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I'm surprised there's not more of this kind of worker co-op apps. These gig economy apps largely cater to region specific markets - so having enough platform sc
by sfifs 7y ago
I'm surprised there's not more of this kind of worker co-op apps. These gig economy apps largely cater to region specific markets - so having enough platform scale to cover an urban agglomeration seems is good enough. If members of a profession in a city choose to go with a specific app, the demand tends to follow by word of mouth. Seems like there's a business model in building white label apps for co-ops and unions on a costs plus kind of model.
- rjtavares 7y agoGig Economy + Economies of Scale + Open Source make cooperatives something that makes a lot of sense economically. It takes a lot of organization effort though, and I don't know who could be the leader on that movement (unions would make sense, but I don't think they're entrepreneurial enough for it).
- TremendousJudge 7y agoIt doesn't seem that hard -- the things needed are a couple of free software nerds that build some sort of "UberFactory", and a city big enough where some workers unionize and are the first to create their own Uber with the UberFactory. After that other cities can copy them, and the only cost for the workers is to keep the servers running. Well, and customer support. They should be able to pay this with surplus and still get better salaries.
- rjtavares 7y agoDon't underestimate the amount of work and coordination needed to set it in motion.
- save_ferris 7y agoAustin got a non-profit ridesharing app after Lyft and Uber left a few years ago. It was pretty solid, although the mobile UX wasn't quite as good (which was to be expected). When Uber and Lyft came back, they artificially lowered prices by subsidizing rides to claw business back from RideAustin, and it worked. Within a few months, RideAustin was pretty much defunct and hard to use since drivers were using the other apps. Word of mouth only works when the local option is also the most lucrative. The problem with gig apps is the company can take their VC cash and underbid the market to weed out competition.
- wffurr 7y agoPredatory pricing like that ought to be illegal.
- TheMagicHorsey 7y agoI'm not worried. People will go back to RideAustin if the paid apps raise prices. Meanwhile, I like my VC subsidized rides.
- save_ferris 7y ago> People will go back to RideAustin if the paid apps raise prices. ...not if RideAustin ceases to operate. It’s a strange day for capitalism when you’re being directly incentivized by the ultra wealthy to make decisions that benefit them instead of the local community. Handouts are cool as long it’s a private payer and not the government I guess.
- jtuente 7y agoThat's ignoring the problem that outside of the greater Austin area, population 2.2 million, RideAustin is useless and suffers a bit from an advertising/discovery perspective for visitors. Both of those problems could have been solved by creating some kind of greater cooperative with other locale-driven rideshares, like say a RideHouston or RideDallas.
- abathur 7y agoDitto. I imagine there may be limited overlap between people who do the work a given coop could provide and those with the ability to start standing up a service and app. Tech hiring seems hard even for companies with large reserves of expertise... Interested in doing this sort of work, myself.
- abathur 7y agoAfterthought: an interesting test of coops like this are how well they identify and exclude/expel customers and workers that cause trouble.
- woah 7y agoThe whole premise of these types of cooperatives is that they pay certain types of workers above-market wages. That puts them in a tough spot when facing competition that pays at market, since the competition can take that extra money and invest it back into the app and make a better service.
- asdff 7y agoIf it got large enough, how long until companies like uber try to ban you from the platform (like they did when people were driving for uber as well as lyft to increase their hourly rate)? If they can lower pay and take away workers rights any more than they already could, these companies would not hesitate.
- s1artibartfast 7y agoWorker co-ops have a long and successful history. In their favor, they can run at lower costs, treat workers better, and avoid inefficient worker/owner conflicts of interest. The reason we don't see more, is because it is much harder to get off the ground without equity investment. Essentially, there is no exit to excite investors.