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