Zipcar Founder Says the Sharing Economy Is Changing Capitalism

Robin Chase, co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar, spoke about the sharing economy during an interview at the Aspen Ideas Festival. ‘I love the idea of sharing cars and everything. It’s something the Internet enabled and Zipcar did fabulously early on,’ said Chase. ‘So when you can share cars and assets and ideas and experiences, the world really does transform.’ Chase is also the author of ’Peers Inc.: How People and Platforms are Investing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism.’ Chase said she wasn’t surprised by how Zipcar took off. ‘In those early days I would be asked what do you expect this company to be in ten years,’ said Chase. ‘And I would say I expect it to be under a monopoly anti-trust suit, because I really thought it would go everywhere.’ Chase said platforms have enabled us to go from sharing cars to sharing a lot of other things, such as massive open online courses. ‘We can think about YouTube and Twitter (TWTR) and Facebook (FB), all of those are also part of this same movement, or Etsy (ETSY ),’ Chase declared. ‘So we have excess capacity being harnessed by a platform, being engaged by a diversity of peers. And this new structure gives us amazing exponential growth, which we have seen with Airbnb and Uber.’