entrepreneurs

Finding insurance just seems like fighting your way through a jungle of policies and prices. Fight over and you still may only be left with an ok price for a bog-standard option. The insurance industry hasn’t been the most innovative when it comes to customer choice.

An industry ripe for disruptive innovation. Bought By Many are bringing collaborative consumption to this space benefiting both consumers and insurance companies, in a forward-thinking way. The result: good group insurance deals for their users.

This article is part of Your Allies’s entrepreneurship series. We profile entrepreneurs and their business concepts and give our view on their marketing approach. There’s always something to learn from real startup and business growth experience!

What was your motivation to set up Bought By Many and what mission have you set yourself?

“Leaving corporate life I had to get a new health insurance. I was quoted four times the cost of the previous corporate deal, obviously a massive price difference.

This experience made me realise just how much individuals can be taken advantage of by corporates. There were a few months between this aha moment and forming the idea for the company. My business partner and co-founder Guy Farley was doing work on grouping people via social media at the time so we linked that approach to the idea of negotiating group deals for individuals.

We aim to use people power to give everyone a better deal. Individuals get a better price and/or more tailored insurance policy. Insurers get back closer to consumer needs the way they used to be. We facilitate this interaction.”

Your Allies says… We know personal experience is the catalyst which drives many entrepreneurs to start their own business. Spotting a clear gap in the market based on his own personal dealings with insurance companies,

Steven then called on his experience of setting up and growing businesses. Combining this with his knowledge of the sector and teaming up with a co-founder with the right set of complementary skills he made it happen. Within the insurance industry they’ve carved out a niche for themselves as a facilitator of product innovation for the insurance industry and deal negotiator for users, a fantastic proposition making for a strong market position.

What makes Bought By Many unique, unlike any direct and indirect competitors?

“We have no direct competition in the UK and I find it amazing. Here’s why: the insurers haven’t changed for a long time, it’s a complicated industry. Affecting change in such an environment is obviously not easy.

Therefore investors have a bigger appetite for other financial services areas. Whenever I’m at conferences where financial services innovation is being discussed, it’s about payments, processing, retail banking and so on.

Also insurance aggregators have absorbed a lot of the margin, diminishing the motivation to innovate further, plus creating a homogenous policy offering rather than focusing on consumer needs.”

Your Allies says… No competition is a dream position to be in but entrepreneurs know to be prepared for competition to enter. Being a first mover isn’t itself a barrier to entry for new competitors but it gives a head start building such hurdles. Establishing strong relationships with business partners, in Bought By Many’s case insurance companies, is one such step, as is raising brand awareness, to name just a few. Having a competitive strategy in your business plan and implementing it is a must even when you start out without competition.

What is your business strategy to accomplish your mission?

“Having successfully proved our concept, our growth plan is to roll out more and more groups, focusing on the UK market. Insurance companies find innovation hard as it would cannibalise their back books. However, we want to use our knowledge about consumer needs to address big issues.

We don’t have a back book restraining us. There are tangible problems that we can help address by introducing groups such as ones for young drivers or flood insurance.

Currently there are about 200,000 houses in flood zones that are uninsurable. Most people living there would love to insure themselves, even if it was expensive to do so. We’ve put a group for them live, and the related insurance product is in the making. It’s going to be a 3 tiered offering, ranging from a regular home insurance with flood exclusion to a flood insurance with excess insurance.”

Your Allies says… It’s always good to see a for-profit company doing good business. Bought By Many’s growth strategy helps address unmet consumer needs in crucial areas, and the industry to provide new products for previously unserved groups of people. According to ABI theUK insurance market is the largest in Europe, and third largest in the world so there should be plenty of growth opportunity for Bought By Many before they’d have to consider additional geographical markets.

What marketing strategy have you put in place to reach your business objectives?

“Our primary marketing objective is to get access to individuals who have a particular insurance need. We’re working hard to get them to join a relevant group. Once they’re in the group we make it easy for them to invite others who have the same need.

We also encourage users to tell us about insurance they might want. New groups mean new products for us if they come to fruition. We typically go into product development from about 100 members, though that might vary by insurance offer.

Being an online platform we focus primarily on social media marketing and PR, and on facilitating word of mouth through our groups. We might choose to partner up with consumer groups who like the concept of collaborative consumption.”

Your Allies says… Bought By Many are applying the classic startup marketing combo of social media and PR to facilitate word of mouth. However, due to the nature of their group deals they have a distinct advantage: it’s in their users’ very own interest to invite more people to join the group their in to get a good deal. They’re smart to stay on top of researching unmet insurance demands, keeping the customer and their needs where they should be – at the core of their proposition. Using the feedback channels in place to keep improving all business and consumer touch points they have will further help refine and strengthen their value proposition.

Constant testing of what type of content their users like and like to share surely is high on their marketing agenda, as will be balancing the followers to following ratio on Twitter. We’re big advocates of smart partner marketing and can only recommend adding this clever way of getting the most out of precious marketing budget and combining reach.

What was your biggest challenge in developing Bought By Many and how did you overcome it?

“I found all the necessary legal, accounting & regulatory compliance to be a complete pain. We’ve spent lots of money and time on these requirements none of which added anything much to the process of building the business. There’s nowhere to turn to find out easily about the best suited accounting firm, law firm, about how to register and so on.
And then how much tax we’re paying in a variety of places is ridiculous I think.

I do fear for new companies that want to set up. It’s hard to know what to do, and it just shouldn’t be.”

What’s the next one?

“I think it’s growing at the right pace – not too fast, not too slow -, finding that pace and sticking to it. We want to stay nimble but keep up our ability to support the consumer groups we create, and to work with insurers while we’re growing.”

Your Allies says… Having gone through the process of setting up a business ourselves we relate to what Steven is pointing out: it should be as easy as pie to set up shop and at least in the early stages there should be significant tax advantages. Especially seeing how much the UK economy could do with growth and how much SMEs are contributing to the economy: they provide nearly 60% of jobs and 50% of GDP. About that next challenge of growing at the right pace, though it seems like a good problem to have it still is a difficult and important one to get right, the more because nimbleness is one prime competitive advantage of startups over established companies.

Anything you would do differently that might have saved time, energy, money?

“If I’d known a year ago what I know now, I’d have jumped in at the deep end quicker and might be a few months ahead now.”

Your Allies says… An encouraging call to go for it for you budding entrepreneurs out there! We’re looking forward to following Bought By Many’s growth path and wish them lots of success for it!

Ready for even more inspiration from real-life business experience? Check out the complete entrepreneurship series!

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What if I told you it could be social, fair and reasonable? German P2P insurance pioneer Friendsurance has indeed made it its mission to achieve exactly that. Co-founder and managing director Tim Kunde shared with us how he and his team are going after insurance innovation.

This article is part of Your Allies’s entrepreneurship series. We profile entrepreneurs and their business concepts and give our view on their marketing approach. There’s always something to learn from real startup and business growth experience!

What was your motivation to set up Friendsurance and what mission have you set yourself?

“Our founding team realized that despite the way social networks have changed our lives, the benefits of the existing social infrastructure had not entered the insurance market at all. However, at its core insurance should be (and hundreds of years ago, was) a very social product were families and village communities used to help each other out in times of need. So our goal was to recreate this system of mutual support with modern technology and make insurance social, fair and reasonable again.”

Your Allies says… Friendsurance has applied the peer-to-peer principle to an industry that seems to have become alienated from its original idea (which is not dissimilar at all to what happened in the banking industry), with intermediaries taking the original role of the community. Germany is a prime market for insurance with consumers prone to German angst and taking out a higher than average amount of contracts per head than most other countries. Kudos to Friendsurance for tackling this complex but promising market.

What makes Friendsurance unique, unlike any direct and indirect competitors?

“Friendsurance has a very unique approach: Nobody else combines individual coverage from leading insurance partners with the possibility of obtaining back up to 50% of your annual premiums if you connect with your network and stay claim free. An integration of your immediate network that deeply into an insurance product exists nowhere else in the market.”

Your Allies says… And as far as we’re aware no such insurance offering exists either in the German market or elsewhere. Insurance cashback may not be a new thing to the UK but with Friendsurance’s “social insurance” offering the people connecting in groups to take out a contract seem to behave differently: Friendsurance experiences 40% fewer damage events on average than conventional insurers. Being able to offer such a tangible benefit as a first mover and still only player in a new niche market is the strongest combination of differentiating factors we’ve come across in the P2P space so far!

What is your business strategy to accomplish your mission?

“We want to show our customers that insurance can be fair, simple and transparent, and by doing so bridge the gap of trust that affects the insurance industry as a whole. We reach out to our target group of digital natives in informal language and make sure all customers benefit from Friendsurance in a symmetrical way. Our customers experience that they are not being sold to but they are always in the driver seat when choosing coverage that is right for them. And they thank us with unforced referral rates that are unheard of in the industry.”

Your Allies says… A novelty in the insurance sector, Friendsurance made the good choice to communicate with their users primarily via social media in a friendly (pun intended) tonality emphasising fairness and transparency. These factors as well as their sales approach are almost the opposite of the one people are used to from the traditional insurance industry. As with many peer-to-peer businesses the challenge will be to keep this approach up with consistency. Businesses who’ve been smart enough to create their own market will know it’s only a matter of time before a challenger appears. Being ready for that eventuality is a must.

What marketing strategy have you put in place to reach your business objectives?

“We work with a hypothesis- and test-driven approach to make sure we are meeting our customers’ needs with our product. We learned a lot in various iterations and we were able to bring the worlds of “insurance” and “social media” together. Since we are an online platform, we also use the classical online marketing channels such as SEO, SEA and Affiliate Partnerships. Most interesting from a distribution perspective is that we also grow virally, as there is a long term built-in benefit for customers to invite friends or family to build an insurance network and save on premiums.”

Your Allies says… Learning about and from their customers is something commonly regarded as a strength and competitive advantage of startups, an area they excel in compared to their traditional industry rivals. We advocate testing for marketing the same way, and again the startup culture and flexibility are the perfect breeding ground for targeted, and sometimes out-of-the-ordinary approaches to bringing an offer to the market with success. However, Friendsurance’s inherent “viral” product factor surely is a welcome boost to their marketing efforts. They’ve been active on the product side extending their range of insurance from home contents, personal liability and legal expenses insurance adding a competitive mobile phone insurance just recently. There’s still potential to increase fan and follower engagement on social media platforms – another opportunity for Friendsurance to capitalise on.

What was your biggest challenge in developing Friendsurance so far and how did you overcome it?

“The biggest challenge was – besides finding good investors – not only to convince customers of our model but also insurance partners. It was a process that needed a lot of time and effort for us to succeed. But we constantly listen to the feedback we get from our users and partners and we improve our product as well as the usability of our website. It is a continuous development that brings us closer to our customers and helps us to get better. Making Friendsurance as easy and usable as possible is thus a challenge we passionately work on each day.”

Your Allies says… Establishing a new niche market can simultaneously create the need for a lot of education and trust building, just like Friendsurance had to find. This is where startups have to juggle between the available funding – a challenge in itself – and the time and money it takes to convince enough users and the right partners to scale up while working on the product offer and platform. Making that customer focus their daily challenge should put Friendsurance in a good position to continue disrupting the insurance market.

We wish them lots of growth and success!

If you’re interested in innovation in the insurance industry you might like reading about Bought by Many who disrupt the way insurance products are developed using the power of the crowd.

Ready for even more inspiration from real-life business experience? Check out the complete entrepreneurship series!

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This article is part of Your Allies’s do-good entrepreneurship series. We profile entrepreneurs and their business concepts and give our view on their marketing approach. There’s always something to learn from real startup and business growth experience!

1) What was your motivation to set up Taxi for two and what mission have you set yourself with it?

Taxi for two was launched in February 2012, and was born from idea I had the previous year. It seemed crazy to me that loads of people queue up together at taxi ranks in city centres, at airports and many other places, but then often get into the taxi on their own. Surely there should be a way of making more efficient use of the taxis available, by helping people share and combine their journeys? This not only saves people money but reduces the number of overall journeys taken and so has an environmental benefit too.

So I started exploring the idea of a mobile-based solution to this problem. It had to be mobile rather than PC/laptop based, because people often don’t plan their taxi journeys in advance so the only device they have available to them at the point of need is their mobile (or potentially their tablet, but often these are not “connected” when out and about).

At the same time I came across the nascent but growing area of Collaborative Consumption, the broad term used to describe the social trend towards sharing and swapping rather than buying and owning. It was great to see loads of other companies and services springing up around this idea, from car sharing to clothes swapping to errand running. This convinced me there was something in the idea of taxi sharing – if people are prepared to share cars, clothes, loft storage and more, then why not share your taxi journey?

Your Allies says… We commend any business able to break into the mainstream, and add to the sharing economy. A service that makes better use of existing, finite resources while giving customers a more cost-effective option is inspiring stuff. That combination doesn’t guarantee success though. Taxi for two understood how their service would be used and matched that with the right distribution channels.

2) What makes Taxi for two unique, unlike any direct and indirect competitors?

There are many taxi apps on the market right now, but most of them focus on booking a taxi itself. We believe that actually booking a taxi is the easy part, which is why we focus purely on providing a platform for people to try to find others to share their taxi with. Also by not having to partner with taxi firms we are able to quickly scale geographically, rather than only being able to operate where we have taxi partnerships. In theory Taxi for two can be used anywhere in the world right now.

Your Allies says… The challenge of how to scale up geographically, fast enough (i.e. before someone else beats you to it), will ring true for many P2P entrepreneurs. Taxi for two has sidestepped one potential hurdle by finding a niche that doesn’t require partnerships which come with potential limitations. Another clever move.

3) What is your business strategy to accomplish that mission?

Our strategy is to focus on areas where there is a density of people looking to take taxi journeys, such as train stations, airports, music and sports events etc. We also believe there’s an opportunity around workplaces such as large offices and business parks.

In the short term our strategy is to offer the service free of charge to prove there’s a demand for taxi sharing. If and when we prove this we will look to implement a pricing model whereby it is still free to post a journey and to search for others, but there will be a small (circa 50p) charge to make contact by calling or messaging someone to arrange to share.

Your Allies says… To prove the need exists and grow a user base starting out with a free offer is a good move. There is risk involved however as making money is being postponed. However, if successful in growing and monetizing a large user base – without losing big percentages of users not willing to pay for a previously free service – it could pay off. Once people have tried, tested and bought into the service – provided it’s good and still offers value – applying additional charges, within reason, can work. Step out of line by (over)charging or not clearly explaining additional pricing and the risk of customers dropping off increases.

4) What marketing strategy have you put in place to reach your business objectives?

As already mentioned our service is currently free whilst we test demand, prior to adopting a model where searching and posting a journey will be free but with a charge to communicate via the platform.

We have tested marketing initiatives such as leaflets at train stations, online (social media) and PR – all have had some impact in driving awareness of Taxi for two, but we need to do more targeted / local-level marketing over a sustained period around key locations.

Your Allies says… Testing different marketing channels and initiatives is a must for startups to find those that work best and deliver in the most cost-effective way. It’s essential that this is done once a defined marketing strategy and objectives are in place so that testing centres around those very objectives. For startups offering a brand new concept, it’s even more crucial because no one else has done exactly what they’re doing. Lots can be gleaned then copied or adapted from businesses that are alike, of course and testing doesn’t have to mean splashing the cash. Plenty of cost-effective localised off and online marketing can be tested, particularly via social media, SEO and PPC channels.

5) What was your biggest challenge in developing Taxi for two so far and how did you overcome it?

The biggest challenge we have faced (and still do) is driving customer awareness on a local basis, so that when someone searches for a journey share there is at least one other person looking to make a similar journey at a similar time – the “coincidence of wants” necessary to make any collaborative consumption business model work. We are still trying to crack the marketing formula around this…and obviously we’re operating on very tight budgets which makes it even more challenging. We are implementing some new “group” functionality which we hope will encourage people to build their own taxi sharing “micro-communities” around locations such as offices and train stations – we think we can leverage this and encourage people to invite others so that communities grow organically.

Your Allies says… Many peer-to-peer businesses face this same challenge of pulling together enough people with the same need at a local level, to make their concept feasible. Partnering up with businesses which are present in the right locations and can help increase awareness and reach, is one route to seriously consider. As well as teaming up to achieve shared goals, putting marketing budgets together can help that precious startup investment go much further and open up bigger marketing opportunities. Incentivising happy customers to spread the word and bring friends and family on board can also help ramp up user numbers. For Taxi for two, focusing on those taxi-congested areas is without doubt the right move. Identifying which social media people use when looking for and/or waiting for a taxi would be a route well worth taking.

One final word… Taxi for two is also keeping it in the sharing economy family by using Task Runners to source a flyer distributor in the London Waterloo area. More proof that Taxi for two really knows how to make peer-to-peer work.

Ready for even more inspiration from real-life business experience? Check out the complete entrepreneurship series!

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Sharing Economy Startup Favabank founder John Durrant is going to give you a new alternative to the quid!

This article is part of Your Allies’s entrepreneurship series. We profile entrepreneurs and their business concepts and give our view on their marketing approach. There’s always something to learn from real startup and business growth experience!

What was your motivation to set up Favabank and what mission have you set yourself?

“The idea for Favabank came out of a curiosity about money, where it comes from, and why the system can’t work without the need for never ending economic growth that we hear so much about in the news, but which is never explained. I discovered that money as we know it is primarily created not by the government as many think, but by high street banks as they make interest bearing loans for their own private profit. This way of creating money requires continual economic growth to be sustainable, so that there is ever more money sloshing around in the system to keep paying interest on the debt. When the system fails, as it did with the bank bail-outs of 2008, it is ordinary people who suffer while the banks carry on as before – privatising profit while socialising risk.

My inquiry into the subject of money led me onto ideas of alternative currencies, and how the way that a currency is created could have an effect on the relationships between the people who use it. Our mainstream currencies create a sense of scarcity of money which sets people against each other in competition for money while consuming the planet’s resources via the addiction to continual economic growth.

Favabank provides a currency, called a Fava, which is based on idea of mutual credit where a unit of currency is created in the act of doing something for someone else. The Fava is therefore a currency which is ‘earned’ into existence rather than ‘loaned’ into existence. The Fava doesn’t carry interest, it is open and traceable, and as abundant as people’s willingness to share and help one another.

The idea of mutual credit systems isn’t new and has been proven in a system known as LETS (Local Exchange Currency Scheme). Favabank builds on this idea with the emphasis on ease of use without a heavy administrative burden to manage. The ambition is for the Fava to become a widely understood and accepted means of transaction for everyday neighbourly favours and exchanges.”

Your Allies’s says…The issue of money being created by banks as debt, relying on ever more growth fuelling a consumerist society is one that is close to our hearts too, and one that more and more forward thinking people are becoming uncomfortable with. There’s still a great need to educate the public about how our current monetary system works and as John points out that it redistributes wealth from the many to a few but risk from a few to everyone. As the Fava is going to stand for real value, not carry interest and is going to reconnect communities, it’s going to be a fantastic way to educate people about the shortcomings of the system in place versus the benefits of a system where money simply fulfills its original purpose: to make trading between people easy.

What makes Favabank unique, unlike any direct and indirect competitors?

“With Favabank I have tried to tick all the boxes as far as creating an intuitive platform which allows people to do peer-to-peer trades of skills and items with built in mechanisms for ensuring trust amongst members, partly through vouching for one another’s authenticity but also through offering a social space for local people to have conversations and getting to know each other.

One obvious thing that makes Favabank different is the idea of developing an alternative currency, based on neighbourly good-will. But for me the main distinguishing factor is the way the whole venture is being structured as a cooperative which is owned by its members, for the benefit of the members. This will give people an experience they’re unused to, of having a democratic voice in the technology platforms they’re using. Instead of having new features of policies thrust upon them, they will have a right, determined by the legal structure, to have their opinions democratically considered.

There are several companies operating under the flag of sharing and ‘collaborative consumption’ who are heavily funded by venture capitalists seeking an ultimate exit. With Favabank I want to extend the idea of ‘sharing’ throughout the venture, creating an open and transparent experience for the membership, rather than having them treated as means to a successful exit.”

Your Allies’s says… Making sure all the right boxes are ticked and combining that with the alternative currency and a cooperative structure gives Favabank a strong differentiator. Overcoming the challenge of growing the user base fast, while establishing local critical mass, will still remain hurdles to address. We’ve seen that John is planning to use share incentives for 5,000 early members. That is a smart move for a startup with Favabank’s cooperative structure to get people on board, and committed early on.

What is your business strategy to accomplish your mission?

“Our strategy is to provide members with a means to acquire things of value in a special way that they would not find elsewhere: peer-to-peer skills, specialist help from a neighbour, access to everyday items. Through our local pages we aim to provide a space for people to get to know one another, build trust, and have fun.

It’s really all about scaling the membership up to a critical mass in each area so that we create opportunities to trade between members, activity on the website, and will then have the page footfall to be able to attract corporate interest in the sponsoring of local pages and discrete, locally targeted advertising.”

Your Allies’s says… The combination of aggregating local sharing options and a virtual currency to trade them is a concept we’ve not come across yet. Sponsorship and advertising will certainly be two interesting avenues to test once Favabank has established a sufficient level of scale, however are adding another target group that needs managing. Progressing from sponsorships to building more mutually beneficial relationships with businesses (i.e. running campaigns together) could be a great next step.

What marketing strategy have you put in place to reach your business objectives?

“I’ve been living with Favabank since 2010, but in terms of product lifecycle it is taking its first baby steps. The key to our success will be gaining sufficient exposure to allow us to scale. We have created a local page for every postcode district in the UK and our aim is to have local managers who will act as Favabank advocates and ambassadors to promote Favabank to members in their local areas and encourage participation. We are adopting a ‘freemium’ model where users can gain access and participate to certain levels on a free of charge basis, with the option to go premium for advanced services.”

Your Allies’s says… The ‘freemium model gets users testing a platform without asking for much commitment, and simultaneously allows Favabank to start educating them about a mutual credit system. Two birds, one stone – smart move indeed. Local managers can lend Favabank a very personal note which is great but will obviously require training, support and ongoing management by Favabank – a logistic challenge given the number of postcode districts. Still a promising approach when they can make it work.

What was your biggest challenge in developing Favabank so far and how did you overcome it?

“The challenges for me personally have involved an awful lot of plate spinning, trying to develop a sophisticated platform without any external funding while still needing to keep going with the day job and family commitments. As the birth of Favabank coincided with the birth of our twin children it has certainly required bucket loads of persistence and faith in the idea.

The biggest challenges are still ahead of us. We now need to engage the membership into the idea of setting up the cooperative together, as well as create a way to gain exposure, introduce new members, and giving them the confidence to participate and scale to nationwide memberships. We are still in desperate need of external funding and will be aiming to attract the right kind of investor once we have the cooperative legal structure in place.”

Your Allies’s says… Starting up a business of the scale of Favabank while holding up a day job and starting a family – apart from determination, discipline and belief in his idea we’re wondering whether John found another energy source to keep him going. If so, we and probably other aspiring entrepreneurs would be eager to know. The pressures of plate-spinning, bedding processes and components down and raising funding will ring true with many entrepreneurs. But with a business concept like Favabank’s we’re confident the reward will be well worth the sleepless nights.

Much success for raising funding and bringing it to life!

Ready for even more inspiration from real-life business experience? Check out the complete entrepreneurship series!

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Ali’s shared with us how that journey went, from the bumpy start to the smoother ride today.

This article is part of Your Allies’s entrepreneurship series. We profile entrepreneurs and their business concepts and give our view on their marketing approach. There’s always something to learn from real startup and business growth experience!

What was your motivation to set up liftshare.com and what mission have you set yourself?

“I’m the youngest of four children, so I grew up in an environment of enforced sharing! But as I reached my teens, I became aware of sharing on a broader scale and recognised the huge potential of a global sharing economy.

As a student at Bristol University, back in 1996, I realised I didn’t have enough money to get the train back to Norfolk for the Christmas holidays. I was convinced there must be students driving in a similar direction, so I pinned a message on a student notice board, asking if anyone could give me a lift. The next day, I returned to find three offers of a ride home – and the idea of Liftshare was born.

Today a total of 550,000 people have joined liftshare.com, with over 80% of commuters having at least one good journey match.

Our mission is very simple: to ensure everyone has someone to share a car with.”

Your Allies says… From enforced sharing to embracing sharing because it makes economic sense – now there’s your customer need uncovered by personal experience. Liftshare.com is an inspiring peer-to-peer company because it is a first mover in its space and has succeeded in establishing corporate and community car-sharing in over 1,200 schemes. Kudos!

What makes liftshare.com unique, unlike any direct and indirect competitors?

“We’re a social enterprise, so we’re mission-driven rather than profit-driven. No member ever pays to join or use any schemes on the Liftshare network and we provide a lot of car-sharing schemes (such as FestivalBUDi.com, StudentCarshare.com and of course liftshare.com) purely to help us achieve our mission.

We are also pioneers in the sharing economy and social networking – we were actually launched a week before Google! But above all, what makes us different is that – with over 360,000 members – we have critical mass in the UK, so we give users the best chance of finding a match. Liftshare works for everyone, every journey, anywhere, and is trusted by both corporates and individuals.”

Your Allies says… Scaling up the business to critical mass so services can be used by the target group is one big challenge P2P companies face where sharing resources happens in the real world rather than online. Social enterprise Liftshare has achieved this growing from a young, cash-stripped user base into car-sharing schemes and broadening its appeal to everyone who can use a lift, from consumers and communities to corporates.

What is your business strategy to accomplish your mission?

“Whilst we provide many free sites for finding a car-sharer, Liftshare is actually funded by businesses, communities, hospitals and universities who pay to have their own lift-sharing schemes, with access to the entire network of UK users. We’ve been the leading provider of car-share schemes in the UK for over a decade, helping organisations such as Heathrow, Tesco and Sky, who recognise the impact a car-sharing scheme can have on their environmental credentials, parking issues and finances.”

Your Allies says… understanding how to provide services which support or tie in with initiatives as Liftshare has done here is a smart move. As well as the benefit of being associated with already established organisations or campaigns comes the added plus of having access to their networks.

What marketing strategy have you put in place to reach your business objectives?

“Our market changes continuously. It took us a while to realise how important it was to refresh our marketing approach. Initially, like any small business, we spent a huge amount of time thinking carefully about our marketing approach; lots of ideas were tried and tested, lessons learned quickly – we started doing well, even though we had no marketing budget.

As time went on, we started to focus more on running the operation than on marketing. We continued to develop some amazing new tools and services but we made the mistake of not dedicating enough time to getting many of them to market. Without a clear marketing strategy for each new service, we unsurprisingly found some were not as successful as we had hoped.

We learnt our lesson and we now rewrite our marketing strategy every year to keep up with the changes in the demands of our various audiences and the variations in the ways they access information.”

Your Allies says… Testing is a must to ensure you’ve chosen the right tactics to support your overarching marketing strategy, and to find out whether that strategy works. Thank you for sharing the learning from switching your focus away from marketing to product development and operations. This happens all too easily in a startup environment and still does to many.

From what we’ve seen you’ve recently invested in a new brand identity broadening the positioning to travel. As we’d expect from an online platform you self-publish content and are proactive on social media to reach your target groups with a mix of useful and fun multi-media content as well as user-generated content that helps to convince undecided users. Keeping your communities engaged and further growing them, especially with both an open community and schemes to manage, is hard work but can really pay off if done well.

What was your biggest challenge in developing liftshare.com so far and how did you overcome it?

Since 1999, Liftshare has been a roller coaster for me and my team – there have been exciting developments but we have certainly had challenges too.

Funding our efforts to change the way we travel in the UK proved an almost insurmountable obstacle at first. My first audience was festival-goers and students, and with a beginner’s enthusiasm I’d imagined 10,000 joining liftshare.com in year one, each paying £10 to make the website sustainable. On day one, we actually made just £40 – which didn’t even cover my travel costs! I rapidly reworked the business model.

Your Allies’s says… We sympathise with the financing challenge which we know very well from our experience working with early-stage startups. It has been difficult to raise funding in the last few years since the fundamental weaknesses of our banking system became more visible in 2008. No doubt that it must have been an even bigger challenge for a peer-to-peer pioneer already long before the financial crisis. Peer-to-business financing has recently become a viable option, especially when the fundraiser can call upon an established following.

Good luck with further growing the Liftshare community, for the good of saving people money and the environment!

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Photo credit: Ryan McGuire / gratisography.com, published unchanged