Chapter 7.8 shows four potential user groups: Enthusiast, Sellers, Dual Users accepting Cryptocurrency, and Dual Users not accepting cryptocurrency. Importantly, the research has shown, that Enthusiasts are clearly the customer segment with the highest likelihood of usage and highest value perception of presented ideas. Therefore, all the marketing and product development activities should be focus and targeted on Enthusiasts.
93 Derivations of targeting the Enthusiast segment:
1. Targeting the age range of 30-35
2. Enthusiasts will both offer and demand skills on the platform, hence user accounts should always be able to both offer and purchase skills.
3. They are highly interested in cooperative ownership 4. They are highly willing to use cryptocurrency
5. Ratings and Reviews, Escrow function and social security are the most valued new features 6. They are not afraid of fraudulent buyers or sellers and therefore trust the community.
7. Enthusiasts are experienced freelancers and blockchain users. (“Free agents”) 8. The proposed brand is well-liked.
9. 15% of the worldwide population could be considered SKILLITYs target customer
Although all our business model hypotheses have all been confirmed and approved by the Enthusiasts, this is not the cases for the three other potential customer segments. Especially noteworthy is that Cluster 2 “Sellers” and Cluster 5 “Dual User not accepting Crypto” are very willing to use SKILLITY and pay for value but are hesitant about the usage of Cryptocurrency. These two customer segments sum up to 29% compared to 67% of total potential users. This means that less than every second potential user of SKILLITY is hesitant to use cryptocurrency. With the goal of rapid growth and worldwide adoption, it is important and necessary not to exclude these people with a cryptocurrency-only payment system. SKILLITY should rather offer a hybrid model, where users can select their means of currency themselves with incentives (like reduced rates or higher potential future valuation) to use cryptocurrency. A future mass adoption of cryptocurrency could be achieved in this way.
SKILLITY will step into the breach by exchanging currency for every transaction, where skill seeker and skill provider chose different means of payment. (e.g. skill seekers pay in tokens and skill providers receive national currency on their bank account or PayPal)
94 8.2 Marketing Plan
SKILLITY’s goal is to create viral growth on its platform to overcome the chicken and egg problem of platform start-ups as quickly as possible. For this purpose and based on previous market research in chapter 4.2, the following platform growth strategies will be applied by SKILLITY:
1. Follow the rabbit strategy: Approach users from other platforms and convince them to offer their services and skills on SKILLITY. (Choudary et al., 2016)
2. The piggyback strategy: Crawl the internet with automated data-gathering software tools to obtain information about service providers who are already active in the internet. (e.g. craigslist or Facebook groups) then create new accounts immediately for these service providers and give skill seekers the impression, that these providers are participating already. At the same time, inform the merchants about the solution and automatically created accounts and invite them to use the platform. (Choudary et al., 2016)
3. Producer Evangelism strategy: Offer business tools and other platform features (Escrow, etc.) as main incentives to motivate skill providers to bring their clients on the platform as well.
(Choudary et al., 2016)
4. Lock-in strategy: Every new user who registers on the platform will be rewarded with some free tokens in the value of around USD $10. In this way, every user simply and automatically becomes partial and cooperative owner of the platform. Moreover, it provides a lock-in feeling to stay loyal to the platform or to spend the token with a high likelihood of participation the network again.
5. The micro market strategy: this strategy selects and begins with a tiny market that comprises participants who are engaging in interaction already. This way, the network can provide effective matchmaking even in the earliest stages of growth. (Choudary et al., 2016) SKILLITY plans to use the environment of the National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) and National
95 Taiwan University (NTU) with its large number of potential users as the starting market, expecting to create effective match making immediately.
6. Rewarding referrals: Free tokens in the amount of USD $20 for every referral.
7. Create a culture of referrals: Similar to multilevel marketing or network marketing approaches SKILLITY will provide training material and support for users to recruit more users.
In this way, the user base will turn into a direct sales force of the network, that will be directly rewarded for referrals that can generate positive networking effects by increasing the user base.
Crucial for the success is the atmosphere and culture to empower users to become the platforms own salesforce. Passion and enthusiasm is required for quick growth and can easily be communicated because of the cooperative ownership model. Users are not only incentivized and rewarded, but also retained. The cost of sales can then be outsourced to the crowd of user and provides an additional income for them by referring friends and actual business partners.
8. Create urgency for personal referrals: Users can invite their friends and enjoy totally free transaction fee-based bookings with personally-invited users. This will lead to an urgency and competition for referrals, because people will want to refer friends, clients or their actual service providers themselves to enjoy commission-free skill sharing with them. If those people are referred by others, they would have to pay commissions to SKILLITY. People will also enjoy these advantages for referrals of their referrals up to the second layer. By always showing them their referral tree, they can see, who has already joined the social network and helped to increase their own social business network. Referral trees could also be shown on the profile.
Regardless, this feature required further investigation, prototyping and testing.
9. Dedicated local sales representatives SKILLITY employees in every major city function as referral partners, that help users to recruit more users and increase user growth. Their tasks include starting local marketing and sales campaigns and supporting the onboarding of new
96 users or supporting the emergence of a positive referral culture. They will be paid monthly commission-based salary. In addition, they will be shown as a mentor to every user in the local community at the beginning to provide personalized and localized customer service.
8.3 Prototype
In the last step a prototype has been developed to demonstrate ideas and features. A prototype, that can be shown on smartphones and that works like an application helps to quickly build the innovative features and functions and get immediate feedback from potential users. This immediate feedback further supports the test of business model hypotheses and design. The following pictures present the introduction to the SKILLITY prototype:
Figure 6: SKILLITY prototype app introduction
The first version of our prototype includes features such as log-in, search query and corresponding comparison of skill offerings. It also shows accounts, maps, creation of skills, skill booking, job
97 completion, messenger, phone calls, ratings, menu, notifications and a feedback overview. (SKILLITY, 2018) The following pictures show a clean design with colours of the brand and structure of accounts.
The design is very likely to reflect potential design preferences of a 30-35 freelancer and blockchain enthusiast based on technology design that targets the same market segment.
Figure 7: Prototype app account and skill view
9 Conclusion
This paper and the SKILLITY business model propose a revolutionary application of blockchain and cooperative ownership to the freelance market in the spirit of advancing Karl Marx’s goals of decentralized ownership and reduction of social ills: current issues and problems in the digital space, freelance market and modern society. The proposed solution includes the integration of users into the platform ownership and providing safety and social security for the grey labour market. For this purpose, it applies break-through technologies such as Blockchain and the digital platform model in combination with the well-tried concept of worker and consumer cooperatives. The conscious reader and other entrepreneurs are similarly challenged to take social responsibility and sustainability into account for their environments or scope of their venture.
98 9.1 Key Findings
We find that application of the cooperative ownership model and blockchain to a digital platform in the freelancing marketplace is feasible both technologically and economically, offering value
benefits to users as both workers and owners. Our survey showed, that a vast majority of respondents agree with this hypotheses and like the business model. Having divided the market into 6 customer segments, we found 4 segments, who would qualify as potential users. “Enthusiasts”, “Sellers”,
“Dual Users Accepting Cryptocurrency” and “Dual Users Not Accepting Cryptocurrency” result in a potential total market share of 67%. Intensions to use the business model are higher for “free agents”, men, freelancers and blockchain enthusiasts, which is why this persona has been chosen as target customer. Nevertheless, the acceptance was also high for respondents, that do not match the previous characteristics. About 38% of respondents are very willing to use Cryptocurrency and even more report experience with Cryptocurrencies. Marketing and prototyping should focus on
Handymen/Repairs, Cleaning, Tutoring, Photography and special transportation services, and the development of rating and review, social security benefits and Escrow function, as they are perceived as the most valuable services and features. Similarly, the qualitative feedback of respondents was extremely positive and supportive. Overall it can be said that the survey helps lend credence to our hypotheses, focusing the business model’s value proposition, developing important features and choosing suitable marketing strategies for rapid network growth.
9.2 Research contributions
This paper contributes to previous research by examining what the worldwide freelance market looks like in terms of perceived issues, demands, needs, experiences and enthusiasm about blockchain. It further suggested a market segmentation into 6 segments, which is partly consistent with previous segmentations. Moreover, it gives an estimation about the current adoption of blockchain within the freelancing society. Although the model of cooperative ownership is proven to be well liked and
99 requested our research shows, that more research and customer education is required as the concept is not globally accepted.
9.3 Learnings from SKILLITY
Conscious readers and like-minded entrepreneurs can learn how to quickly test business model hypotheses with secondary and primary market research and rapid prototyping. The Business Model of SKILLITY and this paper also provides ideas on how to successfully apply Blockchain to a business model or how Cooperative Ownership and a culture of referrals successfully serve to generate positive networking effects.
9.4 Limitations
The limitations of this paper mainly arise from the survey. Respondents mainly belong to the age group of 20-35 years. The older age range group was not reached successfully by the distribution channels of the survey. Moreover, although the survey was distributed online and worldwide, the majority of answers come from US, India and Europe (together about 70%). This does not perfectly reflect the proper distribution of worldwide population in all countries. That is why we left out the variable location for the quantitative analysis of the survey and the customer segmentation (cluster analysis) assuming, that freelancers worldwide face similar issues and needs. However, we believe that the business model would be highly in demand in developing countries and Asia as shown in some qualitative responses of the survey and the secondary market research in Chapter 5. Finally, the limited scope of the survey did not allow a prototype testing, which would help to gain further insights about the hypotheses of the business model and user’s needs.
100
Appendix
Appendix 1: SKILLITY Market Research Survey
SKILLITY Market Research Survey
Thank you for your participation in this survey. We are eager to get your feedback on an innovative new idea for an online, skill-sharing network for offline services called SKILLITY.
SKILLITY is a platform that has the potential to alter the gig economy and local labor market by digitally connecting skill providers with skill seekers and by offering new levels of value to them in terms of transaction security, user reward, job security, and reduced fees. The unique features of SKILLITY may be summarized as follows:
• Provision of full employment benefits, including health insurance, liability insurance, and pension plan for skill providers logging more than 20 hours a week.
• Provision of platform escrow function and skill certification to protect skill providers and seekers.
• Integration of platform users to the cooperative ownership with distributed profits and democratic participation.
101
• Using HEART token and Ethereum smart contracts for automated monthly payment of profits and consensus voting.
• Low transaction fees of just 2% for repeat bookings.
• Potential of HEART token to become an investment and secondary source of income for users.
Please keep these features in mind as you answer the following questions. This description will be repeated at the top of relevant pages so you can refer back to SKILLITY's features as you answer questions.
Thanks again for participating in this survey!
---
1. Have you ever used a freelancing platform before?
o
Yes, as a purchaser/buyer of services or skills.o
Yes, as seller or skill/service provider.o
Yes, as both a purchaser and a skill/service provider.o
No, I have never used a freelancing platform for either buying or selling.2. Based on the description of SKILLITY, how interested are you in…
1 (not at all interested)
2 3 4 5
(extremely interested)
102 Hosting your skills or services for
purchase on this platform
Browsing and purchasing skills and services on this platform
Investing in this platform
---
3. Most freelancing platforms offer their users no influence or input over the direction and decisions of the company. SKILLITY allows its users to become shareholders in the company, participating in democratic decision-making and having their voices
heard. Moreover, users get partially distributed profits of the platform, if they decide to use HEART Tokens for payments. This reward system is designed to increase motivation, commitment, identification, and loyalty to the platform.
On a scale from 1 (not at all appealing) to 5 (extremely appealing), how appealing do you find this idea of cooperative ownership of such a platform?
1
(not at all appealing)
2 3 4 5
(extremely appealing)
103 4. On a scale from 1 (very easy) to 5 (very difficult), how easy is it for you to find offline skill
providers (e.g., cleaners, photographers, computer repair professionals) in your area?
1
(very easy)
2 3 4 5
(very difficult)
---
5. Unfortunately, sometimes freelancing platforms allow service providers to collect payment or company's charge for services even if they deliver incomplete or unsatisfactory work. How big of a problem do you think this is within the freelancing community?
o
Not a huge problem, it only happens once in a while.o
It is a problem, but not one that arises very often.o
It is a big problem, you always have to be on guard for shady or incompetent service providers or companies.6. Similarly, sometimes freelancing platforms allow platform users (service purchasers) to deny payment even if the service provider delivers complete and satisfactory work. How big of a problem do you think this is within the freelancing community?
104
o
Not a huge problem, it only happens once in a while.o
It is a problem, but not one that arises very often.o
It is a big problem, you always have to be on guard for unethical or unreasonable clients.---
7. On a scale from 1 (not at all) to 5 (a great deal), how much do you worry about the security of your online transactions when using a freelancing platform (as a service provider or as a purchaser)?
1
(not at all)
2 3 4 5
(a great deal)
Not sure – I have never used a freelancing platform
8. On a scale from 1 (not at all) to 5 (a great deal), how much do you worry about the quality of the services you receive when using a freelancing platform (as a purchaser)?
1
(not at all)
2 3 4 5
(a great deal)
Not sure – I have never purchased services from a
freelancing platform
105 9. On a scale from 1 (not at all) to 5 (a great deal), please choose “1 (not at all)” for this
question.
1
(not at all)
2 3 4 5
(a great deal)
Not sure – I have never purchased services from a
freelancing platform
10. Have you ever invested into Blockchain assets (coins and tokens) before?
o
Yeso
Noo
Not sure11. Have you ever used a cryptocurrency (e.g., Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin) for making or receiving payments?
o
Yeso
Noo
Not sure---
106 12. On a scale from 1 (not at all comfortable) to 5 (extremely comfortable), how comfortable are
you with the idea of using the platform's cryptocurrency to pay for services?
1
(not at all comfortable)
2 3 4 5
(extremely comfortable)
13. On a scale from 1 (not at all comfortable) to 5 (extremely comfortable), how comfortable are you with the idea of accepting the platform's cryptocurrency as payment for your services?
1
(not at all comfortable)
2 3 4 5
(extremely comfortable)
---
14. On a scale from 1 (not at all valuable) to 5 (extremely valuable), how valuable do you find the following features in a freelancing platform?
1 (not at all valuable)
2 3 4 5
(extremely valuable)
107 Hosting your skills or services for
purchase on this platform Matchmaking users with service providers in their area
Ratings and reviews of service providers
Platform escrow function to protect skill providers and seekers
Low transaction fees (2% on each transaction of repeat service booking by the same client) Please choose 5 (extremely valuable) for this row.
Customer Relationship
Management Tools (e.g., analyses, file storage, notebook, billing, tax assistance)
Certification of service quality by the platform
---
15. Could you see yourself using SKILLITY?
o
Yes, definitelyo
Maybeo
No, probably not108 ---
16. If you are interested in sharing your skills on SKILLITY, what services would you consider offering? Please list all the skills you would consider offering on the platform.
Skill 1:
Skill 2:
Skill 3:
Skill 4:
Skill 5:
---
17. If you are interested in booking service providers through a platform like SKILLITY, what services or skills would you seek? Please check all that apply.
o
Care taking (children, elderly, pets, etc.)o
Cleaningo
Custom-made arto
Handyman / Repairs (household devices, appliances, vehicles, etc.)o
Live musico
Photography109
o
Special delivery and transportation (moving, airport transport, etc.)o
Tour guideso
Translationo
Tutoring / Teaching (languages, musical instruments, art, cooking, sports coaching, etc.)o
Other, please specify: _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
---
18. Based on what you have learned about SKILLITY in this survey, how do you feel about the brand overall?
1
(very negative)
2 3
(neutral)
4 5
(very positive)
---
110 19. Directly above this question is SKILLITY's logo. Please take some time to look over the logo
before answering this question.
On a scale from 1 (do not like it at all) to 5 (love it), how much do you like SKILLITY's logo?
1
(do not like it at all)
2 3 4 5
(love it)
20. On a scale from 1 (not at all likely) to 5 (extremely likely), how likely would you be to…
1 (not at all likely)
2 3 4 5
(extremely likely)
Purchase HEART tokens
Exchange HEART tokens (similar to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency exchanges)
Accept payments in HEART tokens on this platform
Make payments in HEART tokens on this platform
111 21. Is there anything about SKILLITY that makes you hesitant or uninterested in trying it?
22. Do you have any other comments, concerns, or suggestions regarding this freelancing platform?
112 Thank you for your answers so far! There are just a few questions left. Your responses to these questions will be used for classification purposes only, and will not be shared with any third
party. You are not required to answer any of them, but we really appreciate any information you are willing to share!
23. Are you a small business owner, freelancer, or self-employed (whether full-time, part-time, or to complement a more traditional position)?
o
Yeso
No24. With which gender do you identify?
o
Maleo
Femaleo
Other25. In which of the following categories is your current age?
o
Under 18o
18 – 24o
25 – 29o
30 – 34113
o
35 – 39o
40 – 44o
45 – 49o
50 – 54o
55 – 59o
60 – 64o
65 – 69o
70 +26. In which country do you currently live?
Thank you for participating in this survey! We really appreciate your response.
Appendix 2: Competitor Logos
Figure 8 Upwork Logo (Upwork, 2018)
114
Figure 9 Fiverr Logo (Fiverr, 2018)
Figure 10: Freelancer Logo (Freelancer, 2018)
Figure 11: Peopleperhour Logo (Peopleperhour, 2018)
Figure 12: Localancers Logo (Localancers, 2018)
Figure 13: Vanywhere Logo (Vanywhere, 2018)
115
Figure 14: Blocklancer Logo (Blocklancer, 2018)
Figure 15: Talao Logo
Figure 16: Canya Logo
Figure 17: Ethlance Logo
Figure 18: Coinlancer Logo
116
Figure 19: Connectjob Logo (Connectjob.io, 2018)
Figure 20: Moonlighting Logo (Moonlighting.com, 2018)
Figure 21: Amazon Home Services Logo (Amazon Home Services, 2018)
Figure 22: Thumbtack Logo (Thumbtack, 2018)
Figure 23: Bark Logo (Bark, 2018)