P2P motorcycle sharing platform Riders Share raises $2 million

Riders Share, the peer-to-peer motorcycle sharing platform, has raised $2 million in a Series A round of financing led by LiveOak Venture Partners of Austin, Texas.

Riders Share is an online marketplace where people can rent motorcycles from other people. The company screens and vets riders before allowing them to rent on the platform, and by getting rid of brick & mortar and managing insurance costs, it offers “significantly lower prices than legacy rental shops, as well as a vastly larger vehicle selection and superior renter experience.”

Launched in 2018 by Guillermo Cornejo, who worked at Nissan Motors, General Motors and Hyundai, Riders Share has now served over 10,000 unique customers and listed over 10,000 motorcycles for rent on its platform.

In a post on Crunchbase, Cornejo details the evolution of the startup. The first time Riders Share tried to launch in 2015, it was on mobile, and the team learned that websites were better for advertisements. The second time they tried to get the company off the ground in 2016, a rider had an accident and the insurance company wouldn’t pay for the costs associated with it, so the company had to shut down again. The third time, in 2018, Riders Share was taking a loss on each ride in the beginning and Cornejo accumulated $40,000 in credit card debt. But he kept going knowing that once the company had gathered enough data, it would be able to predict which riders were likely to crash. In terms of insurance, Riders Share sells damage waivers and has a master insurance policy from Lloyd’s of London, but it self insures 99.9% of the risk with a captive cell.

“We are grateful to have LiveOak Venture Partners as our lead investor. LiveOak has unrivaled subject matter expertise in online marketplaces. This partnership with LiveOak will underscore our position as the leader in the motorcycle sharing category. Our aim is to deliver higher quality experiences to our users while maintaining high growth in the breadth and scale of our platform.” – Guillermo Cornejo, cofounder and CEO of Riders Share.

“We’ve been blown away by the passion and tenacity of this team. Guillermo and the Riders Share team have managed to address the insurance risk problem while also bringing motorcycle owners and renters together all across the United States, and they did so with very little help. We are confident we can help Riders Share scale and modernize the way people interact with motorcycles.” – David Stewart, Venture Partner at LiveOak Venture Partner.