How listening took the car sharing company from a student start-up to a sharing economy champion
Twenty years is a long time. In the past twenty years the mobile phone has become a part of all our daily lives, our shopping habits have been revolutionised by online payments and Google has become our portal to the internet. None of these things had happened in the August of 1998 when Ali Clabburn, Chief Executive of Liftshare.com, started an online car sharing service, to help fellow students get home at weekends.
“Google launched two weeks later,” he says. “We went live two years before PayPal, eight years before Facebook, about 10 years before Airbnb and 12 before Uber. A lot has changed in that time.”
Liftshare has moved on too. Today its commercial arm focuses on facilitating commuting and business travel, through a tailored online portal and app. And some of its clients, such as GSK and BT, are even rolling out its service to their international offices.
“O
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