5 Startup Lessons You Can Learn From Famous Sharing Economy Companies

Instead of reading and hearing success stories of billionaire entrepreneurs, you can listen to their failures and difficulties they faced during their entrepreneurship journey and find how they came out of it successfully. 

Sharing economy business models implemented by these famous companies like Airbnb, Uber, Turo, Postmates, etc. has completely revolutionized our current industries. 

So, here in this blog, we are going to see business lessons from the top entrepreneurs who have changed the way businesses conducted in their respective industries. 

Let’s find out. 

Lesson from Airbnb - Solving Real user’s problem 

We all know how Airbnb founded and slowly gave a tough competition to the hotel industries. 

Airbnb provides accommodations to travelers with a homely feeling and tourism experience. The main goal of their business is to provide a comfortable stay for travelers and tourists at a modest rate compared to prices offered by the hotels. It also allows people who have a spare room or own a guest house to earn a small income out of it.  

The business made people travel economically anywhere and explore different unique places around the world and have an adventurous life. 

To build a website like Airbnb, you need to approach a web development company that will help you to either build the website from scratch or you can customize their readymade rental marketplace platform to fit your business idea. 

Lesson from Uber - Every business starts small 

Today Uber is the number one on-demand taxi service company in the world, making it simple for people to travel anywhere inside the city just by booking through their app from the phone. All users need is to download the Uber app on their smartphone and create an account using their phone number. 

Uber started small by launching a beta version of the app in San Francisco for hiring a black luxury car to any posh events and conference. Then it slowly gained popularity to rent a ride for traveling inside the city. 

The reason behind the popularity of Uber is that it provided a better taxi service at a low rate compared to the other cab services in the city. 

Lesson from Taskrabbit - Get your business idea creative

Taskrabbit is the successful online marketplace platform to find handymen in the local for any cleaning, fixing, delivering, or for any tasks. It was founded by Leah Busque along with her husband. 

The business idea hit her when she and her husband was waiting for a cab to go for dinner. Then she remembered that she had to feed her dog and she is out of dog food. At that moment, she thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if there was someone I could pay to pick up dog food for me while I was at dinner?”. That’s how Taskrabbit came to existence. 

The website was launched in 2008, originally named RunMyErrand in Boston. If someone got an errand to run, they would post their job with the price they are willing to pay. The website suggests different task doers and the person has to choose a one and set a time to finish the tasks. 

Soon, after a few years, they started their operation in San Francisco. It is said that the people who do tasks earn around $5,000 per month by doing two or three tasks per day. 

This business idea is an extended creative version of the Airbnb business model. But still, it is a difficult business idea to implement in real-time. 

Lesson from Rent The Runway - Test your business idea with customers 

Rent the Runaway is the online rental service for women to rent designer clothes and accessories less than the retail prices offered. The company founded by Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Fleiss in 2009. 

The business idea appeared when Jennifer Hyman and his sister didn’t find any suitable dress for a wedding in their closet and can’t afford to buy a designer dress. They thought it would be great to rent a stunning dress for a night at an affordable rate than the retail price. 

At first, the business idea may seem impractical as we don’t know for sure whether women and girls would spend their money to rent a dress for a few days. So, the founders decided to test their business idea and know people’s responses by participating in focus groups and talking to their friends about it. 

They have talked to 1000 women about their concept and understood the needs of them. From their interactions, they have gathered that the women want to feel confident and beautiful on all occasions and most of them don’t have the access to wear designer clothes. 

Initially, they tested the platform with few customers, and soon the platform began to expand. Now they have millions of customers and have their physical store in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C.

Lesson from Turo - A good PR strategy would reach more audience

Turo is a peer to peer car sharing marketplace platform founded by Shelby Clark in 2010 in Boston. It is the inspiration from the Airbnb business model. 

We all know marketing a company and inviting car owners to rent their vehicles would be a tough job. So to attract potential audiences to their platform, CEO Andre Haddad decided to rent his Tesla Model X for $499 per day. The renting experience went well for him and so, he decided to rent his Cadillac CTS on the platform. 

By this, he experienced to see the joys of the people and found a great way to meet new people by sharing his car. 

This PR tactic has made the brand name "Turo" popular in a short span of time. It got attention as well as people’s strong emotion to sign in to the platform to rent luxuries cars.  

Summing up 

Obstacles are the cost of greatness

I hope you will pick up yourself and fight the battles you face in the entrepreneurial journey. And hope this blog helped you in seeing through perspectives.