Ask HN: Where can I find market numbers about Collaborative Consumption?

2 points by sarbogast 14 years ago | 6 comments

Right now I'm building a app that can be very interesting for the sharing economy. I'm still building the MVP but a lot of people (especially potential investors) ask me about the size of the collaborative consumption market. How many transactions? How much revenue overall? What about today and tomorrow? And I find it very hard to gather this data. There are some estimations about the numbers for AirBnB, but they are not convincing enough. Does anyone know where I can find this kind of market research, or how I could do it myself cheaply?

mjs00 14 years ago |

This may be too new for any 'industry analyst' to have defined or sized well... How about taking the vertical market(s) you are targeting (ie. hotels) then showing your logic and assumptions for what percentage of that market over time will be addressed by collaborative consumption. Also maybe comment on if collaborative opens up or expands the market (so part of your number is conversion from existing market, part creation of new market).

If you are not targeting a single vertical, but instead are a platform targeting any vertical, pick the top three verticals that have or will adopt first as the basis of your next few years.

Your % adoption against verticals market size will get your working forecast to show investors - and debating the (small) percentage of each vertical I think easier than defending an absolute market size number.

You might also consider making an analogy to adoption of online commerce against traditional commerce, and what that meant for supporting tools/platforms/etc, if that helps your case..

ashconway 14 years ago |

I came across this article on collaborative consumption which was from late last year which may help http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020461250457660...

sarbogast 14 years ago | |

Thanks. Unfortunately not a lot of numbers in there. Just like always: a few examples of companies, but not good enough for investors...

ashconway 14 years ago | | |

I've sent an email to a friend who may have more insight and provided them with a link to your post.

sarbogast 14 years ago |

For the record, Forbes just published a great article on the topic with a few interesting facts: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kirstenbischoff/2012/03/14/stran...