ike many businesses, Uber and Airbnb exist to make something easier. For Uber, it’s making getting a ride as easy as possible. For Airbnb, it’s all about easily finding a place to stay.
But if there are so many businesses that make something easier or better, why do Uber and Airbnb standout as being ‘revolutionary?’
Apart from being significantly better compared to alternatives, one of the reasons why Uber and Airbnb stand out is their business models are built on an ingredient that feels magical: they help people sell their leftovers.
Selling leftovers
I first heard about ‘selling leftovers’ from a post called ‘Sell Your By-products‘ by best-selling author and founder of Basecamp, Jason Fried.
Jason writes about one example in the lumber industry where lumber businesses have figured out how to create revenue sources from selling their leftover sawdust and other by-products after they cut wood.
Selling your by-products, or leftovers, means selling the leftover things lying around after you made your core thing.
Finding by-products in your process and packaging them up for sale not only saves you time but it turns something you might have thought was waste, into something of value.
Basecamp has made a living selling leftovers.
Their best-selling books were leftovers created from the experience they went through while building their company. The popular programming language, Ruby on Rails, was a leftover from creating their product. Even their blog is a leftover that has turned into significant value. Basecamp has never paid for any marketing. Instead, they’ve partially relied on selling their leftovers to build a multi-million dollar company.
The beautiful thing about the businesses models behind companies like Uber and Airbnb is they help lots of people sell their leftovers. They allow almost anyone with a car or home the opportunity to get something from nothing.
With Uber, you can make money from the leftover space in your car.
With Airbnb, you can make money from the leftover space in your house. Or your trailer. Or your treehouse.
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