Even More Money Funnels into the Collaborative Economy (Part 3)

Investors are doling out money by the fistful, $241 million deployed in less than three months.

See the Google Sheet that has all this data, broken down by industry, amount, and date.  You can read part 1: Meet the investors, and part 2: The investors are in love with this market.

Since my last analysis on July 3rd, 2014, there’s been continued funding into the Collaborative Economy market –where the crowd gets what they need from each other. Investors are infatuated in this market as it provides new supply, disrupts incumbents, using faster technology powered by mobile, social, and internet of things, the Phoenix Business Journal did a recent write-up of my keynote at a business conference, highlighting the market changes.

In just 2.5 months there’s been even more money flooding the market. SMB FundingCircle raised a massive $65m round, followed by big rounds to Rockettaxi to aid the disrupted incumbents, and Fiverr raised a $30m found, as they enable crowd-based tasks to be completed on a two sided marketplace.  In these past two months, there’s been $241k invested into this growing market.

Recent Funding in the Collaborative Economy

7/16/2014	Funding Circle	$65,000,000	Money
7/16/2014	Shyp	$10,000,000	Services
7/18/2014	Helparound	$600,000	Health
7/26/2014	RocketTaxi	$40,000,000	Transporation
8/8/2014	Thuzio	$6,000,000	Services
8/11/2014	Fiverr	$30,000,000	Services
8/12/2014	RelayRide	$10,000,000	Transporation
9/4/2014	Breather	$6,500,000	Space
9/25/2014	Jimubox	$37,190,000	Money
9/25/2014	FlightCar	$13,500,000	Transporation
9/15/2014	Sidecar	$15,000,000	Transportation
9/19/2014	EatWIth	$8,000,000	Food
	SUM	$241,790,000

 

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Analysis: The Last 9 Mos of Funding
Here’s a breakdown of the 2014 Funding from Jan 1st-Sept 20th:

• Total Funding Events: 39
• Deals per month: 4.3
• Average Funding Per Month $301,052,222
• Average per Funding Round $69,473,590
• Median $10,000,000
• Average funding amount without Uber (outlier) $42,084,857
• Average funding amount without Uber and Airbnb (outliers) $27,282,973
• 2014 Sum: $2,709,470,000

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Bubble? I’m often asked are we in a bubble? My answer is yes and no. First of all, unlike the first web boom I experienced in late 90s or social media phase, there’s clear revenues being generated from peer to peer commerce. Unfortunately, you can’t sustain this many competitors in each arena –particularly in the transportation space. I recently told CNBC that there’s only room for three playersin each of these markets: “In the end, the market can’t sustain this many car-sharing or ridesharing start-ups–there’s typically going to be room for three–the most convenient, the cheapest experience and a unique experience,”

Photo used within creative commons licensing, by 401k