Excuse me may I rent your car Robin Chase

twelve years ago I found a Zipcar Zipcar

buys cars and parks them throughout

dense metropolitan areas for people to

use by the hour and by the day instead

of owning their own cars each zip car

replaces fifteen personal cars and each

driver drives about 80 percent less

because they’re now paying the full

costs all at once in real time but what

zip car really did was make sharing the

norm now a decade later it’s really time

to push the envelope a little bit and so

a couple years ago I moved to Paris with

my husband and youngest child and we

launched buzz car a year ago buzz card

lets people rent out their own cars to

their friends and neighbors instead of

investing in a car we invest in a

community we bring the power of a

corporation to individuals who add their

cars to the network some people call

this peer-to-peer this does express the

humanity of what’s going on and the

personal relationships but that is also

like saying that it’s the same thing as

a yard sale or a bake sale or

babysitting that’s peer-to-peer it’s

like saying yard sales are the same

thing as eBay or fair fair craft fairs

are the same thing as Etsy but what’s

really happening is that we’ve got the

power of a free and open Internet and on

top of that we’re putting a platform for

participation and the peers are now in

partnership with the company creating

shared value on shared values and each

strengthing the other and doing what the

other can’t do I call this peers

incorporated the corporated side the

company is doing things that it does

really well what does it do really well

it creates economies of scale

significant and long-term resource

investment the expertise of many

different kinds of people and different

kinds of

minds and for individuals consumers is

bringing the standards rules and

recourse that we really want as

consumers and this is kind of bound up

and a brand promise and the companies

are providing this on a platform for

participation peers are giving in doing

things that are incredibly expensive for

companies to do what do they bring they

think just fabulous diversity expensive

for companies and what does that deliver

it delivers localization and

customization specialization and all of

this aspect about social networks and

how companies are yearning and eager to

get inside there it’s natural for me me

and my friends I can connect to them

easily and it also delivers really

fabulous innovation and I’ll talk about

that later so we have the peers that are

providing the services and the product

and the company that’s doing the stuff

that companies do the two of these are

delivering the best of both worlds

some of my favorite examples in

transportation carpooling comm

ten-years-old

three and a half million people have

joined up and a million rides are shared

every day it’s a phenomenal thing it’s

the equivalent of 2500 TV trains and

just think they didn’t have to lay a

track or buy a car this is all happening

with excess capacity and it’s not just

with transportation my love but of

course in other realms here’s fiverr.com

I met these founders just weeks after

they had launched and now in two years

what would you do for $5 750,000 gigs

are now posted after two years what

people would do for $5 and not just easy

things that anyone can do this peers

incorporated concept is in very

difficult and complex around

topcoder has 400,000 engineers who are

delivering complex design and

engineering services when I talked to

their CEO he had this great line he said

we have a community that owns its own

company and then my all-time favorite

Etsy Etsy is providing goods that people

make themselves and they’re selling it

in a marketplace

it just celebrated its seventh

anniversary and after seven years last

year it delivered 530 million dollars

worth of sales to all those individuals

who have been making those objects I

know you guys are out there who are

business people are thinking oh my god I

want to build one of those I see this

incredible speed and scale you mean all

I have to do is build the platform and

all these people are gonna put their

stuff on top and I sit back and roll it

in building these platforms for

participation are so non-trivial to do I

think of the difference of Google video

versus YouTube who would have thought

that two young guys and a startup would

beat out Google video why I actually

have no idea why I didn’t talk to them

but I’m thinking you know they probably

had this share button a little bit

brighter into the right and so it was

easier and more convenient for the two

sides that are always participating on

these networks so I actually know a lot

about building a peer platform now and

appears incorporated company because

I’ve spent the last two years doing that

in Paris so let me take you back how

it’s so incredibly different building

buzz car than it was building zip car

because now every single thing we do has

these two different bodies that I have

to be thinking about the owners who are

going to provide the cars and the

drivers who are going to rent them every

single decision I have to think about

what is right for both sides there are

many many examples and I’ll give you one

that is not my favorite example

insurance it took me a year and a half

to get the insurance just right hours

and hours of sitting with insurers and

many companies and their thoughts about

risk and how this is totally innovative

than never thought of it before

way too much money I just can’t even go

there with lawyers trying to figure out

how this is different who’s responsible

to whom and the result was that we were

able to provide owners protection from

for their own driving records in their

own history the cars are completely

insured during the rental and it gives

owner drivers what they need and what do

they need they need a low low deductible

and 24-hour roadside assistance so this

was a this was a trick to get these two

sides so now I want to take you to the

moment of

when you’re doing a bunch when you’re an

entrepreneur and we’ve started any

company there’s the here’s all the stuff

we do beforehand and then the service

launch is what happens so this all those

months of work they come into play

last June one we launched it’s an

exciting moment and all the owners are

adding their cars it’s really exciting

all the drivers are becoming members

it’s excellent

the reservations start coming in and

here owners who are getting text

messages and emails that said hey Joe

wants to rent your car for the weekend

you can earn 60 euros isn’t that great

yes or no

no reply like a huge proportion of them

couldn’t be bothered after they had just

started they just signed up to reply so

I thought duh Robin this is the

difference between industrial production

and peer production industrial

production the whole point of industrial

production is to provide a standardized

exact service model that is consistent

every single time and I’m really

thankful that my smartphone is made

using industrial production and Zipcar

provides a very nice consistent service

that works fabulously but what does peer

production do peer production is this

completely different way of doing things

and you have a big quality range and so

eBay cleverly the first peer production

peer incorporated company I’d say they

figured out early on we need to have

ratings and commentaries and all that

yucky side stuff we can flag that and we

can put it to the side and people who

are buyers and consumers don’t have to

deal with it so going back this is my

look incitement and joy because all the

stuff that I’d also been hoping for

actually really did happen and what’s

that

that is the diversity of what’s going on

you have these different fabulous owners

and they’re different cars different

prices different locations they are

they dress differently and they look

different and really I love these photos

every time I look at them cool guys

excited guys and here is Selma who I

love this driver and after a year we

have a thousand cars that are parked

across France and 6,000 people who are

members and air to drive them this would

not be possible to do that in an

economic fashion for a traditional

company back to this spectrum so what’s

happening is we had the young side but

we actually have this real well side now

I can tell you two great stories a

driver was telling me that they went to

rent a car that to go off the coast of

France and the owner gave it to them and

said you know what here’s where the

cliffs are and here’s all the beaches

and this is my best Beach and this is

where the best fish restaurant is and

the piers also become peers and owners

create relationships and so in the last

minute people can and driver can say hey

you know what I really need the car is

it available and their person will say

sure my wife sent home to go pick up the

keys go do it so you can have these

really nice things that can’t happen and

it’s a kind of Wow and I want to say Wow

type of thing that’s happening here

because individuals if your company what

happens is you might have 10 people who

are in charge of innovation or hundred

people who are in charge of innovation

what happens in peer Inc companies is

that you have tens and hundreds and

thousands and even millions of people

who are creating experiments on this

model and so out of all that influence

in that effort

you are having this this exceptional

amount of of innovation that is coming

out so one of the reasons we come back -

why did I call it buzz car I wanted to

remind all of us about the power of the

hive and its incredible facility to

create this platform that individuals

want to want to participate and innovate

on and for me when I think about our

future and that all of those problems

that seem incredibly large the scale is

impossible the urgency is there

Pearse Inc provides the speed and scale

and the innovation and the creativity

that is going to answer these problems

all we have to do is create a fabulous

platform for participation non-trivial

so I continue to think that

transportation is the center of the hard

universe all problems come back to

transportation for me but there are all

these other areas that are these

profound big problems that I know that

we can work on and people are working on

them in many different sectors but

there’s this really fabulous group of

things with a power of this peers

incorporated model so over the last

decade we’ve been reveling in the power

of the internet and how its empowered

individuals and for me what peers

Incorporated does is it takes it up a

notch we’re now bringing the power of

the company in the corporation and super

charging individuals so for me it’s a

collaboration together we can

you