A Night with ZipCar’s Robin Chase

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Robin Chase, co-founder of Zipcar and CEO of Buzzcar, spoke at the NY Sharing Economy Meetup about the collaborative economy, reinventing capitalism, and her new book Peers Inc: How People and Platforms are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism.

Chase is a huge proponent of the collaborative economy and says the threat of climate change makes it absolutely necessary to share assets now — “When you open up an asset, brand new value is created in all sorts of creative ways”.

She answered challenging questions from the audience with great honesty, wisdom and boldness. If you ever get a chance to meet Robin in the future, take the opportunity to have a conversation with her. She is truly a pioneer and visionary that boldly calls for a different future.

Winter Drinks: Airbnb, Lyft, OuiShare

Screen shot 2015-01-31 at 10.02.15 PMAfter “snowstorm” Juno, New Yorkers congregated at Airbnb’s office for drinks with other sharing economy enthusiasts. Lyft‘s NYC Market Manager, Seth Melnick shared the latest updates on Lyft and OuiShare‘s Francesca Pick delivered an inspiring talk on the collaborative movement OuiShare is spreading throughout the world. Airbnb demonstrated their generous hospitality by opening up their office with food and drink. For more photos, click here.

Sharing Economy: Beyond the Hype

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We are excited to announce that we are collaborating with NYU’s Arun Sundararajan and Meetup’s Odile Beniflah to create the NY Sharing Economy Meetup so that sharing economy enthusiasts can connect with each other on the platform and allow for other groups and organizations to host and post sharing economy events.

For the kickoff, we had Arun and Meetup’s CEO Scott Heiferman give their thoughts and perspectives on the current state of the sharing economy. Arun gave an academic perspective of the economic and social impact and Scott demonstrated the positive change Meetup has had around the world. In New York alone, there are 10,000 meetup groups with 1 in 8 New Yorkers on Meetup.

Pitch Night featuring Rachel Botsman

IMG_0194We had a packed room at the last Let’s Collaborate event with author Rachel Botsman and collaborative consumption pioneer Lauren Capelin in town. Wrede Petersmeyer, Airbnb NY’s General Manager, led a fireside chat with Rachel, exploring what is happening globally around the world in the sharing economy.

Katie Bolin from Spark Capital then introduced the pitch section where we had fantastic pitches from New York local sharing economy companies. We had pitches from Farmigo, PicSell, Sailo, SpareHire, Eleven James, and SpareChair.

Many thanks to Airbnb and Spark Capital for making the evening possible! For photos from the event, click here and video here.

NY Sharing Economy Pitch Night

Banner2Join us at the next Let’s Collaborate event on November 5th with sharing economy thought-leader Rachel Botsman and local New York sharing economy organizations. Many thanks to Airbnb and Spark Capital for making this event possible! For event details, please click here.

The event will be held at Impact Hub NYC – a shared workspace & events platform for a global community of entrepreneurs, activists, artists, and professionals who believe in the power of business to accelerate social and environmental change. Click here to try Impact Hub for a free week!

Sharing Economy Fall Drinks

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As the weather got cooler, folks from the sharing economy gathered together for some Fall drinks and KitchenSurfing snacks at Airbnb’s lovely office space. We had a mix of people from virtual currency platforms to ridesharing services to food sharing startups to crowdfunding platforms and much more learning, sharing, and helping each other out. Many thanks to Airbnb for generously hosting us this evening and Hila Katz for running a stellar workshop!

An Evening to be Shared

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We gathered folks together from KitchenSurfing, Etsy, Zeel, Lyft, Uber, Airbnb, and Brooklyn Brainery for a Feastly dinner to kickstart some conversations across different sharing economy organizations. Best practices, common challenges, and opportunities were shared over great food and wine! Look out for more events in this dinner series with Airbnb.

The Sharing Economy “On Demand”

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Last week, we had a great panel discussion with Wun Wun, Zeel, Lyft, and Airtasker on the topic of the rising “on-demand” economy and how it’s empowering microentrepreneurs. Thanks to Drizly for the on-demand alcohol, T-Mobile for their support, and Impact Hub for hosting us! Photos of the event can be found here.

Next Event: Wun Wun, Zeel, Lyft

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In recent times, we’ve seen the rise of the “On-Demand” economy with services promising to deliver food, flowers, babysitters, and even massages to you right here, right now. At the next Let’s Collaborate event, we will explore startups in the sharing economy space that offer these services: Wun Wun (on-demand delivery), Zeel (on-demand massages), and peer-to-peer errands service Airtasker. RSVP here.