I recently worked with a Silicon Valley based entrepreneur who is launching his company in the collaborative consumption space. This project was my introduction to the world of collaborative consumption and the fertile field of ideas that emphasize access over ownership. We have spoken about Airbnb earlier in this blog and that is one of the early successful sharing economy ventures. There is now a growing number of startups based on the idea of sharing. It could be extra space, cars, things, time and bathrooms. Yes, that’s what I said-bathrooms!
Taskrabbit
We are all aware that there are never enough hours in the day to get everything done. Founded in 2008 in San Francisco, Taskrabbit is an online service that’ll let you hire help to make your daily lives easier. If you have time on your hands and a particular skill, you sign up as a helper on the site. The helpers are called “runners”. Runners are trustworthy, reliable people who have passed a background check and are rated by fellow users. People who have tasks that need to get done, will post their tasks on the site and make an offer of how much they are willing to pay. The jobs can be big and small. They include errands like-“Buy flowers and deliver them at my friends’ apartment in San Leandro” or “Assemble the bunk bed we just bought from IKEA”. If your area of specialty is the kitchen, as a task rabbit ‘runner’, you can take on projects like “Bake pineapple upside down cake before tonight”.
Task rabbit apparently took San Francisco by storm when it was launched and is slowly expanding to other cities. It got an initial funding of $5M and thereafter completed two successful rounds of funding. The company added an amazing IPhone app this year in July and hired Eric Grosse recently as its new CEO. (Task rabbit is not in PDX or San Diego yet, so stay tuned to their feed if you’re interested).
Cloo
After extra space, couches, garages it was only a matter of time before bathrooms entered the shared economy business. And to be honest, this one makes me think of all possible awkward situations that could come up when strangers use your bathroom. (Can’t help thinking of some potentially dangerous ones like hidden cameras etc. but I will let you think about those). I guess when you are in a crowded city and you can’t hold it in anymore, all you want, is a place to pee. From some of the details I have gathered so far, it is embedded with your social network and so the people on the list are your friends or your friends’ friends. Imagine meeting one such friend a few days after he or she has used your facilities. Will the conversation go like- “Hi I think I have met you before” “Yes, I used your bathroom once when I was in the city”.
Once you are over the cringe factor, it is easy to see that where there is a need, there is a market! And Cloo does just that- it addresses the universal need to pee.
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