Today I am going to tell you about the adventure of a lifetime; or 3 lifetimes actually. Ivan, Mat and myself are 3 old friends from high school. Separated in the turmoil of academic life, it is in the collaborative economy that we were to be reunited. September 2013, baptism of fire. At that time we were each experiencing the collaborative rush for the first time (without knowing it) and on 3 different continents. Ivan and I were Couchsurfing in Chile and Uganda while Mathieu had rented a place in Amsterdam with Airbnb.
And we liked it! In fact, we liked it so much that we started to dig a little deeper into these new ways of doing things. These new ways of connecting with other people: we had just discovered the collaborative economy. And we were not the only ones apparently. It was all over the news: « Airbnb is valued at $10bn » or « BlaBlaCar raises $100 million ». But in our eyes, it was more than just a set of figures – it was about that Chilean, that Ugandan and that Dutch people who had welcomed us into their homes and done things differently.
We had a world to discover! March 2014, we make the bet of undertaking the first crossing of the American continent from Canada to Brazil, using only the collaborative economy. Our mission: go and meet the many people behind the movement. How about that? (#HeavyPause) The Sharing Bros were born.
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And off you go! Find a designer, launch your Facebook page, reanimate your grandma after telling her that you’re about to cross 16 countries with the help of complete strangers, attend conferences, look for sponsors, explain to your buddies that you’re not going on holidays, earn money babysitting… And when you finally (!) think you’re out of the woods, you realise you’re still €4.000 short to buy 2 cameras. That’s when we turned to Ulule, a crowdfunding platform. Originally we saw 2 main advantages: 1) it was bang on topic for our trip, 2) there were no other plausible ways of raising that kind of money only a month before departure. We’d sort of guessed that turning a Facebook like into a financial contribution would be no picnic but we had never expected to gain so much from that campaign. Not only did we raise twice as much as we’d hoped (Joy in our hearts!), we actually also managed to build a community. That Ulule page became a showcase of our project. Contributors turned into ambassadors. In fact, those 144 supporters of ours gave us the “street cred” we needed when it came to approaching companies such as Airbnb for partnerships.
Actually, in hindsight, we’ve come to realise that our community carried us throughout the whole project! Mind you, the day our camera got stolen in Costa Rica, we were lost at the heart of Central America. Not a friend in sight. But thanks to our followers we were able to raise €1.300 in 24h through an express crowdfunding campaign.
A vibrant community is a pretty sweet thing, man! - Adam Smith (1757)
Anyhow! The 17th of July had arrived and we were there, all set with our cameras and backpacks, ready to embark upon an adventure that sounded like a bad joke: 3 Frenchies living 7 months and crossing a land mass 22 times that of France only through people. We were floating on cloud nine… but not for long. “Vancouver, final stop. Everybody out!”
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Living using only the collaborative economy is a bit like a football game. From your couch, everything seems straightforward and you’re quite happy to yell your strategic insights to number 10. But when you actually get out on the field, you realise it is neither intuitive nor very relaxing.
Our first week on the field ended up being quite a ride! We slept the first couple nights at May’s, in room #9 of her house turned into a hotel thanks to Airbnb. The following 3 days involved little sleep, as we spent them on the floor at our Couchsurfing hosts’, often woken up in the middle of the night by fellow party mates stepping on your face. Good thing we also had a daily 3-hour bus ride to our coworking space to ponder. Add in a hint of technical inaptitude, and a zest of time pressure and boom… et voilà! But “it ain’t over till it’s over!” Keep calm and think about France. A week, 47 phone calls and 113 Facebook posts later, we had even managed to get ourselves a ride to San Francisco, 2nd halt of the trip.
You should’ve seen us as we irrupted into town after 1000 Km on Highway 101. We were there, San Francisco – the Mecca of the collaborative economy. Everything was going to be alright! Kind of…
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It was a beautiful day – seagulls were singing, Mat was just standing there with his rosy cheeks looking pleased, whilst Ivan was humming his gratitude away. The only thing missing was a roof for the night.
And so began our quest, confident that in the Tech capital of the world, any of the 837 000 inhabitants would certainly be more than thrilled to have us. Once again, reality kicked in. A few hours and a flight of personalised e-mails later, we started coming to terms with the fact that Couchsurfing wouldn’t bring redemption. It did help us draw a fairly accurate and exhaustive list of the most lustful men in the Bay Area seeking to host “one or more women”, but did little for us gritty-looking scavengers. We eventually ended up staying at Sieva’s, a young Californian entrepreneur we met through Airbnb. On that day, we realised that a reciprocal exchange tends to be more fluid, which was confirmed throughout the trip in spite of all geographical or cultural barriers. Beware, we are not necessarily talking about monetisation but actually reciprocity! It can be working in exchange for accommodation (e.g.: Wwoofing), your knowledge for an object (Ex.: Tradeschool) or even points for a roof (E.g.: Nightswapping).There are plenty of ways to exchange nowadays, and it seems that it is in reciprocal engagements that people are most reactive.
3 weeks later we were reaching the US-Mexico border, i.e.: a little revolving door that you’d only expect to see in a supermarket, when we got a message from Che – a Tijuana-based American, and former MMA fighter with dyed hair and arms the size of my chest. Born and bred in Seattle, he quickly tips into a world of violence and drugs. He’s only 16 years old when he gets shot. After a quasi-miraculous recovery he ends up launching his business, which he’ll sell for a small fortune a few years later before moving to Mexico, all alone. He’s inviting us for a 3-day outing on a deserted beach somewhere along the Baja California peninsula to go and swim with whale sharks… out of the sole pleasure of sharing. Screening his Couchsurfing account, we see that he counts no less than 250 mates, not to mention 458 positive comments. After 3 days of careless fun, we’d actually come to understand the importance of Couchsurfing in his life – his ticket to a social life he couldn’t have hoped for otherwise. That is what makes these P2P platforms so special. It all starts with an e-mail on a website, but that message can then lead to; nothing, good times, a new random friendship, or who knows, romance…? As far as we’re concerned, Che remains one of our best memories of the trip.
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Galvanised by that beautiful insight about the possibility of fostering social bonds through Internet platforms, we quickly get that it will be of little use to us once we reach Central America. Platforms there are inexistent. And with regards to social interactions, the dude at the border is quite happy to tell you that, “where you’re headed, people like you get hanged on lampposts” and that “you’re never going to survive.” Sweet.
At first, you feel a bit like Frodo at the gates of Mordor; uneasy. But after a couple days of crossing at the back of a Guatemalan truck and a few nights in absurd places such as a Costa Rican petrol station or an empty rotten container somewhere in Panama, we eventually made it to Colombia.
One day, as Mat was in position by the side of road, all thumb deployed and on the lookout for a good soul to take us to Medellin a few kilometres down the road, a car stops. The window slowly comes down. Inside, a man is nervously clinging onto his steering wheel. His head slowly creeps out of the car, and he stammers: “I want to help you but I am scared. You’re not going to hurt me, are you?” Mat’s laughter and Ivan’s soothing smile will help reassure our good Samaritan, aka Ramiro, and a moment later we’re on board making headway. Once in the car, he tells us that he would never had stopped, had we looked like locals.
We had been told this before. In hindsight, we realise that this mistrust between locals is common in these regions worn out by an often drug-related historic violence. With fear comes mistrust, which in turn hinders exchanges. Our immediate (so occidental!) reaction was to turn to the Internet! As Jeremiah Owyang, the founder of Crowd Companies says: “new technologies enable us strangers to be good neighbours.” Actually, if we look at Europe 70 years ago, it didn’t promise anything all that funky collaboratively speaking. But today, here we are, sharing knowledge, cars, and apartments at the scale of the continent. Could the Internet serve as a catalyst to collaboration?
It didn’t take us long to work out that these countries haven’t bothered waiting for the Internet to collaborate. In these regions where you rarely have the luxury of not making the most of what you own, innovation and collaboration are an ancestral way of life. Peruvians too are quite keen on sharing their taxis with other peers. But they call it “collectivos” rather than “UberPool”. On the road from Cuernavaca to Mexico City, you can find up to 350 people queuing up in a single line, waiting for someone to drop them off in the City Centre some 60 Km further for 32 Pesos. Sort of like an institutionalised BlaBlaCar terminal. While horizontal governance is a trendy topic in the West, the Kuna tribe, Safe keepers of the Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia, take all their decisions in a fully collegial manner. Porto Alegre, Brazilian harbour of a million and some inhabitants, was the first city in the world to implement a policy of participatory budgeting as soon as 1989.
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https://vimeo.com/130855017
Not only is it smooth way of saving money, people in those countries often end up collaborating to tackle issues left unaddressed by an apathetic and/or impotent government. After hitchhiking 19.000 Km and crossing 15 countries, we arrived with a Bang in Porto Alegre, the first chapter of our Brazilian adventures. There, locals told us about their former public transport signalling system. They described it as some sort of darker age, caught somewhere between apocalypse and the dawn of civilisation. Apparently, it was a bit like watching “Interstellar” – complex enough for you to forget your own name. So complex in fact, that they launched the “Que Ônibus Passa Aqui?” program. The concept is simple: everyone is invited to write down the bus itineraries on stickers placed at bus stops all over the city. You’re essentially crowdsourcing the mapping of your public transport system, which makes it easier for locals to find their way around. Not bad, ey?
But you’re probably wondering: “What about the Internet? Will it not have a role to play going forward?” We believe it will, but that it’ll take time. Collaboration in Latin America still doesn’t spontaneously go through the Worldwide Web. Meagre Internet and smartphones penetration rates, aversion to digital tech too often assimilated to fraud, insecurity… there are still numerous barriers to the development of the collaborative economy, as we know it in the West.
Even when people have Internet access, the thought of using it to connect with another Human being can seem absurd. In San Jose, we decided to pop by Costa Rica’s main University. Our mission: assess that mistrust in the Internet with the presumably most open and connected in the country. And guess what? Out of 15 students, only 2 of them knew of Couchsurfing or Airbnb. And none of them would consider sharing their car or apartment with a stranger met on the Internet. In their eyes, a profile on a platform is a bit like a windscreen… pretty useless if you can’t see who’s behind it!
That said, the culture for collaboration is already deeply engrained and digital tools are spreading rapidly. From Mexico to Brazil, if not through BlaBlaCar or Tripda, we can see people organising ridesharing trips via Facebook groups. In Mexico, Kangou has developed an app’ enabling individuals to work as a deliveryman thanks to the local bike sharing network. Idea Me, Argentinean crowdfunding platform and Latin American leader in their field, have facilitated the funding of more than 850 projects in just over 3 years. Cumplo, the Chilean P2P-lending champion, has already funnelled close to $47 Million. And the list goes on.
The demand is there with matching supply thanks to the rise of numerous innovation hubs in different parts of the continent.
It might not be for tomorrow, but we foresee a bright future for the collaborative economy in these regions. After all, if we managed to cross the whole American continent, we owe it to its people and their will to collaborate.
Rodolphe
24, I have 3 passions in life : innovation, badminton and playing the guitar, all this with a dash of collaborative economy, obviously. Ivan
25, I like mashed bananas in my yogurt, meeting weird people while ridesharing and riding a scooter to the movie theater. Mathieu
24, my favourite things in the world are: successfully passing the ball at rugby, taking a bite of a juicy merguez and discovering a city thanks to locals (Airbnb, Couchsurfing, Nightswapping, etc.).