Fora is a new platform that provides full and part-time independent travel agents with the tools needed to run their travel business. They recently raised $5 million in seed funding.
Fora joins a growing list of vertical market platforms providing solopreneurs with infrastructure tools for operating their own business.
The VC firm leading Fora's round, Forerunner Ventures, refers to independent workers as "the entrepreneur next door". Key quote from their article on why they invested in Fora:
At Forerunner, we’re passionate about the empowerment economy, especially opportunities that help marginalized demographics enter the workforce. We love businesses that leverage a technology backbone to streamline previously manual processes, and we’re focused on a future post-COVID world, where people are once again able to explore and travel.
Fora's interesting because it's linked to a mix of growing and powerful trends.
The first is the growth of self-employment and independent work. Fora's travel advisors are independent workers who access Fora's marketing and operation tools to help them run their travel business.
More specifically, Fora is tapping into the creator economy, a fast-growing subset of independent work. Content creators who focus on travel are a large creator economy segment. Adding travel services is logical monetization path for this group.
And, of course, there's a lot of pent-up consumer travel demand due to COVID.
Fora is also tapping in to the long-term growth in personal services companies. These are niche businesses that provide life support services to increasingly harried, time-constrained consumers.
Examples include personal trainers, wealth managers, dog walkers, mow and blow services, sports, music and education coaches for kids, and many others.
We started covering the personal services trend in 2008, and it's been one of the fastest-growing small business and independent worker segments since then.
Expect to see more vertical market platforms that enable independent workers and small businesses to provide personal services.
