If you know what stoked means, you know you owe it to the universe to share it. Number 8 in the Surfers Code is “Pass On Your Stoke to a Nonsurfer”. The Surfers Code we live by goes well beyond surfing. It is a code that transcends any sport or activity and a code we believe leads to a more fulfilled life. StokeShare is about passing on that stoke and fulfillment to others.

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Transcript:

Kevin: This episode of The Crowd is brought to you by Near Me. Power your next on-demand app or marketplace with Near Me.

Hi. Welcome to The Crowd, a podcast by Near Me. We’re talking about peer-to-peer marketplaces. We’re talking collaborative economy. We’re talking about thought leadership. We’re talking about all these things, any and all of them with some of the best minds in the field. And of course, I’m your host, Kevin Cohen.

Hi. I’m your host Kevin Cohen. I’m super excited about today’s interview. Today, I’ll be joined by Warren Neilson. Warren is the co-founder of StokeShare. Warren, welcome to the show.

Warren: Thanks for having me.

Kevin: Of course, of course. Before we jump in to our discussion on the collaborative economy, I’ve got some rapid fire questions for you. What book do you recommend most often?

Warren: That’s a great question. You know, I usually recommend the book that I’m working on or that’s sitting on my nightstand because they shift pretty frequently. But the two books that come to mind I would say right now that I had just opened up is a recent book by Yvon Chouinard, Let My People Go Surfing and I happen to have Sun Tzu’s The Art of War on my nightstand. I just love that book. I read it many, many years ago and I just – I read through it and sift through it often on almost an annual basis.

Kevin: Very cool. So what peer-to-peer marketplaces or on-demand services do you use? I know you live in San Francisco and they’re all around us. So what are the things you use?

Warren: You know, I use some of the most common or basic ones. So Airbnb, I pretty much don’t – I travel a good bit and I either stay with friends or I definitely choose sort of an Airbnb application. Certainly with getting around, I use Lyft or Uber. I’m kind of back and forth on those. TaskRabbit, so I’ve used that a couple of times and kind of enjoyed it. Watch it grow. And Yerdle.

Kevin: Very cool. So give us your back story. What did you do before you started StokeShare?

Warren: Okay. Back, back story or just back story?

Kevin: As far as you want to go. Just give us the juice.

Warren: Yeah. I’ll try to make it short. I’ll try to sum it up. But you know, I came to San Francisco from Sydney, Australia where I was living for a couple of years. And there I was working for the Green Building Council of Australia and I was getting my Master’s in Sustainable Development. And once I graduated from there, the focus that I had was really on the design of high performance and highly sustainable buildings. And so I ended up coming to San Francisco and I chose to come back to the US and definitely wanted to end up in California and on the coastline since surfing is one of my biggest passions. And I chose San Francisco because it’s really a hot spot for sustainability especially in the built environment.

So I jumped on a plane, flew over here and, you know, connected with a couple of great people and worked with the World Green Building Council and some consulting firms and started, you know, working within San Francisco predominantly and, you know, large development projects on buildings throughout both San Francisco and the East Bay and throughout Southern California as well and then a couple of international projects before really jumping in and starting to play around with StokeShare.

Kevin: Nice, nice. So give our listeners the high level overview of StokeShare if they’re not familiar with your marketplace.

Warren: Sure. So StokeShare is a peer-to-peer marketplace for adventure gear. And really what we focus on is connecting people with the outdoors and we do that through the medium of outdoor equipment and adventure gear. So that really ranges from, you know, surfboards or stand up paddle boards, climbing gear, diving gear, canoes and kayaks, snowboards, skis, camping and backpacking gear. And so the way it works really is that those that have the equipment will log into their, to the site and list the gear simply by taking a picture of their equipment, posting it online, listing for, you know, the amount that they want to rent it for whether that be hourly or daily or weekly or long term. And then those that are interested in, you know, wanting to get outdoors and maybe try a new sport or go away for the weekend and get outside can log in to StokeShare, find some equipment in their local area, connect with that lister and actually go rent that equipment for the weekend, have a great adventure, share some stories with the people they connected with on StokeShare and not have to burden themselves with the, you know, upfront expense of affording some of this really expensive equipment or storing it in their own place.

Kevin: It sounds like a great concept. How did you come up with the idea for StokeShare?

Warren: Yeah. Really, so it started out or the idea came about with my business partner Joel and I. We are pretty avid surfers and really outdoor enthusiasts all around but we ended up surfing a lot at Ocean Beach. We both met each other in San Francisco. I, you know, as I just stated moved from Sydney. Joel moved from Santa Barbara where he had just graduated from school as well. And you know, we had limited resources moving to this, you know, big city. And we know it’s surrounded by all this amazing adventure but we really didn’t have a way to connect with that all. So one day, we were surfing down at Ocean Beach and we’re catching some waves and we started talking about some adventures that, you know, Joel and I really wanted to go on.

And I started sharing some, you know, adventures that I had been, climbing experience in Yosemite and some caving in New Zealand and surfing here and there. And he was telling me about his great snowboarding trips he had been on and the travelling that he had done as well. And we’re saying to ourselves, okay, let’s go do something together aside from surfing. Let’s get out and try something else. And so we came up with the idea of going spearfishing on the coast. And I didn’t have any equipment and he didn’t have any diving equipment and we didn’t really – because we’re new to the city, we really didn’t have anyone that we could connect with either.

But here we were looking back at the shore from the surf break and we realized, look at this massive city and it’s a major tech hub, like an international tech hub, if not the largest. Someone in that city has to have this equipment and I’m sure that there’s some sort of platform out there that exists that could connect us with that individual who has the spearfishing gear. So, both Joel and I went back home and we stayed up all night trying to find a way to connect with someone that had some spearfishing equipment. And we tried anything and everything, just every Google search you could come up with and went down all kinds of rabbit holes and actually went back to each other the next morning because I didn’t find anything. Maybe we didn’t look hard enough.

We tried again. And sure enough, nothing existed. So we thought, well, here’s a problem because we really wanted to make this happen. And I’m sure we’re not the only ones. If there’s obviously a solution that doesn’t exist out there, we need to find the solution. So, we ended up deciding we will create our own. And so that’s where StokeShare came about. And the idea was it started upon us sharing stories of our experiences and that we intentionally didn’t start the company and entitled it Dear Share. It was the idea of sharing that stoke, that enjoyment of being outdoors and the stories that come along with that.

Kevin: Very cool.

Warren: Thanks.

Kevin: So, StokeShare is a mission-driven marketplace. Tell us about your mission and how that translates into what you guys do.

Warren: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. It’s definitely a mission-driven marketplace. Both Joel and I come from an environmental responsibility or sustainability background both academically and professionally. That’s what we chose to devote our lives to. And so when StokeShare came about, it was a no brainer that we wanted a really mission-driven company and platform that would do good in the world, that would actually make the world a better place with the use of the site. So what we wanted to do is we – for one, we realized that people protect what they love. They love what they know and they know what they experience. So if we really want to get people to protect the natural environment that we love and explore during our free time, we really need them to get to experience that.

Once you really experience the outdoors in a really meaningful way, it’s pretty easy to gain that relationship and that knowledge of it and then therefore fall in love and protect it. So, we felt the best way for us to continue our missions in life which is to try to protect the environment is to use StokeShare to get more people outdoors to experience these wonderful, the amazing places that we play in. And so we realized that there’s actually a decent amount of the population that just doesn’t have access to the outdoors. We live in the Bay Area which a pretty amazing spot and it’s surrounded by just amazing coastline, rivers, mountains, hills whether it’s Yosemite or Tahoe National Forest or even Lake Tahoe. And we go out skiing and realize that there’s a whole population of people that don’t really get out there on the ski slopes.

It’s a really expensive hobby. The equipment itself is really expensive. Just to get on the slopes, it’s pretty incredible to get to these resorts. So what we wanted to do is – we thought to ourselves, what if we build this platform where we can create this massive library, maybe the largest library of outdoor equipment in the world and then we can make it accessible to anyone and everyone at a very uncostly proposition. Meaning, it’s really inexpensive for you to get outdoors rather spend thousands or hundreds of dollars on this equipment. And so what we’ve done is we’ve spent –

Literally every month, we put together an event where we take inner city kids and we connect them with the equipment that we have online. And we bring them outdoors whether that’s out camping and backpacking or skiing and snowboarding, canoeing or kayaking, out on some climbing trips or surfing. That’s our intention and that’s what we aim to do. So the more equipment that we really get on the site, the more impact we hope to have by bringing these kids that don’t really have access to the outdoors and helping them gain that access.

So, a couple months ago, we were in LA and we got together with the LA Police Department and a couple of organizations including Surfrider Foundation and Patagonia. And we collected all the gear from our site and we took out a group of about 13 kids that had never been in the ocean before and taught them all how to surf and got them out on surfboards and use our wet suits. And they had an absolute blast. I mean, it was remarkable, the smiles on these kids’ faces and the experience that they had. And we’re planning another event coming up here in August as well to do the same.

Kevin: How is being a mission-driven organization, how does that affect the decisions you make in terms of just everyday business decisions? Does it always come in to effect? Is it just kind of something you weave into your marketing? Kind of explain to our listeners how being a mission-driven organization affects everyday decision making?

Warren: Yeah. That’s a great question. I honestly believe it. It makes decision making a lot easier. It really does when it comes from the core of your organization, deep down in the roots. Your purpose for actually existing or your platform’s existence is to leave the world a better place in one way or another whether that’s a social impact or environmental or what have you. It has a real cost behind it that it’s easier to make those decisions. When a decision comes up, you simply ask yourself, hey, does this follow through with what we’re trying to accomplish? And from our perspective, we’re focused on an environmental mission. Does it help us drive our mission and protect the environment that we love and play in? It’s kind of a yes or no. It’s a black or white. I mean, some of the questions that we ask ourselves are a little grayer and you have to think then long term versus short term, right? But I don’t know if that’s too simple of an answer for you but it just actually makes it a lot easier and you sleep a lot better at night as well.

Kevin: Totally, totally. So what do you guys have on the horizon for StokeShare? What’s coming up?

Warren: So we’ve got an event down in LA that we’re partnering with Tom’s shoes, down in Venice, California. And they have a flagship store right on the main strip there in Venice. And we’ve connected with them before and they are – you know, we’re pretty big fans of each other and so it’s kind of exciting to be able to partner with other organizations that share that sort of mission-driven purpose. I think what we found – and this is pretty common. I don’t think I’m going to say anything surprising but once you connect yourself with either other people or other organizations that share those same values, you create a really much deeper relationship very early on. And so what we found that by connecting with those organizations that we, that have inspired us and that we have values aligned with, it’s pretty simple to sort of move forward and make a lasting relationship. So anyway, an example of that is this event that we’re doing with Tom’s down in Venice.

Kevin: Very cool. So where can our listeners find out about StokeShare? Where can they learn more about you guys?

Warren: Yeah. That’s a great question. So stokeshare.com is the place to go. And if you want to find out more about the site, we certainly have a blog that’s been running to give a lot more insight into some of the events that we’ve been putting on, what our mission is, what our purpose, what our aims and our goals are, who we’ve been connecting with and what we’ve been able to accomplish to date. There have also been a couple articles out there. Triple Pounded just worked with us to put out an article on the sharing economy. It’s a pretty well-known publication. And we’ve also – we’re fairly active in social media whether that’s Twitter, Facebook or Instagram simply by following through on StokeShare.

Kevin: Awesome. If I have some extra gear in my closet or in my garage and I want to list it on your site, what does that process look like?

Warren: Yeah. Process is pretty simple. We actually spent a lot of time trying to make it as simple and easy as possible. It’s a really clean process. The idea is this. If you have some equipment in your closet, just go in your closet, pull that gear out, take a really nice, clean, crisp picture of it. Log on to stokeshare.com, create an account which is very simple. It’s just your e-mail address and a little bit of information. And then upload that picture to the site, give some minor details about it. Let’s say it’s some camping gear. You might mark it as a tent and what the make and model is. And then simply determine how much you want to rent that equipment for, what that rate would be. And then post it live.

Then, it’s as simple as that. And the beauty of the site and the way that it works is that when someone is interested in your equipment that we’re not only connected via e-mail and it connects you there but it’s also through SMS or text messaging. So if someone is interested in that piece of equipment you just posted maybe the tent, you’d get a text message that says, hey, you know, so and so is interested in your tent and they want to rent it for X amount of days. It’s, you know, this many dollars in your pocket. Are you interested? You simply say yes, I’m totally interested. Let’s do that. It connects back with them. It lets them know. They’re informed. And then there’s a simple process of you two figuring out when the best time and place to pick that equipment up is.

Kevin: Great. Thanks Warren for joining us here today. It was great to hear about your mission. It was great to hear about how StokeShare started and really it’s an inspiration for anybody who’s looking to start a marketplace. We urge everybody who’s listening here. If you are going to start a marketplace, figure out what you care about, figure out what cause you’re going to get behind because it will make your job of making decisions so much easier. It will give you total clarity of thought and it will give you a lens in which to make every decision from. Anyway, Warren, thanks for joining us. It’s been great checking in with you.

Warren: Kevin, it was a pleasure. Thanks for having me, man.

Kevin: So that’s it for today’s show everybody. I’d like to thank Warren from StokeShare for joining us here today. They’re doing great stuff so check them out. If you want to learn more about StokeShare, we’ve got all of their information in the show notes. Go to www.near-me.com. Click on the blog and then go to the podcast listing. Also, if you like today’s show, we’d really appreciate it if you could go to iTunes and leave us a five-star review and don’t forget to subscribe while you are there. Make it a great day and thanks.