Michelle is the CEO and Co-Founder of Near Me, a ‘platform as a service’ powering global brands and small businesses with a customizable peer-to-peer marketplace. Its flagship product, DesksNear.Me, is a website connecting mobile workers to available desk spaces all over the world.
Michelle is passionate and heavily involved in the sharing economy – listing her car on GetAround, ordering food from Munchery, riding around town using bike share and hiring services from Zirtual and TaskRabbit.
Born and raised in Silicon Valley, Michelle graduated from Notre Dame de Namur with a degree in Business and Finance. Soon after, she worked as a financial analyst at Morgan Stanley. Eventually her entrepreneurial side could not be contained and she successfully launched her first company called Innercircuit, a Software-as-a-Service company which quickly grew into a national payment and communications hub for residential property managers and renters.
What inspired you to start Near Me?
The sharing economy gets us back to our roots the way business used to be done – a more personable, social business using re-commerce, improving the quality of our lives and providing richer choices in products and services. I like the idea of using less while having an abundance of options to choose from, when I need. I see that we’re now focusing more on the access that we have to things, which can give us a richer lifestyle. The idea that “more stuff is better” seems to be slowly eroding, “more choice” is better.
How did you start Near Me?
I met Adam Broadway through some mutual Aussie friends after I exited from my last company. Much like me, he had a concept for desk sharing. My last company had lots of excess space for desks, and we were in a long lease, so we started hoteling out desks on Craigslist – as there was no other good solution to lease out the space. In contrast, Adam brought his business over from Australia and needed to setup an office that he could grow into.
After many coffee and lunch meetings, Adam and I begun to understand our differences as well as our similarities. We took our time getting to know one another before deciding to become business partners. I think the success of a business is the team, and that starts with the founders, so we needed to make sure that we were a good fit from the start.
How do you define a marketplace?
A marketplace is a two-sided exchange, offering up goods or services between two individuals. This often includes a peer rating and review system. Another defining factor is that anyone can be both a provider and a participant. For example, you can be both a guest and a host, a driver and a car owner, a chef and a foodie. Marketplaces can be run by industry experts, local hobbyists, and global brands.
What excites you the most about building Near Me?
The biggest thing I realized early on is how many different types of models of sharing there are (Kickstarter, Airbnb, Uber), with a seemingly endless stream of business concepts. There was no technology or platform to support that – so I thought, why reinvent the wheel when you can share the same features?
What types of businesses can Near Me power?
Near Me is powering nearly every type of marketplace that exists, but our most common marketplaces are: sharing and renting, buying and selling/reselling, services, bartering, or swapping. Examples include the sharing of bikes, cars, meals, office space, camera gear, electronic,s and services like cleaning, babysitting, handymen, and hairstylists.
Another example is individuals who want to sell homemade baked goods. The Cottage Food Act, which is a new law that the makes this legal, gives entrepreneurs the opportunity to create a business model around ideas like this. Now, stay at home moms or phenomenal pastry chefs to make money and build a following, all without having to open up a storefront.
I believe Near Me is speeding up the impact of the sharing economy by allowing anyone to build a business around it. The great thing is that Near Me can help connect people that need to get back into the workforce – they can start a marketplace where they have a certain strength, interest, or skill – for example, they can create a service based marketplaces, specific to social good or volunteering, create a language platform, etc.
Near Me can power marketplaces in all different shapes and sizes, and help both local and global endeavors and that’s really exciting.
