

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

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?
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mjs00
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..

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ashconway
I came across this article on collaborative consumption which was from late
last year which may help
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020461250457660...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204612504576607573655083688.html)

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

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

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sarbogast
Awesome! Thanks a lot!

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sarbogast
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...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kirstenbischoff/2012/03/14/stranger-
danger-collaborative-consumption-sweeps-the-startup-community/)

