The Airbnb of Anything: The Growth of P2P Markets
VC's are clamoring to get in the game, celebrities are throwing money at it, and the media is eating it up. It’s been coined 'collaborative consumption,' and ‘the Airbnb of’ well... anything, really. Peer-to-peer marketplaces are the hot start-up space this year, reporting remarkable growth and unleashing a wave a disruptive innovation.
Cutting edge technology is facilitating consumer connections and enabling trust between strangers like never before. It’s the convergence of this technology and increasing consumer confidence in online interactions that has birthed hundreds of peer-to-peer networks.
While we’ve all grown up sharing offline – P2P start-ups are connecting consumers online, reinventing market behavior and bringing “sharing” to a scale never before possible. The peer-to-peer movement is changing not just what we consume, but how we consume it.
In this panel, the CEOs recently featured in Fast Company's "Sharing Economy" piece, will dig in to the global P2P groundswell and divulge secrets behind the social sharing movement.
Presenters
Lauren is the Innovation Director for Collaborative Lab, working with organizations to deliver socially game-changing and profitable solutions in the Collaborative Consumption space, named by TIME as one of the "10 Ideas That Will Change The World.". She is a leading source of strategic knowledge for global entrepreneurs, journalists, and venture capitalists who want the latest market insights and best practices to stay ahead of the curve on new goods and services in the market.
Lauren is a highly skilled public speaker and workshop facilitator, who has delivered keynotes in Europe, United States and Australia for organizations such as Fast Company, GigaOm, UNEP Future of Sustainable Lifestyles and Entrepreneurship, CPA Australia and the Brightest Young Minds Summit. Her presentations focus on how the latest collaborative technologies will influence the way we live, create, and consume.
Lauren curates a bi-weekly ‘Collaborative Entrepreneurs’ column getting inside hot ventures from Airbnb to thredUP to TaskRabbit. Her work and thinking has appeared in Big Issue UK, Shareable.net, The Age Australia, ABC Radio Australia, Clarín, Westline, Canadian PROFIT Magazine, Mundo Estranho, Sustainable Industries Magazine, McGill Daily and In:genius. She played an instrumental role in building the Collaborative Consumption brand, growing global movement and researching the latest examples for International book editions of What’s Mine is Yours including the UK and Brazil.
She holds a Bachelor of Creative Industries and Graduate Certificate in Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies from Queensland University of Technology, and is currently completing a Master of Applied Innovation and Entrepreneurship from the University of Adelaide.
A true visionary, Leah Busque (@labusque) is the founder and chief product officer of TaskRabbit.com, an online marketplace where you can outsource small jobs and Tasks to others in your own community. TaskRabbit is the pioneer in “service networking” – a concept Leah conceived and has since evangelized. Now an industry-wide concept, service networking describes the productive power of a web-based, social-networked community.
Since its founding in 2008, Leah has grown TaskRabbit to more than 40 employees and has expanded the service to Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle with several more markets to come in 2012. Under her leadership, TaskRabbit was named one of the “Next Big Things in Tech” by WSJ Digits, “Start up to Watch in 2012” by Inc. Magazine, and a finalist for “Mobile app of the year” in 2011 by both the Crunchies and Mashable. Awards.
Prior to founding TaskRabbit, Leah was a Software Engineer at IBM, working in the Messaging and Collaboration Software Development group. Leah graduated magna cum laude from Sweet Briar College, where she earned a Bachelors of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science.
A rare blend of product talent and business savvy, Leah was a finalist for “Founder of the Year” at the 2011 Crunchies, named one of the “15 Women to Watch” in 2012 by Inc Magazine and awarded the Women 2.0’s “5 Top Women Start-up Founders” honor.
Tuesday, March 13
