Airbnb

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4 Open Source Peer-to-Peer Marketplaces

Peer-to-peer marketplaces have been booming, and PwC predicts the market will go from $15 billion in 2013 to $355 billion in 2025. This means that a lot of marketplaces will be developed in the next years. However, until recently, you didn't have many choices if you wanted to create a marketplace like Airbnb, Blablacar, or Drivy. You either developed an expensive proprietary solution like the incumbents do, or you used a hardly customizable SaaS solution, and that approach isn't scalable...

Airbnb And The Unstoppable Rise Of The Share Economy

Tomio Geron | Forbes | January 23, 2013

...Larson is also a data point in an economic revolution that is quietly turning millions of people into part-time entrepreneurs, and disrupting old notions about consumption and ownership. Twelve days per month Larson rents his Marin County home on website Airbnb for $100 a night, of which he nets $97. Four nights a week he transforms his Prius into a de facto taxi via the ride-sharing service Lyft, pocketing another $100 a night in the process.

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Innovation Needs Dumb Ideas

Over the years I've listened to many new-to-health-care entrepreneurs pitch their great new idea. They're so excited: health care is so inefficient! People are so frustrated by the system! It will be so easy to improve it! I usually end up thinking, "Oh, you poor people. You really don't know much about health care, do you?" They don't fully grasp the strange way it is bought and sold, the convoluted financing, or the layers of regulation. So I wish them well and wait to hear about their eventual failure. But now I'm thinking, maybe it is experts like me who are part of health care's problem. In Harvard Business Review, Ayse Birsel suggests that companies need to do more "reverse thinking," deliberately thinking up wrong ideas...

Uber For Health Won't Play Nice...It Will Sideswipe the Industry

People talk "Uber for health care."  After all, Uber has been wildly successful, valued over $60b, which makes it bigger than Ford and GM.  AirBnB, the Uber of hotels, is worth some $20b.  Heck, even the disposable razor industry has its own Uber, with Dollar Shave Club just getting acquired for $1b.  Any industry that isn't looking in its rear view mirror for potential Uber-type competitors may find itself disrupted into irrelevancy. And, goodness knows, health care could use some disruption. There are no shortage of candidates for health care Ubers...

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