Is the Sharing Economy dead? No it is not!

Sarah Kessler from Fast company published an article stating that the sharing economy is dead. I couldn't disagree more with that statement.

Blablacar, the French peer to peer trip sharing platform reached a valuation of 1 Billion USD with more than 20 million users. It is already old and boring to state that Airbnb values more than 20 Billion USD and Uber more than 50 Billion USD. Clearly the sharing economy is healthy and delivering great results if it offers enough convenience for users.

We also see other examples of great companies performing well in the sharing economy: Snappcar, Drivy, Peerby, Mobypark and many more.

From a user's perspective, the service certainly has to be convenient enough to encourage sharing instead of buying goods or services. In my country, when I was a teenager, I remember exchanging clothes with friends, like it or not but that is also part of the sharing economy. Now the real question is if that behaviour can have larger scales that allow companies to be sustainable.

Clearly we need to distinguish between:

1. 1- segment groups willing to share,
2. 2- how big is the pain of not sharing,
3. 3- the prices and convenience of sharing.

What we discover is that sharing per-se is not the added value of companies at large scales. These companies need to compete with the traditional companies on price, offer and marketing.

When you go on a holidays, do you check only Airbnb? Or do you only check booking.com? Or do you check both to see which one has the best offer?

What we learn is that convenience is the key word. Convenience in terms of a combination of price and delivered service/product. This used to be key for traditional companies and is key for those in the sharing economy.