Sharing economy is usually supply side constrained. There needs to be enough incentive for the "seller". If you are renting your mower for $20, the $ benefit is way lower than renting your house.

An acquaintance of mine setup http://www.rentoid.com/ a looong time ago and I never asked but this is probably the reason.

What I saw was professional hire companies using the site as leadgen because it was free advertising and they had lots of inventory. Makes sense right?

So the sharing economy had problems a long time before fastcompany shared its wisdom ;)