Launched in 2005, WellesleyWeston Magazine is a quarterly publication tailored to Wellesley and Weston residents and edited to enrich the experience of living in two of Massachusetts' most desirable communities.
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Fittingly enough, Blake temporarily relocated to a conference room to speak to me by phone, because "as a startup, we share offices," he says. "In economics, before you learn about how money in an economy functions you learn about barter transactions and why we moved from a barter economy to a monetary one," says Blake, an avid user of HomeAway for vacation rentals here and abroad. "A barter economy is one where people have to have what's called a 'double coincidence of wants' — in other words, both people have to want what the other one has and they make a trade… The sharing economy to a large degree is information sharing: You share what you want with people directly and the Internet allows you to do that. It's an interesting development in the history of economics." Coming Full Circle Given the number of movers and shakers in fields such as finance and technology who reside in Wellesley and Weston, it's no surprise that many of these business people are now taking part in the sharing econ- omy in their lines of work. Wellesley's Tom Hennessey, as VP of business operations at a ven- ture-backed startup called Circle, is among those right in the thick of this. In fact, the company boasts on its website that "We're on a mission to change the global economy." Circle, which competes with other pay- ment apps like PayPal's Venmo and Google Wallet, provides a free and secure way to exchange money online, including between currencies. Circle was attractive to Hennessey for numerous reasons, including that its management team has successfully led other startups and had a M E D I A B A K E R Y s s "THE SHARING ECONOMY TO A LARGE DEGREE IS INFORMATION SHARING: YOU SHARE WHAT YOU WANT WITH PEOPLE DIRECTLY AND THE INTERNET ALLOWS YOU TO DO THAT. IT'S AN INTERESTING DEVELOPMENT IN THE HISTORY OF ECONOMICS." – R o b e r t B l a k e 120 W e l l e s l e y W e s t o n M a g a z i n e | s u m m e r 2 0 1 7 Getting Their Fair Share