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The Rise of Collaborative Consumption

Insider Blog: "From Surplus to Sharing"

"From Surplus to Sharing"

How leading a collaborative lifestyle can help build a professional community and launch a start-up.

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By Jamie Wong, Founder & CEO, Vayable.com on August 22, 2011

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I started playing soccer when I was eight years old. Today I continue to enjoy the thrill of the great “passing game”. A squad works together to move the ball from one end of the field to the next, one player pops it in the goal, and the victory is everyone’s to share.

The journey of a start-up is similar, particularly when you make sharing your business.

Two years ago when I moved from New York to San Francisco, I was surprised to discover that a pay-it-forward ethos dominates the start-up scene. This is a different concept than pure networking or favor exchanges that prevail in New York. In the Bay Area, everyone from the powerless entrepreneur to the Almighty VC expects to share their specific knowledge and resources with those who lack them, despite the highly competitive climate. This is what powers Bay Area start-ups.

But for collaborative companies such as ours, sharing is more than a custom, it’s our lifeblood.

At Vayable, we joke that we are “powered by Airbnb.” You see, in a sense our first round of funding came from Airbnb, not in the form of loan, but in an enterprise that has been mutually beneficial in moving both our companies forward.

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In the first few months of starting Vayable, each member of our team was either renting or hosting on Airbnb, and using the extra cash to pay for basic expenses as we bootstrapped the company. Two of us even moved in with friends and rented out our own apartments full time to vacationers.

TaskRabbit also played a big part. Busy at work building our community and product, we would send TaskRabbits out to clean our apartments, greet guests, and one time, even show a guest how to use the television remote.

For an entrepreneur the commercial benefits of collaboration are clear and quantifiable, while the more subtle benefits of connection, idea sharing and building community are harder to measure but invaluable.

Sometimes on weekends and late nights our community manager, June, and I will work from the Airbnb headquarters, where we share much more than desk space and wifi with their team. Two am conversations turn into community initiatives and product ideas. This model of collaborative conception among our teams is a powerful demonstration of a whole being larger than the sum of its parts.

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And when we travel, we take our habit of sharing with us.

In New York, the Vayable team works out of LooseCubes, a start-up that connects people looking to co-work with co-working spaces. LooseCubes not only taps into a market of space-sharing, but also one of knowledge sharing - a benefit we experienced first hand, collaborating with the LooseCubers on marketing and business strategies.

I also enjoy regular collaboration with the founder of Skillshare, another New York marketplace focused on classes and learning. We’re learning from one another and our products and communities are better for it. Michael offers a tour on my site and I offer a class on his.

As the economy forces us away from surplus and toward sharing, entrepreneurs are building businesses around the redistribution of these goods and services. We’re seeing more overlap among collaborative consumers: people who need a place to stay also want something to do, as well as help getting things done. This means that as one of us grows, we all grow. Conversion from Airbnb to Vayable is higher among existing users, as they’re already acclimated to the sharing model and many of them are emphatic about it.

And it’s no coincidence that those who have shared the most knowledge, resources and time with me as a first-time entrepreneur have been the founders of Airbnb, Kickstarter, TaskRabbit. They are not only mentors, but also trusted friends. And as the Airbnb and Vayable communities join together in New York next week, and TaskRabbit and Vayable team up this fall, it’s becoming more clear that the “passing game” at the heart of community-based marketplaces is not only a viable business model, but also a viable way of launching and growing a dream.

Jamie and founders from four other collaborative consumption companies are candidates for a panel at SXSW entitled, ” F*#k Talking about Women, Let’s Build Companies!” where they will discuss how to build collaborative companies. To read more and vote: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/12611

Number of comments: 4
Posted under the category: CC Company
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Lisa Fox’s comment is:

Jamie,

Thanks for such a great post! The community you write of is exactly the type I would like to help grow in Australia.

I love the Vayable concept and it is really awesome to hear about the support you have received (and also "passed on").

Thanks again,

Lisa
Director & Co-founder
Open Shed
www.openshed.com.au

On Aug.23.2011 at 08:08 PM


Jordan’s comment is:

Jamie,

Great post. To NY's credit though, I have found the startup community here to be incredibly collaborative. Your own post mentions Kickstarter, LooseCubes, and Skillshare in your post, and I could add to that SnapGoods, Covestor, Fitocracy, and many more. Meetup in my mind is the ultimate sharing company, having provided a platform for bringing people together to share pretty much everything, long before everyone else.

In the larger picture New York may be a super-competitive city, but within the startup community there is a certain sense of how small we are, and that we are going to succeed or fail together. On the flip side the Bay Area may have a lot of great people, but it's hardly all kumbaya; see under HP and Oracle, Apple and Google, and Facebook and pretty much everybody.

Having defended my NY peeps, I am sorry about any un-collaborative experiences you may have had here, and I look forward to sharing knowledge and drinks at your party tonight.

On Aug.24.2011 at 09:19 AM


Gracen Johnson’s comment is:

Jamie,

This was a joy to read as I can identify so many parallels in my personal collaborative startup experience.

It's beautiful to see credit owing to such diverse and innovative networks of people. The depth and quality of collaboration that we see today is exciting!

I'm also VERY interested in your SXSW Panel. As a young female entrepreneur in the tech space, I'm cheering with ya. I'll be casting my thumbs-up and searching for the long rideshare down from Toronto to SXSW from one of our collaborative buddies!

Thanks,
Gracen

Co-Founder, Tradyo

On Aug.27.2011 at 04:16 AM


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On Apr.02.2012 at 07:36 AM











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