Dan Pierson has worked at rental marketplace Getable and VC firm Collaborative Fund.
1. Tell us about your start in collaborative consumption—why Getable?
I read Rachel Botsman’s book back in 2011 — and it just made perfect sense. We spend our lives being sold on the paradigm of conspicuous consumption, and I found that this left a serious void in my own life. Living a more collaborative lifestyle is such a simple, elegant answer to the most important issues we face in our time: a degrading environment, increasing distance from neighbors, and growing income disparity between rich and poor.
I joined Getable in August of 2011, because it was dramatically different from many of the emerging platforms. Much of the attention on the Sharing Economy focuses on peer to peer (p2p) platforms; there are so many amazing opportunities to put these principles to work in the business to consumer (b2c) and business to business models (b2b). Helping large organizations adopt collaborative consumption and sharing is a largely untapped field.
Today, Getable is helping construction companies more efficiently rent equipment — a super exciting way to leverage the principles of collaborative consumption and disrupt a $40bn market.
2. Tell us about the inspiration behind Subway Sets!
Subway Sets is a concert series bringing the best musicians from the New York underground up to rooftops above the city. Our goal is to help these amazing artists get the exposure they deserve, by turning moments on a subway platform into full sets in the sky.
Every New Yorker has a favorite subway musician. We crowdsource the content by asking our fans to submit their picks for the best underground artists — then we go out and find them!
Our first show was also crowdfunded via Kickstarter.
3. Who do you most admire in the collaborative consumption community and why?
I really admire Jessica Jackley, founder of Kiva and ProFounder, a former colleague of mine and advisor at Collaborative Fund, and the woman behind one of the most compelling, amazing TED talks in history. Jessica pioneered microlending in the developing world almost a decade ago— and to this day, Kiva is one of the most exciting, disruptive, powerful ideas I’ve seen. Establishing human connections across oceans by empowering entrepreneurship; how cool is that?
4. We’ve heard you’re into the legislation side of collaborative consumption. What’s the number one issue for you, and how (theoretically) would you tackle it?
With millions of people leaving full-time employment for the freelance / gig economy, we need to make sure we set up systems to protect worker welfare. For example, Obamacare (aka the Affordable Care Act) will hopefully make it easier and less expensive for individuals to secure health insurance. And participants in the freelance economy aren’t supported by financial programs like matching 401k’s; how can we help make sure these folks are saving money for their retirement?
In general, I’m a fan of the free market and not one for government regulation, so I wouldn’t want to see blanket legislation requiring individuals to secure this kind of coverage. There are definitely interesting initiatives to tackling these issues; Freelancer’s Union is doing great work here, for example.
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Dan Pierson has worked at rental marketplace Getable and VC firm Collaborative Fund. He’s currently focused on Subway Sets, a concert series bringing musicians from the New York underground to rooftops above the city, while also consulting on business strategy for emerging collaborative marketplaces.
Is Getable actually functioning?
It has a home page where you enter your email address to go on a list! – how is that disrupting anything (apart from precious time?!!)
“Super exciting”..? Really?