Small Business Labs

Liza On-Demand, a Gig Economy Comedy

Liza On-Demand is a TV show that, according to its description: 

... follows the chaotic misadventures of Liza, a young woman in Los Angeles who is trying to make a career out of juggling various gig economy jobs — for lack of a better idea of what to do with her life.

We've only watched a few episodes, but we've seen Liza drive for Lyft, get hired via TaskRabbit to bake cookies, help someone move and kill a cat (she didn't do it). 

The show is on YouTube Premium and is free. The 2nd season of the show starts at the end of September. The show's trailer is below.

Liza On-Demand stars Liza Koshy, who is a comedian, actress, and YouTube star who boasts more than 17 million subscribers on her main channel. 

Ths show is produced by Above Average Productions, a digital-first entertainment studio. Their tagline is "slightly better".

We find the show interesting on several levels.

First, of course, is it's about the gig economy. You know a trend has entered the mainstream when their starts to be movies and TV shows about it.

Second is the rise of digital-first entertainment. 

The world of entertainment has changed and the traditional channels (TV, big-screen movies, radio) no longer control the industry. Digital and online entertainment are now near-equal partners to traditional channels.

And the 3rd reason is the rise of Internet stars. Koshy is an excellent example, having turned her YouTube celebrity into broader entertainment success.

All interesting cultural shifts and trends.

BTW, despite being well outside of the target demographic we liked the show.

 

Working Remotely the Norm for independent Workers

According to data from the 2019 MBO Partners State of Independence study, 83% of full-time independent workers report working remotely at least some of the time, and 31% report working remotely full-time.

As the study chart below shows (click to enlarge), this is substantially higher than what traditional full-time job holders report. 

That full-time independent workers are more likely to work remotely than full-time traditional job holders is no surprise.

But that almost 1 in 3 three work remotely full-time is a bit surprising and illustrates the growing nomadic nature of work.

This is in large part being driven by improvements in the technology that support remote work.

Online video and chat services make it easy to connect and communicate with customers and partners, online content creation tools and cloud storage enable work to be done and delivered from remote locations, and online marketplaces provide remote access to new customers.

Another driver is the growing acceptance by hiring organizations that remote workers can be highly valuable and productive contributors. 

A 3rd driver is, of course, more people want to work remotely.

Small Businesses Worried About Corporate Concentration - and Especially Amazon

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance recently released its 2019 Independent Business Survey. The key finding is small independent businesses see large corporations - and especially Amazon - as their main competitive threat. 

They also feel government policies have not helped. Key quote from their article on the study:

Many public policy decisions in recent years have fueled market concentration and favored their big competitors.

As the study chart below shows (click to enlarge), the survey respondents listed Amazon as their biggest challenge.

Big companies, in general, also came in 2nd and supplier mergers and concentration came in 5th.  So it's clear the respondents consider big firms and industry consolidation a major problem.

But as is shown in the study chart below, they see Amazon as the biggest threat. 91% say Amazon has hurt their business at least a little and over half say it has hurt their business significantly.

It's important to note that retail small businesses, who are in competition with Amazon, are heavily overweighted in the survey sample (it was a non-probability sample).

A sample more reflective of the overall small business sector of the economy would not be as negative on Amazon.

But these numbers are still stunning and show the power and reach of Amazon and its impact on small retailers. 

The BBC's List of 101 Things You Need to Know About the Future of Work

The BBC's The 101 people, ideas and things changing how we work today really does cover 101 different trends, shifts, people and things impacting the future of work.

The long list includes a brief description of each item. For example, item 88 - Soft Skills - is described as:

"Employees need abilities computers and automated systems don’t have – like creativity, adaptability and persuasion. Yet recruiters are struggling to find these kinds of candidates."

They also include a link to a more detailed description that contains other links to even more detailed information (click here for the link to the deeper description of soft skills)

We probably wouldn't include some of the items that are on the list. But with such an extensive list there's bound to be some that are less important than others.

Overall it's an excellent list and a great resource and taxonomy on the future of work.

SafetyPIN: Building Trust in the Gig Economy (and elsewhere)

SafetyPIN Technologies is a startup that has created a background check system and trust badge that lets people see at a glance if someone they met online - or elsewhere - is safe to meet offline.

According to the company's website, SafetyPIN has:

"developed a proprietary algorithm that draws on over 10,000 sources of data – and combines behavioral screening — to identify people you can trust the most – and assure them they can trust you, too."

The algorithm checks an applicant's criminal and financial history, verifies their ID, and asks them a series of behavioral profiling questions to determine whether or not they qualify for a SafetyPIN.

The chart below from SaftyPIN's website (click to enlarge) illustrates potential SafetyPIN applications. Most are related to the gig economy, but others are use cases where two people who don't know each other are meeting for various reasons.

Most background check companies only target businesses. But because of this mix of use cases, SafetyPIN is targeting both corporations and consumers with their service. 

For corporate users they hope to become a background check service of choice for the hiring of independent workers (they currently are not providing background check services for the hiring of traditional employees). 

For individuals, their pitch is a SafetyPIN will increase the confidence of the people you work with or are meeting with. Youth coaches, for example, are a prime target market. 

And also unlike other background check companies, users receive and can display their SafetyPINs on their social media accounts and websites.

With the growth of the Internet, peer-to-peer commerce, delivery services and the growing online to offline economy, people are increasingly interacting in new ways. This, of course, is leading to all sorts of trust issues. 

Yet so far, most background checks and trust systems focus on only one party in a transaction or meeting - and mostly the sellers. 

It seems like extending background checks to all parties is a logical step. It will be interesting to see if SafetyPIN, or others like it, are able to make a business out of doing this. 

The Democratization of Wealth Work

The Brookings Institute's Who’s employed by the lifestyles of the rich and famous? covers the growth of the personal care and services jobs, which has been one of the fastest growing job segments over the past decade.

They refer to this type of work as "wealth work", a term coined by MIT Economist David Autor which he defined as personal service jobs created by rising incomes.

As the Brookings's chart below shows (click to enlarge), this includes a wide range of occupations.

A key driver of wealth work, not surprisingly, is the the growth of high income earners. Key quote from the Associated Press article Richer US households fueling a hot job sector: ‘wealth work’:

The main driver of growth in these jobs is the expansion of the upper-middle class. Nearly 8% of U.S. households earned $200,000 a year or more in 2017, according to the Census Bureau. That figure is up from just below 6% in 2007, adjusted for inflation, when the recession began.

And we certainly agree that wealthier consumers have been driving this trend.

But we believe there are 4 other drivers: 

1. A Lack of Time: Most Americans with full-time jobs report working more and having a lack of time.  This means outsourcing personal tasks makes a lot of sense.
2. Life's Growing Complexity:  Many tasks have become so complex or specialized that outside help by professionals is simply required.
3. Fear of Falling Behind:  People are increasingly concerned about falling behind, or their children falling behind. This has led to coaching of all kinds. Think sports, academics, arts and music coaching for kids and things like life coaches, career coaches, wealth managers, etc. for adults. 
4. Wealth workers don't just cater to the wealthy. People with even modest incomes increasingly are utilizing personal services.

The last point is very important.

Much of what is called "the on-demand economy" and "sharing economy" falls into the personal services sector. Everything from dog walking to food delivery to running errands can now easily and cheaply be outsourced to personal services companies.

Also, a wide variety of personal services have been productized and/or digitized, which has reduced their cost and made them in reach of middle class consumers - and even low income consumers.

A good example is portfolio management, which not long ago was only available to high wealth individuals. But today firms like Schwab, Vanguard and others provides a variety of personalized portfolio management services to middle class investors. 

A broader example is food delivery, which is being utilized by people up and down the income scale. 

This democratization of personal services means it's not just the rich driving demand. The middle class and even low to moderate income Americans are increasingly turning to these services. 

The growth of personal services and wealth work is not a new trend. We first wrote about this trend in 2008. But it's reached the size and scale where it's starting to get much more attention.

We'll have more on this topic - with a focus on wealth work jobs - in the near future. But a quick summary of our thoughts on wealth work jobs is we are more positive on them than Brookings is.

The Rise of Independent Worker Teams: Fiverr's Studios and Upwork's Agency Experience

Fiverr this week announced a new service offering called "Studios". This service gives freelancers the ability to easily join forces to sell and tackle larger and more complex client assignments than a freelancer could do on their own.

This follows last week's announcement by Upwork of what they are calling the "agency experience". Key quote from their press release:

"Upwork’s newly enhanced agency experience removes the friction that exists with the traditional agency model, making it easier for businesses to find, hire and engage specialized boutique agencies on the platform with just a few clicks."

The boutique agencies Upwork refers to are small service firms, most of which utilize freelancers as part of their project teams. 

Both services illustrate two growing trends:

1. The trend towards independent workers teaming up via online platforms and marketplaces.
2. The trend towards businesses outsourcing work to boutique firms and/or teams of independent workers.

These services also illustrate how the shift to cloud computing is creating new forms, structures and ways of doing business.

The chart below (click to enlarge) is from a 2014 study on the impact of cloud computing we conducted in partnership with Intuit. 

It illustrates how transformative technologies tend to diffuse through the economy and society in 3 broad waves.  

In the first wave, which occurs after a technology is first commercialized, the impacts are mostly efficiency gains. The new technology makes things cheaper, easier and/or faster. 

The second wave often leads to new types of businesses and new ways of doing business. The 3rd wave results in transformations of business and society.

Railroads are a good example of these waves. 

When first commercialized, most rail lines were built alongside existing canals and roads. They increased efficiency by moving goods and people faster and cheaper than canal boats and wagons.

In the second wave, railroads created new ways to connect distributed resources and producers to customers. This created new forms of businesses (distributed factories, new types of logistics businesses, etc.) and new ways of doing business.

And in the 3rd wave, railroads changed society in a variety of ways including opening up the West, helping to create suburbs and creating economic opportunities for rural areas (they also created standardized time zones).

In 2014 we suggested that cloud computing is a transformational technology that was in stage 2 and helping to create new forms and types of businesses. 

One example we used was what we called at the time "hives", which we described as:

Cloud-adapted small businesses will increasingly be made up of individuals who share talent to form a team. These businesses will operate virtually, with employees (many contractors) working in different locations, and staffing levels increasingly flexible - rising and falling to meet project needs.

Cloud computing is clearly not the only trend driving freelancer teaming and the growth of boutique consulting firms and agencies.

But it is a key enabling technology behind the growth of these types of organizations. 

We still think cloud computing is in stage 2 and will drive more change in organizations and how business is done. 

But one could easily argue stage 3 has also started, with the growing impact - good and bad - of cloud enabled social media an example of societal change.

We think it's too early to make this call, but we're not arguing with those who think otherwise.

Bain Consulting on Predicting the Next Tech Disruption

Predicting the Next Tech Disruption from Big 3 Strategy Consulting firm Bain and Company discusses 4 forecasting tools (shown below) Bain uses to predict when disruptive technologies will be widely adopted.

Two of the tools - experience curves and adoption curves - have been around a long time and widely used.

For example, we use both - and especially adoption curves - in our forecasts. And much like McKinsey also suggests, Bain suggests using similar technologies to help you develop your adoption curves. 

This is something we've done for many years and have found very useful. 

Bain's Elements of Value tool is focused on consumer technologies. But we think it could be modified to also work with B2B tech. You'd just need to create the equivalent of Maslow's hierarchy for business users.

The tool we found most interesting is what they call barriers and accelerators. 

We spend a lot of time examining potential barriers and countervailing trends that could impact our forecasts. This is because we've observed that most technology forecasts are overly optimistic because they don't include these.

A good example is drone forecasts back in 2014. The vast majority of these forecasts at that time simply ignored the wide range of barriers to broad adoption drones faced. 

Other examples include autonomous car forecasts, Internet of Things forecasts back in the early 2000's and again in 2010 through 2015 and pretty much all the forecasts that A.I. and automation would eliminate huge numbers of jobs by 2020 that were put out 6-8 years ago. 

In all these cases barriers and countervailing forces were either missed or ignored. So we certainly agree with Bain's inclusion of this tool.

Forecasting is obviously not easy and no one can actually predict the future. But using tools like the ones Bain suggests will help your forecasts miss by less.

Outdoorsy - An Aribnb for RVs

Outdoorsy claims to be the largest recreational vehicle (RV) rental marketplace. And we certainly don't know of a bigger one. 

RV owners use Outdoorsy to rent their idle RVs to people who want to hit the road but don't want to own an RV themselves.

So think of Outdoorsy as an Airbnb for things that roll that you can sleep in. 

Outdoorsy nicely illustrates several trends we follow:

Asset Monetization: Just as Airbnb allows people to turn their home into income, Outdoorsy does the same for RV owners. 

Digital Nomads: These are folks who have a location-independent lifestyle that allows them to travel and work anywhere they can plug into the Internet. 

While the digital nomads that tend to get the most press are the ones that travel internationally, a growing number hit the road domestically in RVs and camper vans. Outdoorsy is obviously a good way for people to try out a nomadic lifestyle. 

Platforms supporting microbusinesses: Outdoorsy recently announced a vehicle purchase program geared towards very small RV rental businesses. With this program even a solopreneur can more easily start an RV rental business. 

And, of course, owners who rent out their RVs are creating a source of self-employment income.

Outdoorsy's short video below nicely describes the company.

"The Venture Capitalizaton of Belonging"

Fast Company's Social clubs died out in America. Now, venture capital is bringing them back provides an interesting look at the changing landscape of American social clubs.

The article starts by pointing out the long decline in the membership of traditional clubs. Key quote:

"Over the last few decades, sociologists and political scientists have found that American clubs of all stripes–from youth service clubs to bowling leagues–have experienced steep declines in their memberships. ... The Freemasons has lost 3.8 million members since the late 1950s. The Elks ... has seen its membership drop from 1.6 million in 1980 to 803,000 in 2012. The Rotary only has 330,000 members now and only 10% of them are under 40."

It then covers various kinds of new types of clubs that are mostly in urban areas and cater to those with relatively high incomes:

"These are stylishly designed, members-only spaces that often come with a high price tag, thereby limiting membership to the wealthy and privileged. There are social clubs like Soho House, Spring Place, and the Battery, which serve as gathering spaces for well-heeled professionals.

There are special-interest clubs like The Cultivist, which, for $2,200 a year, gives art-lovers access to museums and galleries without the hassle of making bookings. There are private gyms like Equinox and Peformix House where you can work out with celebrity coaches using top-of-the-line equipment. There are beautiful coworking spaces like WeWork, the Wing, and the Riveter."

The broader point of the article is that the new wave of clubs need to charge high prices because they are ventured backed, have lots of amenities and high costs. This is very different from the traditional grass roots, self-organized clubs where membership is either cheap or free. 

Our favorite quote is final sentence in the article:

"But we need to ask ourselves: Are we, as we are building community, creating a Tocquevillian society full of associations, or are we creating the Gilded Age of Louis the 14th.”"

Good question - and one that can easily be asked more broadly about income equality in America.

We've long covered the shifting nature of social clubs. This is due to our coworking research.

We've also dug into the topics of loneliness and belonging. This is because solopreneurs, remote worker and home-based workers report loneliness and lack of belonging among their biggest work challenges. We also look at these topics because of the community building aspects of coworking.  

Because of this, we've been exposed to some fascinating work on these topics.

A great example is the How We Gather project, which is a collaboration between Harvard Divinity School, the Fetzer Institute and the On Being project. 

It's an extension of a Harvard Divinity School report that looked at declining church membership.

It too is called How We Gather and it has become a very influential paper on this topic.

It also inspired coworking pioneer Tony Bacigalupo to create The Gathering Summit, which is an online conference that brings together community builders from all over the world to learn from and support each other.

The list of presenters at the Gathering Summit is a who's who of the experts these topics. So if you're interested in this area, visit the Gathering Summit homepage. 

The need for belonging and community is part of being human and it impacts many aspects of our lives and work. Included are impacting the future of work, the future of small business and the future of self-employment and the gig economy.

So we will continue tracking and reporting on this topic.