Our Origin
A Family Business Born from Everyday Frustrations.
We're the MacDonald family — Alex, Leanne, and our daughter Madeleine. As an oil-patch engineer, Alex spent ten years running drilling rigs where every second costs big money, learning to obsess over making processes as simple as possible. That mindset is what drove us to build TreasureHub together as a family business.
Like many families, our garage kept filling up with perfectly good gear through the years — furniture that no longer fits our space, toys Madeleine has outgrown, exercise equipment gathering dust, and that inevitable stack of items we keep meaning to sell. We knew other families faced the same challenge.
The traditional process of selling items online became a family frustration: fighting through bot messages and scams, endless negotiations, coordinating meet-ups around work and family schedules, and hoping buyers would actually show up. Leanne and Alex kept asking, "Why can't someone just handle this entire process for busy families like us?"
The Real Pain:
| Headache | Solution |
|---|---|
| Paying strangers with cash | Almost nowhere else in your day-to-day life do you pay with cash anymore, why for selling your stuff? No cash hand-offs needed, all payments are processed via Stripe. |
| Haggling over price | The price is set via a discount schedule and only reserved for the first person to "Buy It Now". Reducing the number of messages by 95%. |
| Coordinating pick-up/drop-off times is challenging | Pick-up/drop-off times are easily coordinated via the app only after the item is sold. |
The Proof-of-Concept:
Target window
August 2025
Pilot zone
Houston (within the 610 loop to start)
Scope
50+ items (furniture, baby gear, fitness equipment, etc.). No vehicles or clothing will be accepted.
| Phase | What we'll test | Success metric |
|---|---|---|
| 1. One-Tap Listing | Upload 2 photos minimum → auto-price → auto-list | < 60 second or less listing time |
| 2. Concierge Pick-Up | Truck & trailer, route optimization, and quality control checks. | 100% on-time pick-ups |
| 3. Secure Cash-Out | Buyer pays via card; Seller receives payment once item passes QA/QC checks and buyer accepts delivery. | Zero cash-hand-offs, seller payment within 24 hours of delivery. |
| 4. Feedback Loop | Both Buyer and Seller rate the transaction via SMS/email micro-survey | ≥ 4.5★ Average Satisfaction |
Early access sign-ups earn a family and friends rate of free delivery for the first month for all transactions. They will have direct access to the team building the application for any feedback or suggestions. We'll tweak things until the process feels as friction-free as hailing a rideshare.
The Mission:
If the proof-of-concept is successful, two great things happen:
Households free up space and get paid without any hassle.
Quality items stay in circulation, giving a new life to items that no longer serve a purpose for you.
That's the kind of efficiency any family with an over-stuffed garage like ours can get behind. We're building TreasureHub to solve a problem we live with every day, and we believe other families will benefit from the solution just as much as we will.
Thanks for hopping on the wait-list
Your invite to the August proof-of-concept is coming soon.
— The MacDonald Family
Alex, Leanne, and Madeleine