Image by Getty Images for AOL via @daylife  After spending a few hours at TechCrunch Disrupt this week, I quickly encountered a few trends I’ve been seeing and hearing from a number of other early-stage startups. Perhaps the most exciting one, particularly as unemployment hovers around 9%…  Everything Can Be Monetized Now  This isn’t new. eBay started way back in 1995 and even Etsy, the marketplace for selling homemade arts and crafts, started in 2005. But more narrow and creative verticals keep popping up and are gaining traction among buyers and sellers. Airbnb, for example, has proven that there’s a marketplace for renting out your house to vacationers. The next generation companies are getting even more creative about what can be bought and sold between strangers.  The next generation marketplaces via TechCrunch Disrupt:  Have a few hours of time that you’re not driving your car? Rent it out on Getaround.  Want to make a few dollars giving up your aisle row seat on an airplane, offer $40 for it on Zaarly and see who bites.  Both companies speak the language of the new tech paradigm. Zaarly says it wants “eBay growth at Groupon speed.” And indeed the company was conceived and created just three months ago at a Startup Weekend event in Los Angeles, a tech event that aims to help companies get created in a weekend. The company landed Ashton Kutcher as its first investor there.  Getaround spent a bit longer getting going as it’s taken the company about a year and a half to build out technology that lets you unlock any car from your mobile phone. It’s also secured separate insurance for anyone renting a car through Zaarly.  While I often find my eyes glazing over at tech events when I hear company #20 of the day describe themselves as the “X of Y” (insert Groupon, Facebook, or Twitter and any vertical you can imagine here). But companies like Zaarly and Getaround only work because consumers have become fluent in the language of mobile apps, and social media and such descriptors, though tedious, actually mean something.  “When there’s a critical mass of the internet and mobile, things that were probably tried and failed years ago become viable,” says David Tisch, who runs startup accelerator TechStars’ New York program. “Sharing works when there’s a network effect.”  Tisch calls Zaarly the modern-day Kozmo. A former Forbes reporter described Kozmo in a story detailing its 2001 demise as “a pathetic friend, ready to deliver movies or magazines or candy bars to your door.”  As we struggle to look for parallels or differences between the last tech boom/bubble and today’s boom, perhaps the Kozmo/Zaarly/Getaround comparisons are good ones to use. It’s too early to see whether the traction is there for these new companies, even though both Zaarly and Getaround both boast thousands of users a few weeks after their initial launch. Getaround also landed top honors at TechCrunch Disrupt’s New York conference this week.  Will you rent your car with insurance or sell or buy an aisle seat on an airplane? I’m tempted to transact as long as there’s someone on the other side.
Zaarly and Getaround are some of the new companies that could help us share everything and monetize it.