colored letter quietly reinforces who the brand is for.
- It's recognizable in the wild. A colored letter in the middle of a word is a pattern the eye catches before it reads the message. Same recognition mechanism as Mailchimp yellow or Tiffany blue — but at the typographic level.
- It scales without breaking. No custom typeface, no licensing. Any designer, platform, or size — the rule is "color the u." Cheap systems get executed consistently.
- It's quiet enough to feel grown-up. Restraint reads as confidence. The device doesn't shout, doesn't gimmick, doesn't ask the reader to work harder. Bounce isn't a brand that needs to wave its arms.
Why it solves trust + unique + warm
Most brand systems pick one and lose the others. The colored-u rule threads all three: trust through legible, restrained typography; unique through unclaimed territory (no other brand does this); warm through a warm primary color landing on the letter that spells you.
Color
Palette + typography concepts shown in context. Click Apply on any card to make its accent the site primary.
Web design
Site layout, components, and page-level direction for bounce.com.
Three marketing-site directions for the Bounce homepage. v1 is the current live site at trybounce.ai. v2 and v3 are new explorations that lean into the rebrand — different layouts, different ways of staging the value proposition. Toggle between them to compare side-by-side.
App design
Mobile UX, screens, and interaction patterns for the Bounce app.