Change Agent

Since summer, I’ve been interim COO at RelayRides, the world’s first neighbor-to-neighbor carsharing service.  I work for founding CEO Shelby Clark.  Yesterday we announced funding from August Capital and Google Ventures.

RelayRides is an innovative twist on the traditional carsharing model, ala Zipcar.  I believe our business model will have an important impact on the young and rapidly growing $12.5B global carsharing industry. Adding neighbor-to-neighbor carsharing to a community with traditional carsharing is one of those instances when one plus one equals more than two, as detailed here.

RelayRides is a perfect example of Collaborative Consumption. Rather than putting new cars on the road like other carsharing services, RelayRides goes the eco-friendly route by leveraging existing, often idle autos.  Neighbors help each other.  Car owners recover some of the costs of owning an expensive asset while they simultaneously provide a new, convenient transportation option for their neighbors in need of a car.

After operating in Cambridge for six months, Tuesday we launched our second city, San Francisco, generating a slew of great press.

This entry was posted on 15 December 2010 at 4:54 PM and is filed under August Capital, Carsharing, Collaborative Consumption, Des Pieri, Desmond Pieri, Google Ventures, Howard Hartenbaum, Interim COO, Interim Management, Joe Kraus, Neighbor-to-neighbor, Person-to-person, San Francisco, The Mesh; Why the Future of Business is Sharing, What's Mine is Yours, Zipcar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.