8 ms·

Welcome to the ‘Sharing Economy’

166 points by pg 13y ago

trevorstarick 13y ago
I recently co-founded a startup (http://outpost.travel http://outpost.travel) that aggregates the 'sharing economy'. So far we've had a great response to it from investors and users. It's been a crazy experience going from idea to MVP to where we are today and I get exactly what they mean when they say to keep an eye on startups/sites like Airbnb/Vayable. Almost all our users hadn't known about Airbnb before we introduced them to the whole P2P travel experience and quite a few then booked experiences, rideshares and place rentals using us. The one think that I am concerned about is that quite a few federal/state tourism agencies are now banning P2P travel as theres no taxes being made and it takes away from bigger chains such as Hilton and Holiday Inn.
- trevorstarick 13y ago
  And there goes the backend... We're fixing the problem should be back in a few min. Sorry about that! EDIT: Fixed!
  - wikiburner 13y ago
    Did you really get HNed just from a link in your comment, or was the outage coincidental?
    - trevorstarick 13y ago
      We don't have a dedicated server set up (We got one yesterday but its been having technical issues). Had to disable some features that were requiring too much. I honestly wasn't expecting this much traffic this quickly. I guessed wrong :P
    - graeme 13y ago
      I had top comment on pg's most recent essay; I got an extra 1,500 visitors to a subreddit I mentioned in the comment. And my comment only rose to the top when the essay was quite far down the frontpage. The link in this post was top or near top at the time this essay was #1, so I imagine they got quite a few visitors quite fast.
  - lambtron 13y ago
    .travel as a top level domain? Nice! How did you go about getting this may I ask?
    - wikiburner 13y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.travel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.travel - I assumed it was one of the new "buy your own TLD" for $200k (http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/20/icann-to-expand-top-level-domain-names-applications-start-jan-12-2012/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/20/icann-to-expand-top-level-d...), but apparently .travel has been around for 8 years.
    - askovi 13y ago
      By applying to the .travel Registry Association as a registered business with it's main focus being traveling. Once they accept you, you can register a .travel domain from one of the registrars they provide. There are constant audits and check-ups of your website and in case it changes its focus, the domain can be revoked.
      - bcoates 13y ago
        Where do I complain about the false advertising going on over at http://time.travel/ http://time.travel/ ?
- zbruhnke 13y ago
  I met your co-founder last week at International Startup festival(we were both finalists for the grand prize) you guys are awesome! Keep up the good work!
jtchang 13y ago
There is going to be a head on collision between current government regulations and this rise of social sharing. Airbnb vs the entrenched hotel industry. Uber vs the taxi commissions. I, for one, welcome it. It's time the market voiced their opinion over how much value these groups provide. For example, take internet. Right now everyone can get cable/dsl but in many contracts it is against their terms to share it. I understand why because a lot of their #s are based around utilization. But I still feel in some way taken advantage of.
- frossie 13y ago
  Not just social sharing, I am amazed how many regulations there are that protect businesses from disruption by other businesses. For example, Tesla cannot sell cars in Arizona, because it is against the law for a manufacturer to sell a car directly to a consumer: http://bit.ly/143Zvqt http://bit.ly/143Zvqt
  - muzz 13y ago
    That regulation affects not just Tesla, but all car makers. Tesla is certainly innovative, but these restrictions have nothing to do with that innovation; gas-guzzling SUVs cannot be sold direct-to-consumer either.
    - dantheman 13y ago
      But Tesla is the only car manufacturer without dealers so they're the only one that can challenge the law without destroying their existing sales channel.
    - jodrellblank 13y ago
      "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." - Anatole France, Le Lys Rouge [The Red Lily] (1894), ch. 7
  - lorax 13y ago
    And yet, that regulation was probably created for a good reason, to protect consumers from car companies selling cars that they had no way of servicing effectively if something went wrong with the car or if there was a recall. Maybe Tesla has found a way of profitably selling cars and servicing them without a dealer network and the law should be changed. Or, maybe Tesla just isn't big enough to have had that problem yet.
jjsz 13y ago
The sharing economy is also known as the collaborative consumption based economy, a directory of websites I found a while a go: http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/directory/ http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/directory/.
- jjindev 13y ago
  Toffler should get some credit for "prosumer," years and years ago.
  - jjsz 13y ago
    Looking at Wikipedia, he did get some recognition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosumer#General_meanings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosumer#General_meanings.
muzz 13y ago
Hasn't the sharing economy already reached the tipping point? The ideas in the piece clearly aren't new for most of us on HackerNews, but I would contend they're not really new for many in the general public either. There have been many mainstream news stories about the sharing economy. And even battles in big cities (SF, NY) over regulation. I would've guessed that this was already on many people's radar.
- rjurney 13y ago
  Friedman only writes things that are obviously true, or that most people would agree with.
- graeme 13y ago
  You'd be surprised. About half the people I talk to under 25 haven't heard of Airbnb yet. This usually comes up when I tell them what Ycombinator is. "Have you heard of Dropbox? Airbnb? Reddit?" Usually one of those three works, but a surprising amount of people don't know what either of the first two are. I even talk to a lot of people who don't know what Reddit is. They're all obviously mainstream, just not as mainstream as, say, staying in a hotel.
  - stephengillie 13y ago
    I was having dinner with some college friends recently who hadn't heard of Google's self-driving car. O_o
salimmadjd 13y ago
OH NO! Tom Freedman just invented the Sharing Economy. Be hold for 1000 pages plus book and endless pontifications on virtues of "What I call the Sharing Economy" on the Charlie Rose and other shows.
- wikiburner 13y ago
  I've never really understood the Tom Friedman backlash. He seems to be a pretty thoughtful, reasonably imaginative writer. My guess is that it's because he's not a doctrinaire liberal, plus probably the whole Iraq thing.
  - u2328 13y ago
    The backlash exists because most of his writings consist of regurgitated ideas plucked from elsewhere that he attempts to pass off as his own as though he's some sort revolutionary thinker in the modern era. Then he sells tickets to his Friedman Forum for $1K a pop to people who aren't read-well enough to realize as much.
    - wikiburner 13y ago
      So your issue with Friedman is that he's aggregating, popularizing, and improving the accessibility of new ideas that he himself didn't create? Sounds like any number of journalists/writers to me. Do you really feel that he has an attribution issue? He seems to always put the focus on people at the forefront of the change he describes (for example, in this article the focus is on Chesky.) It's not like his articles are some TED like exercise, where he portrays himself as being at the center of making all of these new things happen.
  - gautamnarula 13y ago
    Friedman is a skilled writer, but most of the backlash is from him taking well established ideas and presenting them as if he discovered them. For instance, his books "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" and "The World is Flat" are basically just standard treatises on globalization, but reading them you'd think Friedman has done years of painstaking research to uncover this new, previously unheard of trend. Not all Friedman books are like that. "From Beirut to Jerusalem" was excellent and should be mandatory reading for anyone who wants to get a better grasp of the conflicts in the middle east.
minor_nitwit 13y ago
Sharing Houses is just time shares taken to the logical internet extreme. What are some other sharing ideas that are out there? I think women's fashion could benefit from something like this, sharing shoes - dresses, gowns etc. Think of all the money that is spent on weddings, proms, etc. For the typical man, power tools and machinery. The one guy in town with the Bridgeport will make out like a bandit. Neighbours let each other borrow sugar or borrow an egg. - There's definitely a location aspect involved in all of this. Vacations are different because you're specifically going to some place far away. Maybe otherwise, you shouldn't focus on a single type of item, and simply connect the nearby community with a focus on sharing any and everything.
- Tossrock 13y ago
  This idea already exists for women's fashion, it's called 99 dresses: http://www.99dresses.com/ http://www.99dresses.com/
- deleted 13y ago
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- pg 13y ago
  I think women's fashion could benefit from something like this There's a startup in the current batch doing Netflix for women's fashion: http://letote.com http://letote.com. It's quite popular among the women who work for YC.
deleted 13y ago
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graeme 13y ago
If you think Airbnb is big now, just wait. I'm 27. Most people I know have not stayed in an Airbnb rental, or considered becoming hosts. They haven't heard of it, or they're reluctant to stay with a stranger. Eventually, positive word of mouth will convince them to try. They just have to like it once and they'll do it again. Friedman tried to paint Airbnb as massive, but all I can think about it how tiny it still is compared to the global hotel industry. You may say that for use case X, a hotel would be better. Fine. But I'd estimate 80% of the market hasn't tried Airbnb, and X% of them will switch once they do.
- jmtame 13y ago
  There has been somewhat of a stigma associated with it. I was the guy telling my friend in Illinois about it when we were planning a trip to LA with some other friends. I also told my parents when we were planning a vacation. Once you experience it, it's awesome and people will talk about it. You can find this pattern in other markets, like online dating. A lot of people were initially hesitant (and still are), so there are social forces at work. Once the lid comes off that, I think it'll blow up. I have the urge to box Airbnb into this "paid couch-surfing" category, but that's not really what they are. They positioned their company as something greater than that: all of the services that went along with their experience. Funny enough, the investors didn't buy it because they were tunnel visioned by how big it could be and whether it would scale at the seed stage. Those are the wrong questions to be asking at seed, and actually I don't think many founders could have pulled off starting Airbnb. The team clearly was the overriding factor in Airbnb working, followed by their excitement to be doing that startup. I liked the Subject: Airbnb "essay" which showed how true this was (http://paulgraham.com/airbnb.html http://paulgraham.com/airbnb.html).
  - dano414 13y ago
    Some people are still turned off by online dating.
    - jmtame 13y ago
      I'm not sure why this is downvoted. That stigma in dating is still alive and strong today, and Airbnb is still stigmatized for some of the younger people I know outside of Silicon Valley. Part of the article talks about trust, which is pretty important. Both couch-surfing and dating have lacked identity and trust, which makes it more comfortable. The last thing you want is for someone to axe murder you or spike your drink and not know who it was. If you get axe murdered, knowing who it was is your last concern, but at least it acts as an enormous deterrent. Identity is the reason places like Hacker News don't completely degrade to the rules of Crowd Psychology (well, most of the time). That friend in Illinois was very uncomfortable with the idea of sleeping in some random person's house, and I didn't realize how absurd it sounded until I was listening to myself explain it to him and his very uncertain reaction. The reputation/trust element removes that "randomness." So much so that I won't book with listings that don't have any reviews, and I tell my friends the same thing.
Dewie 13y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_exchange_trading_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_exchange_trading_system I like the idea of something like this, with a local non-monetary exchange currency.
deleted 13y ago
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thejteam 13y ago
I don't really like the term "sharing" applied to airbnb and the like. More like renting out excess capacity, which businesses have been doing since the concept of business first came into being.
- muzz 13y ago
  It is indeed a misnomer. Services like AirBNB allow for spare personal consumption to be monetized as business would, yet users of it don't want to pay the costs of operating as a business or follow the same rules. EDIT: "The monetizing economy" would probably be a better term, but that doesn't sound as noble.
nlh 13y ago
I love love love AirBNB. I host w/ my apartment in NYC and it's enabled me to travel around the world this year and still have a home base when I need it. I've used AirBNB a lot in those travels. BUT (there's always a 'but' isn't there). I'm skeptical. On two fronts: First, it's becoming increasingly difficult to make reservations as a guest in a nice place unless you're planning 4-6 months ahead of time. Some people have the luxury of doing that, many do not. I've just taken reservations for both Xmas and New Year's eve at my place in NYC and it's barely the end of July. As a guest, this irks me. I spent 3 weeks in London recently, booked the trip about a month in advance, and tried to no avail to find a place on AirBNB -- nada. All the nice places had been snapped up months ago, and the ones that were left were either shady brokers or absolute crap (it makes sense -- I wanted a 3 week booking. If a nice place had even a 1-day booking in that window, the whole place was unavailable). I ended up booking on HomeAway or FlipKey or one of their competitors. Second, I feel in some sense, the tide is turning the other way on the regulation front. I've been lucky with my place in NYC in that I'm in an AirBNB-friendly building and I've had extremely good luck in getting terrific guests. But the regulatory environment is not AirBNB-friendly and it's getting less so. Several people who used to host in NYC have stopped doing so for fear (irrational or otherwise) of running afoul of the law. I tried to host w/ my apartment in SF and within 72 hours of posting the listing, I received a very strongly-worded C&D letter from the building's management company staff attorney. They had someone in the office who constantly scanned for listings on AirBNB and came down hard and fast. Others have reported similar stories from HOAs and management companies. So of course I want nothing but the best for AirBNB - I've a happy customer on both sides. But I don't think it's such a slam dunk as many seem to think it is...
- joering2 13y ago
  I saw a bright lightbulb above my head for a moment: a paid service for $99 per month (or whatever!) and we will daily/weekly monitor if any of your properties/tenants are listed on BnB. Optional service for extra buck: we will mail them C&D letter (with Realtor logo on it, of course) to violators. I can see a brilliant marketing campaign and can imagine many Realtors signing up! Does something like that already exist?
  - 13y ago
kevinalexbrown 13y ago
Most remarkable to me is that their success required so few conceptual shifts (but important ones). Time-shares and couchsurfing and vacation rentals already existed. I'll try to remember this the next time I think something's 'obviously' been tried before. It also seems like there was a large shift in (or discovery of) the willingness of individuals to participate in the way that makes sharing work. I suspect that many other innovations will be primarily social ones enabled by the internet (the watsi model?), and that these will be just as powerful as, say, graphene or spacex.
- seiji 13y ago
  It also seems like there was a large shift in (or discovery of) the willingness of individuals to participate in the way that makes sharing work. The "large shift" was when people started getting paid. People will do anything to get paid, including inconveniencing themselves by illegally renting out rooms in their apartments.
andyidsinga 13y ago
i read the title as "welcome to the sharding economy" - oops - but still, looking fwd to reading that post somewhere.
brownbat 13y ago
What's the airbnb equivalent for renting a drill/lawnmower/weed whacker/snowblower from a neighbor?
- andyidsinga 13y ago
  hardwairbnb :)
- namenotrequired 13y ago
  https://peerby.com/ https://peerby.com/
- cyunker 13y ago
  For borrowing there's this: http://neighborgoods.net/ http://neighborgoods.net/
dano414 13y ago
Great concept, but in Marin county I would get a huge fine for doing this. My neighbors would turn on me in a second.
- spiritplumber 13y ago
  I've had people here for a while - they were homeless. I took them in, helped them stop doing (most) drugs, and taught them a trade. Nobody in my condo cluster had a problem with it. And yes I live in Marin.
namenotrequired 13y ago
Reminds me of https://peerby.com/ https://peerby.com/ which is also definitely part of this.
sellandb 13y ago
I like to think about the "Sharing Economy" kind of like the shift from physical servers to virtual servers. A similar set of principals come into play when you try to make better use of excess memory and CPU cycles VS when you try to make use of nights when your spare room is empty.
anigbrowl 13y ago
This is sort of a rip of the Economist story: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21573104-internet-everything-hire-rise-sharing-economy http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21573104-internet-ever... I do think it would be more appropriate to call it the 'renting economy' or the 'ending economy,' however. Sharing implies something more equitable than a straight business transaction.
- jrn 13y ago
  Yep rental economy. Internet lowering of transaction costs is enabling the unbundling of ownership rights to capital/durable goods. AirBnb, facilitating exchange by providing 'trust', which is reducing the asymmetric information between the two negotiating parties.
unimpressive 13y ago
Can I see some of the castle listings? I'm curious. EDIT: Sweet... http://www.probnb.com/the-most-expensive-airbnb-listings-in-the-world http://www.probnb.com/the-most-expensive-airbnb-listings-in-...
paulsutter 13y ago
The sharing economy is great for anyone who thinks bankruptcy is a cool idea. If you share your home with someone, they can sue you for arbitrarily reasons. If you share your car with someone, and they get into an accident, the victims (or "victims") can sue you for arbitrary reasons. (Yes the services provide liability insurance, but the caps are well below awards that are commonly made in accident cases. Just trawl some websites of ambulance chaser lawyers to see what I mean) EDIT: NO this cannot be solved with "boilerplate waivers". YES it's a shame. Try to find a lawyer who is willing to share his car over the Internet. You can't. Because they know. EDIT: As for jurisdictions, I'm referring to the US. California is probably close to worst case.
- lukifer 13y ago
  Couldn't this be solved with simple boilerplate waivers? It really is a shame that litigiousness has become so bad. My folks had to stop letting neighbor kids use their zip-line when they learned they could be sued and lose everything if anyone hurt themselves.
  - goggles99 13y ago
    A waiver will not solve the issue of negligence. What is considered negligent? Well it is not definable in any given terms. So someone sues you for having black mold in your attic and now they are permanently disabled for staying in your house for two weeks. You didn't know it was there, but you should have. someone trips and falls in your kitchen the tile is 1/96 of an inch uneven, you are negligent. Someone's kid gets scalded in your bathtub, it's your fault because that hot water heater that you just had replaced was too hot. You can never be safe, any waiver saying "I will not sue this land owner for any reason no matter what" is worthless because even if they did sigh it, it would be deemed illegal. Good luck.
- cthor 13y ago
  Is this true for most jurisdictions? That doesn't seem like the kind of law that lends itself to being universal.
- yaix 13y ago
acd 13y ago
Sharing is caring.
VLM 13y ago
"can be trusted like a company and provide the services of a company. And once you unlock that idea, it is so much bigger than homes. ... There is a whole generation of people that don’t want everything mass produced. They want things that are unique and personal.” " Failure of analysis. The reason why people want to trust each other rather than companies is not some weird cultural shift that doesn't exist WRT anti-mass production, its the death of trust in existing big companies. I want a coffee mug. I don't really care how many other copies exist, I'd just like one not made with lead, where the artwork isn't water soluble, and it hasn't been value engineered to fail rapidly. Because of crony capitalism and consolidation, and the careful cooperation of for-profit media also owned by consolidated crony capitalists (in some situations, the same individuals...), those options are not available in the big company mug market. So a system that rates individuals for their production is going to do well if the big companies are unable to provide what individuals are allowed to provide. The TLDR is a monopolistic command economy (ours) is inherently inefficient. Computers and tech and stuff can make at least some inefficient things, efficient enough. I don't really care if I'm sleeping in the most unique bedroom in the world... I'm asleep, what do I care. On the other hand, I'd like it to be reasonably clean, no bed bugs, and no one stealing my stuff. I'd feel more ethical if no illegal aliens were being treated inhumanely as part of my experience. And no customer service script readers. The big corporations simply can no longer provide that experience like they could in the past, too bad. Airbnb can provide some trust in that experience. Guess which is growing?
VLM 13y ago
An area of failure in anecdotes about "sharing economy" or specifically airbnb is the locality and individuality of the transactions vs the "big domain name" for the whole thing. Anecdotes, good or bad, are as pointless as reading nation wide multi thousand tower cell phone company reviews. "Oh, you're looking for a cell phone company (in LA)? Well let me tell you, (multinational) is (terrible|great) (in NYC)."
ansdkfus13 13y ago
I like the business concept behind Airbnb because it can apply to so many other industries - which suffers from the mismatch between supply and demand. It definitely helps spawn similar ideas that are set out to help eliminate inefficiencies in the economy. Now there are a lot of start-ups that help you share your car, vacation home, yacht and pretty much whatever you own that you would rather share with someone than let it sit rotting in your garage.
sixbrx 13y ago
Can't help but wonder if this is one of those things that will go downhill towards the "dangerous, better not try" once a wider demographic than the early adopter tech crowd gets involved. Like hitch-hiking?

166 points by pg 13y ago

I recently co-founded a startup (http://outpost.travel http://outpost.travel) that aggregates the 'sharing economy'. So far we've had a great response to it from investors and users. It's been a crazy experience going from idea to MVP to where we are today and I get exactly what they mean when they say to keep an eye on startups/sites like Airbnb/Vayable. Almost all our users hadn't known about Airbnb before we introduced them to the whole P2P travel experience and quite a few then booked experiences, rideshares and place rentals using us. The one think that I am concerned about is that quite a few federal/state tourism agencies are now banning P2P travel as theres no taxes being made and it takes away from bigger chains such as Hilton and Holiday Inn.

trevorstarick 13y ago
And there goes the backend... We're fixing the problem should be back in a few min. Sorry about that! EDIT: Fixed!
- wikiburner 13y ago
  Did you really get HNed just from a link in your comment, or was the outage coincidental?
  - trevorstarick 13y ago
    We don't have a dedicated server set up (We got one yesterday but its been having technical issues). Had to disable some features that were requiring too much. I honestly wasn't expecting this much traffic this quickly. I guessed wrong :P
  - graeme 13y ago
    I had top comment on pg's most recent essay; I got an extra 1,500 visitors to a subreddit I mentioned in the comment. And my comment only rose to the top when the essay was quite far down the frontpage. The link in this post was top or near top at the time this essay was #1, so I imagine they got quite a few visitors quite fast.
- lambtron 13y ago
  .travel as a top level domain? Nice! How did you go about getting this may I ask?
  - wikiburner 13y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.travel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.travel - I assumed it was one of the new "buy your own TLD" for $200k (http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/20/icann-to-expand-top-level-domain-names-applications-start-jan-12-2012/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/20/icann-to-expand-top-level-d...), but apparently .travel has been around for 8 years.
  - askovi 13y ago
    By applying to the .travel Registry Association as a registered business with it's main focus being traveling. Once they accept you, you can register a .travel domain from one of the registrars they provide. There are constant audits and check-ups of your website and in case it changes its focus, the domain can be revoked.
    - bcoates 13y ago
      Where do I complain about the false advertising going on over at http://time.travel/ http://time.travel/ ?
zbruhnke 13y ago
I met your co-founder last week at International Startup festival(we were both finalists for the grand prize) you guys are awesome! Keep up the good work!

jtchang 13y ago

There is going to be a head on collision between current government regulations and this rise of social sharing. Airbnb vs the entrenched hotel industry. Uber vs the taxi commissions. I, for one, welcome it. It's time the market voiced their opinion over how much value these groups provide. For example, take internet. Right now everyone can get cable/dsl but in many contracts it is against their terms to share it. I understand why because a lot of their #s are based around utilization. But I still feel in some way taken advantage of.

frossie 13y ago
Not just social sharing, I am amazed how many regulations there are that protect businesses from disruption by other businesses. For example, Tesla cannot sell cars in Arizona, because it is against the law for a manufacturer to sell a car directly to a consumer: http://bit.ly/143Zvqt http://bit.ly/143Zvqt
- muzz 13y ago
  That regulation affects not just Tesla, but all car makers. Tesla is certainly innovative, but these restrictions have nothing to do with that innovation; gas-guzzling SUVs cannot be sold direct-to-consumer either.
  - dantheman 13y ago
    But Tesla is the only car manufacturer without dealers so they're the only one that can challenge the law without destroying their existing sales channel.
  - jodrellblank 13y ago
    "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." - Anatole France, Le Lys Rouge [The Red Lily] (1894), ch. 7
- lorax 13y ago
  And yet, that regulation was probably created for a good reason, to protect consumers from car companies selling cars that they had no way of servicing effectively if something went wrong with the car or if there was a recall. Maybe Tesla has found a way of profitably selling cars and servicing them without a dealer network and the law should be changed. Or, maybe Tesla just isn't big enough to have had that problem yet.

jjsz 13y ago

The sharing economy is also known as the collaborative consumption based economy, a directory of websites I found a while a go: http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/directory/ http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/directory/.

jjindev 13y ago
Toffler should get some credit for "prosumer," years and years ago.
- jjsz 13y ago
  Looking at Wikipedia, he did get some recognition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosumer#General_meanings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosumer#General_meanings.

muzz 13y ago

Hasn't the sharing economy already reached the tipping point? The ideas in the piece clearly aren't new for most of us on HackerNews, but I would contend they're not really new for many in the general public either. There have been many mainstream news stories about the sharing economy. And even battles in big cities (SF, NY) over regulation. I would've guessed that this was already on many people's radar.

rjurney 13y ago
Friedman only writes things that are obviously true, or that most people would agree with.
graeme 13y ago
You'd be surprised. About half the people I talk to under 25 haven't heard of Airbnb yet. This usually comes up when I tell them what Ycombinator is. "Have you heard of Dropbox? Airbnb? Reddit?" Usually one of those three works, but a surprising amount of people don't know what either of the first two are. I even talk to a lot of people who don't know what Reddit is. They're all obviously mainstream, just not as mainstream as, say, staying in a hotel.
- stephengillie 13y ago
  I was having dinner with some college friends recently who hadn't heard of Google's self-driving car. O_o

salimmadjd 13y ago

OH NO! Tom Freedman just invented the Sharing Economy. Be hold for 1000 pages plus book and endless pontifications on virtues of "What I call the Sharing Economy" on the Charlie Rose and other shows.

wikiburner 13y ago
I've never really understood the Tom Friedman backlash. He seems to be a pretty thoughtful, reasonably imaginative writer. My guess is that it's because he's not a doctrinaire liberal, plus probably the whole Iraq thing.
- u2328 13y ago
  The backlash exists because most of his writings consist of regurgitated ideas plucked from elsewhere that he attempts to pass off as his own as though he's some sort revolutionary thinker in the modern era. Then he sells tickets to his Friedman Forum for $1K a pop to people who aren't read-well enough to realize as much.
  - wikiburner 13y ago
    So your issue with Friedman is that he's aggregating, popularizing, and improving the accessibility of new ideas that he himself didn't create? Sounds like any number of journalists/writers to me. Do you really feel that he has an attribution issue? He seems to always put the focus on people at the forefront of the change he describes (for example, in this article the focus is on Chesky.) It's not like his articles are some TED like exercise, where he portrays himself as being at the center of making all of these new things happen.
- gautamnarula 13y ago
  Friedman is a skilled writer, but most of the backlash is from him taking well established ideas and presenting them as if he discovered them. For instance, his books "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" and "The World is Flat" are basically just standard treatises on globalization, but reading them you'd think Friedman has done years of painstaking research to uncover this new, previously unheard of trend. Not all Friedman books are like that. "From Beirut to Jerusalem" was excellent and should be mandatory reading for anyone who wants to get a better grasp of the conflicts in the middle east.

minor_nitwit 13y ago

Sharing Houses is just time shares taken to the logical internet extreme. What are some other sharing ideas that are out there? I think women's fashion could benefit from something like this, sharing shoes - dresses, gowns etc. Think of all the money that is spent on weddings, proms, etc. For the typical man, power tools and machinery. The one guy in town with the Bridgeport will make out like a bandit. Neighbours let each other borrow sugar or borrow an egg. - There's definitely a location aspect involved in all of this. Vacations are different because you're specifically going to some place far away. Maybe otherwise, you shouldn't focus on a single type of item, and simply connect the nearby community with a focus on sharing any and everything.

Tossrock 13y ago
This idea already exists for women's fashion, it's called 99 dresses: http://www.99dresses.com/ http://www.99dresses.com/
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pg 13y ago
I think women's fashion could benefit from something like this There's a startup in the current batch doing Netflix for women's fashion: http://letote.com http://letote.com. It's quite popular among the women who work for YC.

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graeme 13y ago

If you think Airbnb is big now, just wait. I'm 27. Most people I know have not stayed in an Airbnb rental, or considered becoming hosts. They haven't heard of it, or they're reluctant to stay with a stranger. Eventually, positive word of mouth will convince them to try. They just have to like it once and they'll do it again. Friedman tried to paint Airbnb as massive, but all I can think about it how tiny it still is compared to the global hotel industry. You may say that for use case X, a hotel would be better. Fine. But I'd estimate 80% of the market hasn't tried Airbnb, and X% of them will switch once they do.

jmtame 13y ago
There has been somewhat of a stigma associated with it. I was the guy telling my friend in Illinois about it when we were planning a trip to LA with some other friends. I also told my parents when we were planning a vacation. Once you experience it, it's awesome and people will talk about it. You can find this pattern in other markets, like online dating. A lot of people were initially hesitant (and still are), so there are social forces at work. Once the lid comes off that, I think it'll blow up. I have the urge to box Airbnb into this "paid couch-surfing" category, but that's not really what they are. They positioned their company as something greater than that: all of the services that went along with their experience. Funny enough, the investors didn't buy it because they were tunnel visioned by how big it could be and whether it would scale at the seed stage. Those are the wrong questions to be asking at seed, and actually I don't think many founders could have pulled off starting Airbnb. The team clearly was the overriding factor in Airbnb working, followed by their excitement to be doing that startup. I liked the Subject: Airbnb "essay" which showed how true this was (http://paulgraham.com/airbnb.html http://paulgraham.com/airbnb.html).
- dano414 13y ago
  Some people are still turned off by online dating.
  - jmtame 13y ago
    I'm not sure why this is downvoted. That stigma in dating is still alive and strong today, and Airbnb is still stigmatized for some of the younger people I know outside of Silicon Valley. Part of the article talks about trust, which is pretty important. Both couch-surfing and dating have lacked identity and trust, which makes it more comfortable. The last thing you want is for someone to axe murder you or spike your drink and not know who it was. If you get axe murdered, knowing who it was is your last concern, but at least it acts as an enormous deterrent. Identity is the reason places like Hacker News don't completely degrade to the rules of Crowd Psychology (well, most of the time). That friend in Illinois was very uncomfortable with the idea of sleeping in some random person's house, and I didn't realize how absurd it sounded until I was listening to myself explain it to him and his very uncertain reaction. The reputation/trust element removes that "randomness." So much so that I won't book with listings that don't have any reviews, and I tell my friends the same thing.

Dewie 13y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_exchange_trading_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_exchange_trading_system I like the idea of something like this, with a local non-monetary exchange currency.

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thejteam 13y ago

I don't really like the term "sharing" applied to airbnb and the like. More like renting out excess capacity, which businesses have been doing since the concept of business first came into being.

muzz 13y ago
It is indeed a misnomer. Services like AirBNB allow for spare personal consumption to be monetized as business would, yet users of it don't want to pay the costs of operating as a business or follow the same rules. EDIT: "The monetizing economy" would probably be a better term, but that doesn't sound as noble.

nlh 13y ago

I love love love AirBNB. I host w/ my apartment in NYC and it's enabled me to travel around the world this year and still have a home base when I need it. I've used AirBNB a lot in those travels. BUT (there's always a 'but' isn't there). I'm skeptical. On two fronts: First, it's becoming increasingly difficult to make reservations as a guest in a nice place unless you're planning 4-6 months ahead of time. Some people have the luxury of doing that, many do not. I've just taken reservations for both Xmas and New Year's eve at my place in NYC and it's barely the end of July. As a guest, this irks me. I spent 3 weeks in London recently, booked the trip about a month in advance, and tried to no avail to find a place on AirBNB -- nada. All the nice places had been snapped up months ago, and the ones that were left were either shady brokers or absolute crap (it makes sense -- I wanted a 3 week booking. If a nice place had even a 1-day booking in that window, the whole place was unavailable). I ended up booking on HomeAway or FlipKey or one of their competitors. Second, I feel in some sense, the tide is turning the other way on the regulation front. I've been lucky with my place in NYC in that I'm in an AirBNB-friendly building and I've had extremely good luck in getting terrific guests. But the regulatory environment is not AirBNB-friendly and it's getting less so. Several people who used to host in NYC have stopped doing so for fear (irrational or otherwise) of running afoul of the law. I tried to host w/ my apartment in SF and within 72 hours of posting the listing, I received a very strongly-worded C&D letter from the building's management company staff attorney. They had someone in the office who constantly scanned for listings on AirBNB and came down hard and fast. Others have reported similar stories from HOAs and management companies. So of course I want nothing but the best for AirBNB - I've a happy customer on both sides. But I don't think it's such a slam dunk as many seem to think it is...

joering2 13y ago
I saw a bright lightbulb above my head for a moment: a paid service for $99 per month (or whatever!) and we will daily/weekly monitor if any of your properties/tenants are listed on BnB. Optional service for extra buck: we will mail them C&D letter (with Realtor logo on it, of course) to violators. I can see a brilliant marketing campaign and can imagine many Realtors signing up! Does something like that already exist?
- 13y ago

kevinalexbrown 13y ago

Most remarkable to me is that their success required so few conceptual shifts (but important ones). Time-shares and couchsurfing and vacation rentals already existed. I'll try to remember this the next time I think something's 'obviously' been tried before. It also seems like there was a large shift in (or discovery of) the willingness of individuals to participate in the way that makes sharing work. I suspect that many other innovations will be primarily social ones enabled by the internet (the watsi model?), and that these will be just as powerful as, say, graphene or spacex.

seiji 13y ago
It also seems like there was a large shift in (or discovery of) the willingness of individuals to participate in the way that makes sharing work. The "large shift" was when people started getting paid. People will do anything to get paid, including inconveniencing themselves by illegally renting out rooms in their apartments.

andyidsinga 13y ago

i read the title as "welcome to the sharding economy" - oops - but still, looking fwd to reading that post somewhere.

brownbat 13y ago

What's the airbnb equivalent for renting a drill/lawnmower/weed whacker/snowblower from a neighbor?

andyidsinga 13y ago
hardwairbnb :)
namenotrequired 13y ago
https://peerby.com/ https://peerby.com/
cyunker 13y ago
For borrowing there's this: http://neighborgoods.net/ http://neighborgoods.net/

dano414 13y ago

Great concept, but in Marin county I would get a huge fine for doing this. My neighbors would turn on me in a second.

spiritplumber 13y ago
I've had people here for a while - they were homeless. I took them in, helped them stop doing (most) drugs, and taught them a trade. Nobody in my condo cluster had a problem with it. And yes I live in Marin.

namenotrequired 13y ago

Reminds me of https://peerby.com/ https://peerby.com/ which is also definitely part of this.

sellandb 13y ago

I like to think about the "Sharing Economy" kind of like the shift from physical servers to virtual servers. A similar set of principals come into play when you try to make better use of excess memory and CPU cycles VS when you try to make use of nights when your spare room is empty.

anigbrowl 13y ago

This is sort of a rip of the Economist story: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21573104-internet-everything-hire-rise-sharing-economy http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21573104-internet-ever... I do think it would be more appropriate to call it the 'renting economy' or the 'ending economy,' however. Sharing implies something more equitable than a straight business transaction.

jrn 13y ago
Yep rental economy. Internet lowering of transaction costs is enabling the unbundling of ownership rights to capital/durable goods. AirBnb, facilitating exchange by providing 'trust', which is reducing the asymmetric information between the two negotiating parties.

unimpressive 13y ago

Can I see some of the castle listings? I'm curious. EDIT: Sweet... http://www.probnb.com/the-most-expensive-airbnb-listings-in-the-world http://www.probnb.com/the-most-expensive-airbnb-listings-in-...

paulsutter 13y ago

The sharing economy is great for anyone who thinks bankruptcy is a cool idea. If you share your home with someone, they can sue you for arbitrarily reasons. If you share your car with someone, and they get into an accident, the victims (or "victims") can sue you for arbitrary reasons. (Yes the services provide liability insurance, but the caps are well below awards that are commonly made in accident cases. Just trawl some websites of ambulance chaser lawyers to see what I mean) EDIT: NO this cannot be solved with "boilerplate waivers". YES it's a shame. Try to find a lawyer who is willing to share his car over the Internet. You can't. Because they know. EDIT: As for jurisdictions, I'm referring to the US. California is probably close to worst case.

lukifer 13y ago
Couldn't this be solved with simple boilerplate waivers? It really is a shame that litigiousness has become so bad. My folks had to stop letting neighbor kids use their zip-line when they learned they could be sued and lose everything if anyone hurt themselves.
- goggles99 13y ago
  A waiver will not solve the issue of negligence. What is considered negligent? Well it is not definable in any given terms. So someone sues you for having black mold in your attic and now they are permanently disabled for staying in your house for two weeks. You didn't know it was there, but you should have. someone trips and falls in your kitchen the tile is 1/96 of an inch uneven, you are negligent. Someone's kid gets scalded in your bathtub, it's your fault because that hot water heater that you just had replaced was too hot. You can never be safe, any waiver saying "I will not sue this land owner for any reason no matter what" is worthless because even if they did sigh it, it would be deemed illegal. Good luck.
cthor 13y ago
Is this true for most jurisdictions? That doesn't seem like the kind of law that lends itself to being universal.
yaix 13y ago

acd 13y ago

Sharing is caring.

VLM 13y ago

"can be trusted like a company and provide the services of a company. And once you unlock that idea, it is so much bigger than homes. ... There is a whole generation of people that don’t want everything mass produced. They want things that are unique and personal.” " Failure of analysis. The reason why people want to trust each other rather than companies is not some weird cultural shift that doesn't exist WRT anti-mass production, its the death of trust in existing big companies. I want a coffee mug. I don't really care how many other copies exist, I'd just like one not made with lead, where the artwork isn't water soluble, and it hasn't been value engineered to fail rapidly. Because of crony capitalism and consolidation, and the careful cooperation of for-profit media also owned by consolidated crony capitalists (in some situations, the same individuals...), those options are not available in the big company mug market. So a system that rates individuals for their production is going to do well if the big companies are unable to provide what individuals are allowed to provide. The TLDR is a monopolistic command economy (ours) is inherently inefficient. Computers and tech and stuff can make at least some inefficient things, efficient enough. I don't really care if I'm sleeping in the most unique bedroom in the world... I'm asleep, what do I care. On the other hand, I'd like it to be reasonably clean, no bed bugs, and no one stealing my stuff. I'd feel more ethical if no illegal aliens were being treated inhumanely as part of my experience. And no customer service script readers. The big corporations simply can no longer provide that experience like they could in the past, too bad. Airbnb can provide some trust in that experience. Guess which is growing?

VLM 13y ago

An area of failure in anecdotes about "sharing economy" or specifically airbnb is the locality and individuality of the transactions vs the "big domain name" for the whole thing. Anecdotes, good or bad, are as pointless as reading nation wide multi thousand tower cell phone company reviews. "Oh, you're looking for a cell phone company (in LA)? Well let me tell you, (multinational) is (terrible|great) (in NYC)."

ansdkfus13 13y ago

I like the business concept behind Airbnb because it can apply to so many other industries - which suffers from the mismatch between supply and demand. It definitely helps spawn similar ideas that are set out to help eliminate inefficiencies in the economy. Now there are a lot of start-ups that help you share your car, vacation home, yacht and pretty much whatever you own that you would rather share with someone than let it sit rotting in your garage.

sixbrx 13y ago

Can't help but wonder if this is one of those things that will go downhill towards the "dangerous, better not try" once a wider demographic than the early adopter tech crowd gets involved. Like hitch-hiking?