Peer-to-Peer Networks

Airbnb is today a $10B company riding the wave of collaborative consumption, a closet industry that is the modern manifestation of traditional barter marketplaces. By tapping into the inherent efficiency of today's increasingly connected world, peer-to-peer collaborative consumption threatens to shake the pillars of traditional and institutional marketplaces and exchanges such as financial markets (peer-to-peer lending), automotive dealers (peer-to-peer car-sharing), and transportation (peer-to-peer ride-sharing such as lyft.com or uber.com).

Peer-to-peer e-commerce platforms seem to be popping up almost daily, touching nearly every vertical ripe for disruption, or at least providing just a little grease for the wheel. These software-augmented approaches to the simplest of individual bartering work on the principles of search and discovery, trust, payment, and transparency. They eliminate waste and quickly create value on both sides by tapping into what's commonly referred to as “idling capacity.” This idling capacity, when discoverable, and monetizeable, has already built exchanges of significant value seemingly out of thin air (As mentioned above, Airbnb is valued at $10B; uber.com is valued at $3.5B; LendingClub.com is valued at $3.8B).To those of us in the commercial real estate industry, and the occupiers who spend a significant portion of their hard-earned revenue paying rent, the question is, could a peer-to-peer marketplace ever make our business more efficient, much less deliver eye-catching value to both landlords and tenants alike? We think the answer is yes.