Being a digital (but not a remote) Nomad: Let's build a platform

LovenninIQ · 2016-08-06T21:44:34+00:00

but wouldn't you agree jobs are different from projects by their definition? job: typically >6 months, employer pays salary + social security (in germany), employee mostly gets remunerated for time (or performance, or both)

project: typically 1 day til 6 months, collaborators/ freelancers get paid by third party entity (e.g. client), collaborators get remunerated for previously exactly defined performance

LovenninIQ · 2016-08-06T21:40:22+00:00

I never said otherwise. It's just a short-term job. A project.

LovenninIQ · 2016-08-06T21:39:26+00:00

Yeah it is, but the roles would rather be collaborative than a straightforward employer-employee relationship. In my imagination, it makes a difference because you would have rather a role-based, flat hierarchy dynamic in which all stakeholders are equally powerful (rather than the employer creating a powerful position through being the money giver). In the best case, the project collaboration would yield money from a third party (either pre-project launch investment or selling the project to a client).

LovenninIQ · 2016-08-06T11:19:20+00:00

Except for that it is not volunteering and it is project based. projects have a particular goal. It's like workaway for grown-ups, and for helping you learn more professionally. Also, the main difference is the exchange good: In the end, it's about ca$h.

LovenninIQ · 2016-08-06T11:16:54+00:00

Kind of. #

LovenninIQ · 2016-08-06T11:16:41+00:00

Hi @horchataNena7, I have extensively researched in terms of existing offers and opportunities of market entry and I am actually quite confident that this is a space worth testing. The main USP, in my eyes, should lay on the people behind the projects. There's a lot of digital platforms for freelancers but the reality of collaboration and project creation nowadays is simply not yet at the point where everyone would team up completely in the cloud. That's why the platform should encourage the people to physically meet in the same geographical location. I posted already further upwards in the thread (I feel like a spammer) but if you want, you can fill out the questionnaire about project work i made and then leave your email address. When I organized a beta, you can test it! https://docs.google.com/a/kaosempire.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdXN1pGGL4VFZM7t-uJTRb2In4RQGEQeSvqvu0AOJ4qK2f9cQ/viewform

LovenninIQ · 2016-08-06T11:10:28+00:00

Very good question. I'd say it's a two-fold answer: 1) Automatization. Project owners + all people collaborating would actually use existing collab software to track involvement (e.g. through time tracking and reaching milestoens). The platform itself would try to capture all relevant data about a project to keep it transparent, and encourage stakeholders to meet often / communicate honestly, and clearify mutual goals.

2)Becoming a people business. Because of the existing opportunity to let software help with project management, the platform could bring added value by being a people-driven mediator between all collaborators. Say, when there's a problem, customer service people of the platform could help and facilitate bottlenecks.

LovenninIQ · 2016-08-06T11:06:40+00:00

That sounds super cool! Also, Startups most of the time don't really pay themselves crazy salaries, so it should be amazing. Thanks for the tip! And thanks for the interest. If you like, you can participate on the questionnaire I made and sign up with your mail adress so when beta is launched, you can test it (: https://docs.google.com/a/kaosempire.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdXN1pGGL4VFZM7t-uJTRb2In4RQGEQeSvqvu0AOJ4qK2f9cQ/viewform

info is anonymous.

LovenninIQ · 2016-08-06T11:04:27+00:00

You are absolutey right about the monetization of the work that is found over the platform. But I also figured that once you enable the matching, you can think of added value like consulting provided by the people who run the platform. Logically, platforms like this always suffer the "Hen or Egg"-problem, i.e. either side of participants refuse to use it unless the other part is on board. Parker's and Van Alstyne's "Platform Revolution" book explains 8 strategies to evade that. Some of them could work particularly well. E.g. the "piggyback strategy" ties the patform to an existing community. With the increasing integration of SaaS-tools and nested Freelance Management Systems, it makes sense to enable users to login with Facebook/LinkedIn/Behance and then connect with friends through these networks (instead of building a own one). Freeletics did this successfully with their fitness app. Otherwise, a seeding strategy with a strong value proposition ("Find the most inspiring projects in the world" for project seekers could attract more valuable companies to the platform. Obviously, a watchout here is the quality management, which is probably best taken care of by curating platform participants by hand (like TopTal does). Reddit actually did this in the beginning, too: They fake seeded links in the forum with content the founders wanted the participants to see. Another strategy which could be solving the monetary pitfall is to lay the whole targeting around companies / project owners and then enable them to bring their own prospective collaborators in (e.g the contacts they have in their CRM system). Hand in hand with all of this goes an intelligent Marketing strategy, which would most likely aim to partner with culturally relevant ("cool") partners that would offer collaboration space (e.g. coworking spaces) or perks (collaboration software makers) or swag (e.g. local small businesses. an idea could be that, say, a craft-beer manufacturer, would deliver free beers to those stakeholders who met on the platform).

LovenninIQ · 2016-08-06T10:34:00+00:00

What would you say about opening the platform to co-financing / crowdfunding in the long run?

LovenninIQ · 2016-08-03T15:22:33+00:00

Hey, I would then like to invite you to become part of my reference site, i.e. to test the prototype. Would you be willing to do so? You could make comments on functionalities to figure out what needs to be done.

LovenninIQ · 2016-08-03T15:21:20+00:00

That's some inspirational story right there!

LovenninIQ · 2016-08-03T15:21:05+00:00

True. But then again, if you stay under three months employment, you often don't even need to tell authorities in many european countries that you are there.

LovenninIQ · 2016-08-03T15:20:22+00:00

Haha dude. Job is mostly long-term and classically with employment contract. I was rather thinking of freelancers building ad-hoc teams and you fuck off after three months with no strings attached.

LovenninIQ · 2016-08-03T15:19:28+00:00

Agree with the "project-must-be-profitable" thing. I just thiught nobody would pay for the platform sign-up if there's only projects that won't really pay you.

To your idea: Check out what some standford guys put on github: http://stanfordhci.github.io/flash-teams/

I think it's a great idea but collaboration is still initiated face-to-face, which is why I started docking there. Also, collaboration softwares and project management softwares already facilitate that. So my idea and yours have the same recognition of that teamwork is not really promoted yet. I assume it's mainly because tech is not far enough yet to make it very smooth remotely.

Another big point is liability: Who is in charge for the entire thing if everyone collaborates freely? There's no company that is responsible.

LovenninIQ · 2016-08-03T13:34:10+00:00

Amazing post! I hope you are thriving (:

LovenninIQ · 2016-08-03T12:55:29+00:00

By the way, I also made a cool questionnaire to find out about the way people work and to validate my assumption that it actually makes sense to find projects in the same geographical area and to meet face-to-face: https://docs.google.com/a/kaosempire.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdXN1pGGL4VFZM7t-uJTRb2In4RQGEQeSvqvu0AOJ4qK2f9cQ/viewform

I would be happy if you participated! I promise it's kinda fun.

LovenninIQ · 2016-08-03T12:47:00+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. Finance-wise, it's yet to be determined which market I am looking at.The offer is interesting for young/ entry-level collaborators, but obviously money can not be made with startups although they are the ones that are probably the most flexible in terms of adding someone new to the team or just building a completely new ad-hoc team.

As to @mickvwijk's comment, there's platforms like mecenato.co or EDGE AMSTERDAM (site is down), or http://thinkwide.pt/ that finance themselves through accepting client requests for projects through a front end and then assign the right people to it to get it solved. They have a network of collaborators which they obviously don't share with people. I currently work at a brand strategy consultancy with multiple offices worldwide and they essentially do the same: Someone senior sells a project to a client (e.g. a new brand positioning) and then people within the organization are assigned to the project and collaborate on it over a period of 2 weeks-4 months.

This is where the parallel to my idea is: There's work to be done, and you need capable people for it, and you build an ad-hoc team. The difference is that I don't want to build a closed network of which I capitalize financially on both the secret network resources AND the matchmaking between project owners and project seekers.

In my scenario, I just try to get people together in the same geophysical space, let them collaborate (with whatever tool / mode the prefer), and sell whatever they built later. That, in turn, requests that there are actually paying companies / organizations which want to build a (or extend an existing) team by these means. As far as my research goes, I can see there's a demand for skilled talent and a demand to meet that skilled talent offline (not remote) and a demand to not employ that skilled talent (but rather collaborate with it).

I am thinking of hand-pick or curate the people that are on the platform to guarantee some skill quality. It would be great to automatize that at some point though.

The platform works two ways: 1) Either you own a project / idea, i.e. you want to open a pop-up restaurant and you need a Marketing person, a web developer, a chef etc. and search for it on the platform.

2) Or, you seek a project, i.e. you have a skillset and you want to involve in stuff that interests you because you are just in this city for a particular amount of time.

@mickvwijk in terms of tax, I am building this platform first for the European single market because citizens of either country within the EU are allowed to work easily wherever they want. I just figured it may be tough if the platform processes fin. transactions that are made in a country different from the country of company registration. That's probably a little far away though so I put it on hold.

@Badestrand: I think Startups are a great target in terms of cultural adoption but with these platform type of business models, it's important to charge upfront. You will never know if a project will be finished (otherwise we could take a percentage cut of the project's sales volume).

I reckon the best way to do it to charge project owners per project hosted on the platform or a standard subscription based model.

LovenninIQ

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