Vator Box on P2P renting and Wiki-sheets

This week on Vator Box, we look at Zilok, a recently-launched online rental marketplace where anyone can rent anything, like a Porsche 911 GT3 for $900 a day, or an inflatable castle for $200. Zilok is one of the companies emerging to enable online peer-to-peer rentals. Others include U.K.-based Rentmineonline and Los Angeles-based iRent2u. We also discuss SmartSheet, a software as a service (SaaS) company that enables teams to coordinate projects. Deva Hazarika, founder of enterprise software company ClearContext, and our entertaining host for our "Under the kimono" episode, helped provide more colorful commentary as well as insights. Deva was particularly insightful when we covered productivity software and tracking tools since his company focuses on making sense of large volumes of data and organizing work flows.

We started with Zilok, which received a fairly decent plug from all of us. But geography was a big challenge the three of us identified. After all, it's great to find a Mechanical Bull or a big jumpy house to rent, it's a problem when you have to ship it from 500 miles away. The trust factor is another potential problem. But overall, the idea is sound. In order to get big, however, Zilok will have to move beyond P2P, much like eBay did, and cater to big rental stores or services.

As for SmarSheet, both Deva and Ezra Roizen (my guest host) referred to its product as a "Wiki-sheet," for its collaborative nature around spreadsheets. The consensus among Deva and Ezra was that the company is definitely addressing a problem and onto something. But I can't give it all away. You'll have to watch and hear what we say.

(Editor's note: Next week, Scott Banister, founder of IronPort, which was sold to Cisco Systems for $800-plus million, and the cofounder of Zivity, is our next guest host. If you'd like to be on Vator Box as a company we discuss, message me on Vator.)