This profile is originally posted on the Pozible blog. Pozible is an Australia-based crowdfunding platform and community for creative projects and ideas. Discover the projects here.
You’ve no doubt heard about Airbnb and you’ve probably already caught a ride in an Uber but are these 10 local collaborative economy start-ups on your radar? These companies will change how we think about work, logistics, mobility and more, so we wanted to give you the rundown on who to look out for.
Airtasker ( airtasker.com)
Founder: Tim Fung
How it Works: Airtasker is a platform that allows anyone to outsource their everyday tasks such as deliveries, office work or odd jobs to other runners to complete these tasks.
Last year, it partnered with job seeking site CareerOne to offer temporary task work as an additional job search category.
By the Numbers: Airtasker now has 130,000 runners and processes $5 million a year worth of jobs.
Car Next Door ( carnextdoor.com.au)
Founder: Will Davies
How it Works: Car Next Door is a platform that lets locals list their cars so others in the neighbourhood can borrow them for as little as $25 a day.
By the Numbers: Car Next Door currently has 150 car owners and 2,200 borrowers in their member pool. In August, the number of rentals facilitated by the platform was 5,431. Car owners make around $200-250 per month.
Founding story: CEO Will Davies was on his way to pick up a GoGet car when he observed the rows of idle cars around Bondi. He thought, why not rent one of those cars instead?
Divvy ( divvy.com.au)
Founder: Nick Austin
How it Works: Divvy uses smart technology to connect drivers to unused private car spaces that sit idle every day in high demand areas. The platform handles all bookings, payments and reporting.
Members with listed parking spaces in the CBD receive between $2,000 and $3,500 per year.
Divvy by the numbers: Divvy now has 3,000+ users on the platform and 1,000+ listings. There are about 150-200 bookings made on the platform per month.
Garage Sale Trail ( garagesaletrail.com.au)
Founders: Andrew Valder and Darryl Nichols
How it works: Garage Sale Trail is a national initiative that enables and organises communities across Australia to hold garage sales on the same day.
Founding Story: What started as a community event in Bondi in 2010 has become a national program with over 100 participating councils in Australia, 7,000 sales nationally, 360,000 participants, 35,000 sellers and 2.1 million audience over the course of 3 years.
GoGet ( goget.com.au)
Founders: Nic Lowe and Bruce Jeffreys
How it works: GoGet is a national car sharing service that lets you book cars by the hour, unlock and access the car using a smart card and return the car to a dedicated parking spot.
By the Numbers: GoGet is in 86 suburbs across 20 local government areas in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria. Because of the introduction of shared GoGet cars, it is estimated that 12,690 private cars are removed from the roads.
Society One ( societyone.com.au)
Founders: Matt Symons, Greg Symons and Andy Taylor
How it works: SocietyOne is Australia’s 1st peer-to-peer lender; the online platform connects savvy investors to creditworthy borrowers. It offers borrowers cheaper loans and investors access to a new asset class.
Westpac invested $5 million in SocietyOne making it the first equity stake a bank has taken in the peer-to-peer world.
By the Numbers: To date, SocietyOne has made 200 loans totalling $4 million and has assessed applications for loans totalling $26.5 million.
TuShare ( tushare.com)
Founder: James Moody
How it works: TuShare is an online marketplace to gift the things you no longer want to the community—from cameras and couches to bikes and baby goods.
Interesting partnerships: NRMA Motoring and Services recently invested $700,000 in the platform, and offers sponsorships of its different hubs to corporate and community partners such as 1MillionWomen.
Ripe near Me ( ripenear.me)
Founder: Alistair Martin
How it works: RipeNearMe is a platform that allows users to share, sell and swap produce that they grow. If you are a buyer, you’ve got first dibs on local produce that’s fresher and cheaper than in the supermarkets, and if you’re a grower, you can share your surplus produce.
Cool feature: RipeNearMe has a subscription service that allows users to keep tabs on the individual fruit-producing trees of their neighbours. When you subscribe, you will receive email notifications when the grower marks the produce ripe for picking.
MeeMeep ( meemeep.com)
Founder: Rob Emett
How it Works: MeeMeep is a peer-to-peer delivery platform that connects individuals or businesses to a network of approved drivers when they want something delivered. It is the delivery service partner of eBay and GraysOnline.
Price comparison: If you compare jobs completed on MeeMeep against quotes from stand-alone delivery companies on Temando (a price comparison site for courier delivery) the average MeeMeep job prices were 55% cheaper.
Zookal ( zookal.com)
Founders: Ahmed Haider, Chris Zaharia, Jon Tse and Vicky Lay
How it works: Zookal lets you rent, or buy used university textbooks with slashed prices compared to traditional bookstores. It also allows you to sell your used books to others.
Founding Story: The four university friends raised money from their family and friends, bought 300 textbooks and started releasing flyers to students at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) business faculty that the books were available for rent. All 300 books were rented that first semester!
For other examples within Australia, search our directory.
This is a really inspirational page! Thanks for putting it together. Great examples of people using social technology to help people, themselves and the environment. This is being the change you want to see.