Unbundling Work from Employment

4. Learning, upskilling, and development

1. Single sign-on for fans

Freshbooks’ 2019 study on self-employment found that the primary motivations for those pursuing self-employment were non-financial: most individuals seek a combination of freedom, fulfillment, and career control.

Employment at a company is itself a bundle of various services and infrastructure, and there’s an opportunity for platforms to replace what workers lose when they leave traditional employment arrangements. For micro-entrepreneurs, the tradeoff of independence is a de-risked company environment for learning, pivoting, and risk-taking—and there’s an ... See more

What are some ideas for horizontal platforms? (not exhaustive)

Podcasting has been around since the early 2000s, but Anchor, a podcast platform launched in 2017 that simplifies podcast creation, was reported to be powering 70% of all new podcasts as of Q1 2020 and believes that its monetization platform effectively doubled the number of podcasts running ads.

The benefit of building for a particular vertical is focus. Startups are able to align execution to a particular type of work and provide greater value for workers in a specific industry. A vertical approach also means more focused marketing, sales, and user acquisition strategies. Given that the online creative economy is growing at nearly 20% per... See more

Marketo—which was purchased by Adobe for $4.75B—develops marketing automation software for businesses to market to customers. Creators and independent workers are likewise seeking to re-engage and customize experiences for their fans/customers, but lack the tools to do so. For instance, if someone subscribes to a paid podcast, trigger an email invi... See more

. Prior to Cameo being founded in 2017, it would have been strange for celebrities to charge fans for personalized shout-out videos, but Cameo normalized this type of paid interaction—and anticipates $100M in bookings this year.