Welcome, this industry newsletter shares key market changes, in a twice-monthly publication, curated by Jeremiah Owyang, Founder of Catalyst Companies™, you can subscribe to the email newsletter on the footer of the homepage.

Shapeways and Hasbro Birth 3D SuperFanArt
Shapeways mission is to help people in the creative community to make exactly what they want, for themselves, to share and sell to others. That mission just got a lot easier as Hasbro, one of the leading toy manufacturers in the world, has continued to embrace the collaborative economy by joining with Shapeway to make products on demand that might otherwise never make it into people’s hands. This collaboration utlizes 3D printing technology to help creative designers expose their products to a worldwide audience and to help Hasbro tap into designs they most likely would never have seen before this alliance. Read more.

Uber and Airbnb Concur to Attract Business Travelers
“Often easier to use, often cheaper, and often more versatile,” is an appropriate description of both Uber and Airbnb, leaders in the ride and space sharing niches. There is a certain irony about the fact that both companies recently announced that they have partnered with Concur to enhance their services for business travellers, a much bigger and more consistent, potential revenue stream. Concur is the provided of one of the leading expense tracking, business software systems. The collaboration brings Uber and Airbnb into the heart of the business travel model, while Concur gives them acceptance and credibility. Read more.

FundingCircle Expands Horizons in P2P Lending
As traditional lending institutions continue to withholding funding for small businesses, the vacuum the banks have created is being filled at a rapid pace by peer-to-peer crowd-funding startups. FundingCircle is a London-based that was established in 2009. In the ensuing five years it has helped more than 5,000 business to find more than £300 million. s 2013 was coming to a close, the company that advertizes that it can obtain funding for applicants within seven business days, launched operations in the U.S. By January it had already processed $300,000 for small businesses in North America. By the end of June the figure was in excess of $65 million. Read more.

Lyft Begins Operations is NYC (Finally)
We were all looking forward to July 11th when Lyft was originally set to begin operations in New York City, ironically, the third city in which it hoped to activate in New York State. Lyft’s original plans were thwarted by a lawsuit filed jointly by NYS Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman and the state’s insurance regulator, Benjamin Lawsky. Now that the parties have settled their differences, Lyft is ready to join competitor Uber in the Big Apple tonight, July 25th. Under the terms of the agreement, Lyft may must use commercially licensed drivers and may not provide them with liability insurance. Although it must suspend operations in Rochester and Buffalo for an indefinite period of time, the company will open in all five NYC boroughs. Originally it was slated to open only in Brooklyn and Queens. Read more.

Canada’s AskforTask Models TaskRabbit
Imagine a collaborative Askers and Taskers. That’s what brothers Muneeb and Nabeel Mushtaq did when they couldn’t easily find a plumber to fix their mother’s leaky faucet. Out of the incident they conceived and began AskforTask a website and (soon-to-be) mobile app by which Askers advertize tasks that they need to have done and where Taskers can respond and contract to do the job at an agreed price. AskforTask earns its keep by getting a 15% cut once the task has been assigned. There are some concerns that the endeavor will promote a lifestyle of “one-off jobs,” but isn’t that what freelancing, sharing and collaboration are all about? Read more.