TaskRabbit

Hustle and Gig: Struggling and Surviving in the Sharing Economy

by Alexandrea J. Ravenelle  · 12 Mar 2019  · 349pp  · 98,309 words

sharing economy’s promise to bring entrepreneurship to the masses, their careers diverge even more. Sarah doesn’t think of herself as an entrepreneur, but TaskRabbit tells her she is, and that the service is “incentivizing” her entrepreneurship through its commission structure. Yet successful Airbnb entrepreneurs (discussed further in chapter

…

Your Own Boss. Make $7,000 in December, Guaranteed. —Uber Find jobs you love. At rates you choose. Make a schedule that fits your life. —TaskRabbit Airbnb provides supplemental income for tens of thousands of New Yorkers. —Airbnb Mimic a restaurant experience . . . without all of the chaos and uncertainty that inevitably

…

, and deciding one’s own paycheck in the hands of ordinary Americans. These companies comprise the sharing economy and include such services as Airbnb, Uber, TaskRabbit, Etsy, and Kitchensurfing. Sharing economy is a catchall term for “‘peer-to-peer’ firms that connect people for the purposes of distributing, sharing, and

…

earn additional money to supplement traditional incomes, while providing others with low-cost access to goods and space. • Exchange of services. These services, such as TaskRabbit, Handy, and Zaarly,9 pair users who need tasks done with individuals who need or want work. • Sharing of productive assets. These services enable production

…

safety” efforts, which include an identity check, criminal-offense screening, and a two-hour orientation that discusses the best practices for success on the TaskRabbit platform. As the TaskRabbit website explains, “We share knowledge of what creates a great task so that [Taskers] can deliver safe and superior experiences.” Again, trust is

…

personal preference, hosts often make use of strategically located street-side lockboxes (see figs. 3 and 4), KeyCafes (lockboxes in local stores and restaurants), and TaskRabbit workers to allow for interaction-free key transfer between host and guest. This avoidance of contact is so prevalent that in an undergraduate observational study

…

relationship between worker and firm and the resulting workplace risks encountered by sharing economy workers. The majority of sharing economy workers—including Uber/Lyft drivers, TaskRabbit runners, Airbnb hosts, and Handy cleaners—are independent contractors. In recent years, the number of workers classified as independent contractors has grown steadily as

…

its workers homeless? PARTICIPANT RECRUITMENT AND METHODOLOGY I drew my data from seventy-eight in-depth qualitative interviews with twenty-three Airbnb hosts, twenty-two TaskRabbit workers, nineteen Kitchensurfing chefs, and fourteen Uber drivers/messengers. These four services were chosen because they illustrate the diversity of businesses within the sharing or

…

gig economy: incredibly successful, well-funded companies worth billions (Uber and Airbnb), an established but somewhat struggling start-up (TaskRabbit), and a relatively new upstart (Kitchensurfing).62 In addition, these companies were also chosen for their ability to highlight the different components of the sharing

…

economy. For instance, all four services offer consumers access to underused physical assets (“idle capacity”), but TaskRabbit and Kitchensurfing offer consumer-to-consumer or “on demand” services, while Airbnb is about granting consumers temporary or shared access to a home. Uber focuses

…

uberPOOL.63 Finally, these four firms also illustrate the range of skill and capital barriers that divide services in the sharing economy (see table 1). TaskRabbit, a personal assistant service, has few barriers to involvement: workers complete an online application and attend an orientation; there is no capital investment needed.

…

service before the first pivot, and several respondents were using it as an entrepreneurial opportunity. As noted in a Work in Progress blog post, “One TaskRabbit with good linguistic skills started a small translation business, and outsourced jobs to digital workers on other platforms. Another who specializes in virtual assistant work

…

two participants declined to provide income numbers. Kitchensurfing Kitchensurfing was started in 2012 as a way to hire professional chefs for home dinner parties. Like TaskRabbit, the platform was originally a marketplace; the service vetted chefs by having them cook a sample meal within the company’s test kitchen. Approved chefs

…

. Peers, a grassroots organization that aimed to “to grow the sharing economy” was started in 2013 with the support of twenty-two partners, including Airbnb, TaskRabbit, Lyft, and several foundations. While not directly funded by the platforms, donations from “mission-aligned” independent donors, such as platform executives and investors, have

…

low-income workers, such as Caribbean nannies.40 It’s hard to imagine the National Guard being called on striking Uber drivers or to imagine TaskRabbit workers unionizing. But most worker strikes generally revolved around several broad issues—pay cuts, work hours, and “workplace arbitrariness,” such as policy changes and

…

spend a lot of time going like this: “click” crossword, crossword, crossword, “click,” crossword, crossword, crossword, “click.” The thirty-minute response requirement is only for TaskRabbits—clients are not held to the same requirement. This is especially problematic for Strugglers who need to schedule tasks around odd jobs, or who rely

…

Juliet Schor refers to as the “servant economy.”13 It’s true that Natasha and Jamal could simply refuse to do the work. Numerous TaskRabbits noted that TaskRabbit orientation emphasizes worker safety, and that Taskers are told to leave any task where they feel physically uncomfortable. But such policies ignore the reality

…

likely spent at least an hour on traveling and on communicating with the client—further decreasing the appeal of such an unpaid “choice.” Figure 12. TaskRabbit advertising campaign noting, “We do chores. You live life.” Photo by author. DANGEROUS WORK DELIVERED VIA APP Many workers probably encounter work that they’

…

rules that many children learn. In response to many people’s leeriness of strangers, sharing economy companies often promote their background screening mechanisms. For example, TaskRabbit’s website notes that Taskers must pass an identity check, are screened for criminal offenses, and must attend an orientation. Uber drivers in New York

…

’s very easy to create numerous identities. Worker profiles are often much more complete than those of clients and include a photo and short biography. TaskRabbit, in particular, requires workers to supply additional information for their profiles before it allows them to “pass” orientation. As a result, clients can generally

…

my interview guide didn’t include any questions on sexual harassment, a surprisingly large number of workers mentioned sexually uncomfortable situations. Jasmine noted that some TaskRabbit clients were especially generous when she was in their home: “‘Have some wine. Do you want to smoke [marijuana]?’ Like, ‘I’m okay. Thank

…

West Coast, such as Seattle and San Francisco, companies even have specially marked doors for “runners,” as the temporary workers are often called. Wired described TaskRabbit as “particularly addictive for executives at the pathologically understaffed startups of San Francisco, where the phrase ‘we can get a runner to do that’ has

…

staff short-term jobs, with a product that was “more reliable than online classifieds and less costly than traditional temp agencies.”13 At one point, TaskRabbit for Business had sixteen thousand businesses signed up and began handling compliance paperwork, including payroll taxes, workers’ compensation, and unemployment insurance for corporate workers who

…

modern workplaces are often ridiculed for their hefty employee manuals, there’s something to be said for the coverture provided by rules and regulations. Although TaskRabbit workers mentioned that the company told them to leave situations that felt uncomfortable or unsafe, of the nearly eighty workers I have interviewed to date

…

gig economy, and especially those who view themselves as entrepreneurs, are often those who have the skills and capital to succeed outside the sharing economy. TaskRabbit and Uber have low skill-barriers and are open to virtually anyone, while Kitchensurfing Tonight has high skill-barriers, and Airbnb and the Kitchensurfing marketplace

…

Kitchensurfing and Airbnb, workers can highlight their experience and include multiple photos of themselves and their product (food or housing). Marketing is much more important. TaskRabbit allows profiles and information about one’s experience, but with a rigid character limit. While Airbnb and Kitchensurfing have response-time requirements, they are much

…

a child up from soccer practice, the ease with which workers can be hired or discarded has not escaped the recognition of business managers. Numerous TaskRabbits and Kitchensurfing workers that I interviewed noted being hired by companies for everything from making dinners for corporate meetings to assembling Ikea furniture for start

…

“taken-for-granted models for organizing one’s life” essentially unattainable.53 FREELANCE WAGE OR GIG ECONOMY MIRAGE? Sharing economy services such as Uber and TaskRabbit argue that their workers also command premium incomes. In 2014, an Uber blog post describing drivers as “small business entrepreneurs” noted that “the median

…

exactly when a driver arrives, picks up a passenger, where he goes, and when he drops them off. With required in-app communication, Airbnb and TaskRabbit track response times and record written communication. Furthermore, the crowdsourced nature of peer review allows for constant evaluation. While not every client gives a rating

…

individuals seeking to go into business for themselves as independent consultants and contractors. Even workplaces that are part of the gig economy, such as Uber, TaskRabbit, Airbnb, Munchery, and Kitchensurfing, pay their professional workers as employees. Why should frontline workers be treated any differently? Allowing workers who seek part-time,

…

(2014). 59. Kurtzleben (2015). 60. Green and Levin (2017). 61. Roose (2014). 62. As a further illustration of the aptness of these four services, both TaskRabbit and Kitchensurfing underwent major pivots or service changes during the course of this study, and Kitchensurfing later closed its doors. 63. Frenken, Meelen, Arets, and

…

10. See Welsh (1999); Acker (1990); West and Fenstermaker (1995); Lorber (1994). 11. Rogers and Henson (1997). 12. Tsotsis (2011). 13. Perez (2014). 14. Although TaskRabbit has since ended its corporation-focused branch, companies continue to hire through it and other sharing economy services. For instance, several Kitchensurfing chefs mentioned being

…

Labor Movement in the United States: From Colonial Times to the Founding of the American Federation of Labor. New York: International. Fottrell, Quentin. 2015. “Some TaskRabbit Handymen Can Make $78,000 a Year.” Marketwatch, March 31. Fox, Justin. 2014. “Breaking Down the Freelance Economy.” Harvard Business Review, September 4. Fraser,

…

December 20. Perea, Christian. 2016. “What’s the Real Commission That Uber Takes from Its Drivers?” The Rideshare Guy (blog), July 25. Perez, Sarah. 2014. “TaskRabbit for Business Service Portal Quietly Disappears.” TechCrunch, April 1. Peters, Diniece, Lee Kim, Raiyyan Zaman, Greg Haas, Jialei Cheng, and Shakil Ahmed. 2015. “Pedestrian Crossing

…

Howard H., and David E. Gumpert. 1985. “The Heart of Entrepreneurship.” Harvard Business Review (March–April): 85–94. Stone, Brad. 2012. “My Life as a TaskRabbit.” Bloomberg Business, September 13. Stone, Jeff. 2014. “Sharing-Economy Moves the Small Town Mindset Online.” When You Put It That Way, June 7. http://whenyouputitthatway

…

Tonnies, Ferdinand. 1957. Community and Society: Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Translated and edited by Charles P. Looms. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Tsotsis, Alexia. 2011. “TaskRabbit Turns Grunt Work into a Game.” Wired, July 15. Uber Blog. 2016. “Lower Prices; Increased Demand.” January 29. www.uber.com/blog/new-york-city

…

46 acceptance rates, 1–2 access, 28fig. 2 accidental occupational liability policies, 110–11 Adshade, Marina, 127 advertisements: Airbnb, 44fig. 5; by Kitchensurfing, 57, 59; TaskRabbit, 100fig. 12; by Uber, 50, 51fig. 7 African-Americans: as Airbnb hosts, 35, 39; digital divide and, 193; discrimination against, 169, 193; economic issues of

…

Iron Corporation, 68–69 Commission on Industrial Relations, 93 commission structure model: independent contractor status and, 199–201box 1; Juno/Gett, 190–91; Lyft, 75; TaskRabbit, 6, 80, 185; Uber, 75–76, 184; worker control and, 182 Committee on Public Safety, 93 communication issues: Airbnb, 63; anonymity and, 141; client/

…

93 enclosure movement, 66 entrepreneurial ethos: Airbnb, 44–45, 45fig. 6, 171; Kitchensurfing, 58–59, 161–62, 171; Lyft, 171; personal responsibility and, 181–82; TaskRabbit, 56, 171; Uber, 52–53, 171; worker control and, 64, 171 entrepreneurship: overview, 6, 23, 31; Airbnb and, 44; capital requirements for, 40; democratization of

…

Joe, 30 Geller, Justin, 189 Gemeinschaft, 31–36 gender issues: gender of chefs, 59; gender of drivers, 53; gender of hosts, 49, 165; gender of TaskRabbits, 56; piecemeal system, 66, 68; sexual harassment and, 119–20; stereotypical work; vulnerability categories, 193–94 gentrification, 47 Gesellschaft, 31–36 Gett/Juno, 190–91

…

putting-out system, 66, 68. See also piecemeal system race issues: digital divide and, 193; discrimination, 35–36, 193; race of chefs, 59; race of TaskRabbit workers, 56; segregation, 119; vulnerability categories, 193–94 Ravenelle, Alexandrea, 194 Reagan, Ronald, 178 recession effects, 26–27 recession of 1981–1982, 178 recirculation of

…

rentals, 132; rent-controlled residents, 41; renter protections, 41; short-term rentals, 19–20, 40, 149–50. See also Airbnb repeat business: Kitchensurfing Tonight, 58; TaskRabbit, 56, 80 research methodology: case studies, 7; critical perspective and, 7–8; Hawthorne effect, 232n24; interview matrix, 216–17; participant recruitment and methodology, 21–22

…

, 78 surplus rentals, 9. See also unused assets Survey of Consumer Finances (2014 Federal Reserve report), 9 swaps, 9 task acceptance, 78–79 Taskers. See TaskRabbit workers TaskRabbit: 1099 reporting, 205; overview, 7, 21, 22; algorithm-based acceptance and response rates, 2; as app-based service, 17; background on, 54–57; bidding

…

smartphones technology focus: apps, 6; contactless payment systems, 6; review systems, 6; smartphones, 6 TED talk, 30 temporary-agency model: sexual harassment and, 119–21; TaskRabbit as, 1, 55; worker expectations and, 121–24 temporary workers, 179–80 Temp Slave (Kelly), 180 1099/freelance workers, 94–96, 186, 189, 198fig. 14

After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back

by Juliet Schor, William Attwood-Charles and Mehmet Cansoy  · 15 Mar 2020  · 296pp  · 83,254 words

Will did two cases—the makerspace and delivery couriers (Postmates/Favor) (chaps. 1, 2, 5). Among the for-profit cases, Robert took the lead on TaskRabbit and our consumer interviews. Isak did Airbnb and ride-hail driver interviews (Uber and Lyft). Juliet was a lead researcher for the for-profit cases

…

, making movies, wrestling, volunteering, nutrition, and professional tutoring. When we interviewed him, he was on a break from touring and had started earning on TaskRabbit, an errands site. He quickly became the number-one-ranked tasker in Los Angeles. He was handy and enjoyed helping others. Part of his success

…

and resource use. They predicted a revolution from an “ownership” to an “access” society. Yes, the money mattered to Devon. He was temporarily substituting TaskRabbit for his usual job, and it was paying the rent. But he wasn’t mercenary about his participation. He let his new Belgian friends know

…

working at a family-support organization when the recession hit and her hours were cut back. Looking to replace the lost income, she “stumbled” on TaskRabbit. It proved to be “empowering” on a personal level and “perfect” for its flexibility. She earned a good hourly wage—eighteen dollars was the

…

. As the for-profits scaled, we wanted to understand their attractions and how earners experienced working on them. Focusing on consumer services, we added Airbnb, TaskRabbit, and Turo (then called RelayRides, a peer-to-peer car rental site). We moved on to delivery (Postmates and Favor) and ride-hail (Uber

…

that when I’m at Turo and it’s great.” Stephanie, a former special education teacher and caterer, believed that fate had brought her to TaskRabbit after she successfully used the platform to start her own personal assistant business. She loved “being able to help other people,” especially the “strong,

…

young adults who might be willing to borrow or rent rather than buy new. There were also platforms that offer labor services to individual customers. TaskRabbit provided “rabbits” who would do any (reasonable and legal) task a “poster” (client) needed done. While rabbits did all sorts of things, common tasks

…

power of the state. Reasonable Hope or Rampant Hype? Many observers predicted that sharing platforms were a tsunami that would roll over conventional businesses. TaskRabbit founder Leah Busque reported that the company’s goal was to “revolutionize the world’s labor force.”53 Critic Steven Hill saw them as the

…

survey only 31 percent wanted to do more of it, with the same number disagreeing.60 Failures also litter the landscape in general labor services. TaskRabbit went through two “pivots” (or transformations of its business model) before being acquired. Zaarly abandoned this market within a year.61 AgentAnything and HomeJoy

…

that the organization was not a grassroots movement of sharing enthusiasts but an “astroturf” effort by the companies financing it. Those happened to be Airbnb, TaskRabbit, Lyft, and the Omidyar Foundation, started by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, who had recently invested in Couchsurfing as it went for-profit.75 Was

…

their properties, set house rules, and write a bit about themselves. Profiles are generally linked to Facebook accounts.13 Turo has a similar setup. On TaskRabbit and the delivery platforms we studied, there’s now a short “onboarding” session before being activated. These were unremarkable for most of the people

…

a finding that replicates ours: “platform-dependent” workers are worse off than the other two groups, with the lowest earnings and least satisfaction. Many TaskRabbits who use the platform as an add-on to other income love the whole experience. Charlie was in school during the recession, earning an MA

…

recession. He finds the variety of tasks “exciting,” especially compared to his part-time chain restaurant job with its scripted interactions with customers. On TaskRabbit “you do build relationships with people, and I think that’s one of the most rewarding parts of the job.” Helen also loves the platform

…

servant,” says one easily offended respondent. But overall, this is a happy group. So far I’ve focused on the high satisfaction levels of TaskRabbits. We have similar findings from other platforms when the income is a supplement. A particularly enthusiastic interviewee was Suhani, who had recently arrived in the

…

situations of jeopardy. They lack benefits, unemployment insurance, and workers’ compensation, so insecurity is pervasive. Overall, they are less satisfied than supplemental earners. Among our TaskRabbits, the worst off were a couple of guys who had lost lucrative jobs—one in software, the other at a hospital. The latter, Josh, was

…

. But, he explained, it’s “absolutely mentally exhausting to keep up all these projects and this farce about my living situation.” Josh felt that TaskRabbit is “actually really a race to the bottom.” He recounted one of his clients telling him, “It’s almost exploitative the things she can get

…

. On Turo, owners also have high levels of control. While total earnings aren’t high, effort is minimal, so income per hour is good. TaskRabbit has more autonomy and better hourly wages than Uber/Lyft or Postmates/Favor, with respondents reporting a floor of twenty dollars to twenty-five dollars

…

, and their operating costs are high. Barriers to entry also roughly align with our ranking, with Airbnb having the highest requirement (a rentable space), TaskRabbits generally having at least a college degree, and ride-hail drivers needing a late model car.68 Some of our participants who had experience with

…

, he realized that the twenty-five dollars an hour he was grossing was more like fourteen or fifteen after expenses and depreciation. So he joined TaskRabbit, where he said he was “averaging around close to thirty dollars an hour. Easy. At least thirty.” He also figured that the lowest possible

…

for workers have also gotten worse on many platforms, a development quite a few of our interviewees talked about. In 2014, to great media attention, TaskRabbit engineered a pivot, in which it scrapped its bidding system, shifted to algorithmic matching, and raised fees. While there were some aspects of the

…

making arrangements with guests, but washing sheets and towels, and cleaning bedrooms and shared spaces are often the most time-consuming chores for hosts. On TaskRabbit, housecleaning is a typical job for many of our women respondents. Moving and handyman work, including furniture assembly, are frequent activities for the men we

…

interviewed. Delivery was also popular on TaskRabbit, and of course, it’s the only task on Postmates and Favor. Driving is the most prevalent service overall in the platform sector, given

…

the large size of Uber and Lyft. As TaskRabbit Josh explained about the work: “It’s manual labor in person.” In the conventional economy nearly all these occupations are dominated by people without

…

, the economic squeeze on the middle class, and the sheer ease of earning for those with valuable assets. Destigmatizing Platform Labor: The Experience of TaskRabbits To understand why we found lawyers cleaning houses and graduate students on driving apps, we need to return to the early days of the platforms

…

that featured good-looking, mostly young folks, with just enough multiracial casting to prove their progressiveness. In the 2011 introductory video for Zaarly (a TaskRabbit wannabe that has since changed its business model),52 Casey, a perky red-headed woman, sits on her couch as the room fills up with

…

locations. Another entry in the economic ledger is that some providers are using platforms to start small businesses, as we saw with some of our TaskRabbits and Airbnb hosts, even if platforms’ claims of widespread “micro-entrepreneurship” are overblown.17 While founders and venture capitalists are getting spectacularly rich, platforms

…

platforms, like RenttheRunway, have company-owned products with no P2P dimension.23 We did find some personalization outside of Airbnb. It was most prevalent on TaskRabbit, although only some of our respondents discussed making durable connections. Tyler, the aspiring musician, did repeated jobs for some clients and felt he’d developed

…

. They’ll also likely be walking dogs, assembling IKEA furniture, and cleaning houses. But who will own the bots? Will it be Care.com, TaskRabbit, and DogVacay? Or will those platforms have fallen by the wayside? Another uncertainty is that the road to market dominance and profitability relies on passive

…

. Even before the governor signed AB5, the companies publicly announced they are putting tens of millions toward a ballot initiative to overturn it.59 TaskRabbit’s Terms of Service prohibit taskers from even sharing contact information with each other,60 taking away a right that the law guarantees regular employees

…

either over video chat or the phone. Data collection: Phase 1: 2012–2014; Phase 2: late spring / early summer 2015. For-Profit Cases Airbnb, Turo, TaskRabbit Wave 1 (Emilie Dubois Poteat, Juliet, and undergraduates) For our first wave of research we recruited forty-three participants on these three platforms. We used

…

random sampling methods until we were unable to find additional respondents. For TaskRabbit we posted the interview as a task. For Airbnb we contacted hosts via the platform and used snowball sampling. For Turo we contacted participants

…

about experiences, earnings, and satisfaction with the work. We followed this interview script in subsequent waves of data collection unless otherwise noted. Data collection: 2013. TaskRabbit Wave 2 (Robert Wengronowitz and undergraduates) We conducted seventeen semi-structured hour-long interviews with taskers and administered a follow-up survey. The participation requirement

…

of eighteen to thirty-four. We compensated respondents at thirty-five dollars on average (more experienced taskers required higher compensation). We recruited interviewees through the TaskRabbit platform by requesting an interview as the task. We also targeted taskers who appeared to be persons of color in their profile. Data collection: August

…

experiences. We recruited through email lists, Facebook, Twitter, Craigslist, snowballing, and fliers posted around town. This sample consisted of twenty people who had used Airbnb, TaskRabbit, or Turo. Dates of data collection: July 2014–March 2015. Uber/Lyft (Isak Ladegaard) We conducted seventeen semi-structured interviews of forty-five minutes to

…

estimate is that 90 percent are immigrants; however, outside of these services the provider workforce is generally highly educated, particularly on higher-wage platforms like TaskRabbit. Appendix D Defining the Sharing Economy There is considerable debate over terminology among scholars who study sharing platforms. We have discussed this issue in Schor

…

to include P2P platforms and organizations that are oriented to consumers and mainly offer offline services. (We say mainly because on some platforms, such as TaskRabbit, a portion of the tasks are digital.) The offline aspect enforces a local dimension, even in cases of global companies. There are many activities

…

to be less true among our lower-wage respondents. Ravenelle reports that among her respondents, those without assets to rent, such as Uber drivers and TaskRabbits, reject the term. A final point is that the sharing economy exists within a larger universe. For some, that context is collaborative online relations,

…

Networks (2006). On technology and context see also Benkler (2020). 22. See Paharia et al. (2011). 23. Leah Busque quote: www.crunchbase.com/organization/taskrabbit#section-overview. 24. Uber’s origin story is detailed in Stone (2017). 25. In 2011 Couchsurfing was reorganized as a for-profit, but lodging is

…

power, which reduces competition and welfare. By contrast, for local services, network effects dissipate more quickly. (See also Sundararajan [2016, 120] for this point.) Studying TaskRabbit, Cullen and Farronato (2018) find that network effects drop off quickly and that doubling the number of transactions results in no efficiency gains. This is

…

(Wilhelm 2019). A competitor, Favor, stopped operating outside of Texas in 2016–17 and thereafter merged with a retail grocer. IKEA’s price for TaskRabbit was not publicly disclosed, but it is unlikely to have been much above the $38 million in funding the company had previously attracted. See www

…

.crunchbase.com/organization/taskrabbit. Turo achieved a $311 million valuation, but the market for peer-to-peer car rental remains limited; Solomon (2015). 59. Madrigal (2019). 60. Center

…

, are most likely to be active throughout the year. 8. Farrell, Greig, and Hamoudi (2018, 4). 9. After the first round of interviews on TaskRabbit yielded insufficient numbers of taskers of color, we intentionally targeted that group. Over time, on some platforms we also reverted to snowball sampling and advertising

…

(2019). 45. Attwood-Charles (2019a). See also Shapiro (2018); and Griesbach et al. (2019). 46. Connor went through the orientation process and was cleared for TaskRabbit but over a month failed to get any tasks. 47. Allen-Robertson (2017). 48. The term is from Edwards (1980). 49. Edwards (1980). 50. Noble

…

71 (3): 705–32. Hannák, Anikó, Claudia Wagner, David Garcia, Alan Mislove, Markus Strohmaier, and Christo Wilson. 2017. “Bias in Online Freelance Marketplaces: Evidence from TaskRabbit and Fiverr.” In CSCW ’17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 1914–33. New York: ACM Press

…

a ‘Sharing’ Conference.” Gawker, May 8, 2014. http://valleywag.gawker.com/airbnb-lobbyist-is-charging-800-for-tickets-to-a-shar-1572254090. Tsotsis, Alexia. 2012. “TaskRabbit Gets $13M from Founders Fund and Others to ‘Revolutionize the World’s Labor Force,’ ” 2012. Tech Crunch, July 23, 2012. Turner, Fred. 2006. From Counterculture

…

Eixo (FdE), 170 Forces of Production, 67 Ford, Henry, 67 for-profit cases: Airbnb, 181–82; demographic data, 186; Postmates/Favor, 183; Stocksy, 183–84; TaskRabbit, 181; Turo, 181; Uber/Lyft, 183 for-profit platforms. See platforms, for-profit Foster, Natalie, 37, 39 France, 153 Frank, Thomas, 23 Freecycle, 26,

…

algorithmic control, 68–70; characteristics of, 72; and financial security, 103–4 Sweden, 153, 173 taking (advantage), 159 Takl, 27 Tamara, 68–69 Tanwen, 51 TaskRabbit, 4–5, 9–10, 21, 35; earnings, 73–74; ease of access, 45–46; employee rights, 161; identity conflicts, 100–101; individual control, 77;

Humans as a Service: The Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy

by Jeremias Prassl  · 7 May 2018  · 491pp  · 77,650 words

quickly become house- hold names—think ‘ride-sharing’ companies Uber, Lyft, Didi, and Ola, delivery apps Deliveroo and Foodora, or casual task platforms Helpling and TaskRabbit. New platforms are cropping up in industries from transportation to domes- tic care, from professional services to manual labour. They are at the van- guard

…

our daily lives. In cities around the world, consumers can hail Ubers instead of traditional taxis, order their food through Deliveroo, request handyman assistance from TaskRabbit, and out- source small digital tasks on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Welcome to the gig economy. The ramifications are far-reaching. Traditional companies are

…

exceed the pages of this book—and be out- dated before it could be printed. Despite their public prominence, platforms such as Uber, MTurk, and TaskRabbit are but the tip of an iceberg. Each business model has been copied and developed by a vast number of rival start-ups: Uber faces

…

competition in the United States from Lyft, Didi in China, Ola in India, and a host of local taxi apps across the globe. Whereas TaskRabbit tackles all sorts of odd jobs, a growing number of operators focus on particular industries, such as restaurants: food-delivery rivals Deliveroo and Foodora had

…

it isn’t the only differentiation by any means: think, for example, about the difference between task-specific platforms (Lyft, Deliveroo) versus generalist operators (Fiverr, TaskRabbit), or differences in who sets the price of each task (the platform, in some cases; the consumer or even the worker herself, in others).7

…

service (such as UberX at the econ- omy end of the spectrum and UberLUX for premium cars), depending on location.8 Other platforms, such as TaskRabbit, offer a much broader range of services. Accessed through an app or website, the company advertises help with jobs ranging from moving home and furniture

…

in the car (or beforehand, if the customer wants a price estimate), the rider enters her destination; an algorithm automatically works out the route. On TaskRabbit, consumers choose a task category, and specify when and where the work should get done. An algorithm matches each request with a shortlist of ‘Taskers

…

and drivers are invited to rate each other through a five-star system, the cumulative results of which become their ‘ratings’ displayed before future rides. TaskRabbit similarly handles invoicing and payment on the basis of how many hours a task took to complete. Each Tasker can set her own hourly rates

…

contrary, little that is genuinely novel as far as platforms’ production pro- cesses are concerned. Uber follows the basic lines of a traditional taxi firm; TaskRabbit, those of a labour-outsourcing agency. The key to understanding the business model, Tomassetti points out, is a different one: platforms are but the latest

…

GAAP losses would easily exceed $3 billion.’39 Numbers are less extreme for other plat- forms, but the underlying struggle for profitability is the same. TaskRabbit, for example, had long aimed to turn a profit by the end of 2016—and promptly ‘backed away from that claim’ when the time came

…

about 40 expected guests for her son’s 8th birthday beach party, a Client in Los Angeles was, understandably, looking for a little assistance . . . Luckily, TaskRabbit was able to connect her with Tasker Rain F. Rain has experience working with kids, and she’s also an accomplished event planner and staffer

…

well as their pro- phetic visions of future economies and labour markets. Many platforms even have their very own founding myth. In the case of TaskRabbit, tech- nology magazine Wired reports that the idea of ‘neighbours helping neigh- bours’ was born on: [a] wintry night in February 2008, when Busque, a

…

fired: ‘We are terminating your Supplier Agreement due to your failure to meet Service Delivery Standards.’47 Deliveroo is not alone in this strategic dissimulation. TaskRabbit’s US website provides a list of ‘Feature Tasks’, illustrated with the picture of a happy young Tasker in her bright green

…

any Users. Company makes no representations about the suitability, reliability, timeliness, or accuracy of the Tasks requested and services provided by Users identified through the TaskRabbit Platform whether in public, private, or offline interactions.49 What a contrast: the images and slogans suggest a tightly curated product, delivered by an integrated

…

labour market; young mothers who want to combine bringing up children with part-time jobs; [and] the semi-retired, whether voluntarily so or not.54 TaskRabbit founder Busque is one of the key proponents of this view: ‘[P]roviding people with the tools and resources to set their own schedules, be

…

.’1 This narrative of entrepreneurship and opportunity chimes with the sharing-economy doublespeak we have already encountered. Remember Leah Busque waxing lyrical about how her TaskRabbit platform is fostering a new generation of entrepreneurs, ‘with the tools and resources to set their own schedules, be their own bosses and say how

…

’ offers of cheap and abundant services. It is not difficult to find instances of genuine entrepreneurship in the gig economy: think of a plumber using TaskRabbit to grow her business. When we look at platform work as a whole, however, the entrepreneurship narra- tive is much more difficult to sustain. In

…

.’7 Autonomy? Most platforms’ fine print suggests that they are merely in the business of what economists call ‘matching’: according to its terms of service, TaskRabbit ‘provides an online venue where individuals or businesses who need some- thing done . . . and individuals or businesses who are willing to perform such tasks . . . can

…

not specify the work to be done, it will still often control the way in which tasks are performed—whether through detailed stipulations such as TaskRabbit’s bright green T-shirts featuring the company logo or through general conditions of use.26 Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) insists that users ‘specifically

…

double loading washers. It was a mountain of laundry and it was all covered in cat diarrhea. The third time this happened, I actually called TaskRabbit and I said, ‘Look this is what’s happening. Plus I’m allergic to cats and it actually says that in my profile.’ I said

…

, ‘I think I should get paid more than $25 for doing this.’ TaskRabbit was actually very polite and said ‘Yes, yes that sounds horrible. Thanks for let- ting us know, we’ll have a word with him.’31

…

. When she demanded a higher price in response to his next request for a few loads’ washing, things went wrong: ‘I got an email from TaskRabbit shortly there- after saying that I was unprofessional. They said if I did that again, I was fired.’32 Other tasks might even expose workers

…

the world have similarly witnessed how initially reasonably generous platforms have ‘started to tighten the rope’—or, in some cases, changed their business model altogether. TaskRabbit’s levels of remuneration vary dramatically, for example, as the platform continues to experiment with different remuneration models. A notable shift in 2014 saw a

…

‘optimum price’ to taskers offering their rates (with the platform then charging an additional service fee), or even pre- set ‘Quick Assign’ tasks, for which TaskRabbit’s algorithms determine pay.66 * * * Freedom? 65 Deliveroo attempted a similar move in the summer of 2016, when it began to switch its workers away

…

court. As part of the sign-up process, workers usually have to agree that they are under a duty personally to perform any work offered. TaskRabbit’s manual notes that ‘TaskPosters want to see your smiling face, not anyone else’s’, thus explicitly prohibiting budding entrepreneurs from sending ‘someone that hasn

…

consumers. Some websites even invite their users to report other customers or workers striking private bargains: ‘If someone you know is participating in fee avoidance,’ TaskRabbit exhorts its workers, ‘please contact our Customer Support so that we can act accord- ingly.’72 It appears that the disrupters don’t care much

…

operators exercise full control over all aspects of their product, others grant their users considerable leeway. Taskers can set a price for their services on TaskRabbit, Requesters on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) specify the working time available for each task, and clients on platforms such as Upwork often stipulate precisely

…

certain functions to consumers (think of MTurk cus- tomers specifying what is to be done, for how long, and at which price); operators following the TaskRabbit business model might share key func- tions, such as determining wages, directly with individual workers. Once the exercise of employer functions is shared or parcelled

…

. In certain scenarios, however, that might again be problematic, albeit for opposite reasons: what if a genuinely independent tradesperson wants to advertise her services through TaskRabbit? Instead of falling into the trap of this ‘all or nothing’ approach, we should be more flexible and adopt a functional concept of the employer

…

on-demand economy for consumers and markets? You might think it unlikely that you will spend a lot of time driving for Uber, cleaning for TaskRabbit, or earning a side income by completing ‘Human Intelligence Tasks’ (HITs) on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk)— or even use their services. Yet an increasing

…

vocal support for President Obama’s healthcare scheme in the United States came from Silicon Valley, with gig-economy work platforms Uber, Lyft, Fiverr, Handy, TaskRabbit, and others all working with the US government to enrol their workers.31 These indirect subsidies are not limited to periods out of work. In

…

, the Business Talent Group providing senior executives and Eden McCallum providing management con- sultancy. Lower down the scale can be found companies such as Handy, Taskrabbit, Helpling and Hassle which provide simple services such as cleaning, running errands or basic house-hold maintenance tasks. In between can be found a vast

…

, ‘The sharing economy: a whole new way of living’, The Guardian (4 August 2013), http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/04/ internet-technology-fon-taskrabbit-blablacar, archived at https://perma.cc/ 8KL4-AQJW 56. Natasha Singer, ‘In the sharing economy, workers find both freedom and uncer- tainty’, The New York

…

, ‘The sharing economy: a whole new way of living’, The Guardian (4 August 2013), http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/04/Internet- technology-fon-taskrabbit-blablacar, archived at https://perma.cc/8KL4-AQJW 3. The original release could be found at https://newsroom.uber.com/an-uber- impact-20000-jobs

…

waiter does not make that waiter an inde- pendent entrepreneur. 6. Frederick W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (Harper & Brothers 1919). 7. TaskRabbit, ‘Summer tasks’, http://www.taskrabbit.co.uk/m/summer-tasks, archived at https://perma.cc/49G5-3TPP; ‘Digital Taylorism’, The Economist (10 September 2015), http://www.economist.com

…

/news/business/21664190- modern-version-scientific-management-threatens-dehumanise-workplace- digital, archived at https://perma.cc/97U5-FGBF 8. TaskRabbit, ‘Terms of service’, Introduction and clause 1, http://www.taskrab- bit.co.uk/terms, archived at https://perma.cc/WX39-9PJE 9. Uber, ‘US terms

…

it seeks new users’, TechCrunch (30 November 2014), https://techcrunch.com/2014/11/30/lyft-quirks/, archived at https://perma. cc/2QYB-4VZX 26. ‘How TaskRabbit works: insights into business & revenue model’, Juggernaut (10 August 2015), http://nextjuggernaut.com/blog/how-task-rabbit-works-insights- into-business-revenue-model/, archived at

…

increases safe driving with telematics’, Uber Engineering (29 June 2016), https://eng.uber.com/telematics/, archived at https://perma.cc/E82S-37NQ 29. TaskRabbit, ‘Frequently asked questions’, https://support.taskrabbit.com/hc/ en-us/articles/204409560-Can-I-leave-a-review-for-my-Client-, archived at https://perma.cc/K6DR-BV86 * * * Notes

…

), http://www.policyalternatives.ca/publica- tions/monitor/apploitation-city-instaserfs, archived at https://perma.cc/ AP9Z-TZ5J 31. Alyson Shontell, ‘My nightmare experience as a TaskRabbit drone’, Business Insider (7 December 2011), http://www.businessinsider.com/confessions-of-a- task-rabbit-2011-12?IR=T, archived at https://perma.cc/7EYK

…

/lessons_from_amt_and_turkop- ticon_summary.pdf, archived at https://perma.cc/2WN3-D7F5 51. TaskRabbit, The TaskRabbit Handbook (on file with author), 9; Task Rabbit, ‘Community guidelines’, https://support.taskrabbit.com/hc/en-us/articles/ 204409440-TaskRabbit-Community-Guidelines, archived at https://perma. cc/VX4Q-77CT; Josh Dzieza, ‘The rating game: how

…

.theverge.com/2015/10/28/ 9625968/rating-system-on-demand-economy-uber-olive-garden, archived at https://perma.cc/CVU4-GEV7 53. TaskRabbit, ‘The TaskRabbit elite’, http://www.taskrabbit.co.uk/taskrabbit-elite, archived at https://perma.cc/P2FE-GLM2; Panos Ipeirotis, ‘Mechanical Turk changing the defaults: the game has changed’, Behind the Enemy

…

-the-gig-economy-take-a-stand.html? partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=3, archived at https://perma.cc/3VC9-HRG8 65. Ibid. 66. Casey Newton, ‘TaskRabbit is blowing up its business and becoming the Uber for everything’, The Verge (17 June 2014), http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/17/ 5816254

…

(28 June 2016), http://prospect.org/article/demand-and- demanding-their-rights, archived at https://perma.cc/CMB2-W8QT 71. TaskRabbit, The TaskRabbit Handbook (on file with author), 15. 72. TaskRabbit, https://support.taskrabbit.com/hc/en-us/articles/207814456, archived at https://perma.cc/WS63-FUQN 73. Work and Pensions Committee, Written Evidence

…

Einat Albin, ‘A worker–employer–customer triangle: the case of tips’ (2011) 40(2) Industrial Law Journal 181. 25. Jeremias Prassl and Martin Risak, ‘Uber, TaskRabbit, and Co.: platforms as employers? Rethinking the legal analysis of crowdwork’ (2016) 37(3) Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal 619. 26. This guidance was withdrawn

…

/internal-data-offers-glimpse-at-uber-sex-assault-complaints?utm_term=. kwrmerQ3MG#.fwNnogvPrD, archived at https://perma.cc/XG76-C6RV 9. TaskRabbit, ‘Terms of service’, clause 12, https:/www.taskrabbit.co.uk/terms, archived at https://perma.cc/S7CY-FK9S. Users may also be liable for a host of other obligations: see

…

and Job Creation and Destruction Dynamics (International Labour Organization 2016). 14. Although I struggle to see how a robot could do the job of the TaskRabbit organizer we encountered in Chapter 1: coming up with a bespoke beach party, and keeping parents and children happy, strikes me as pretty much impossible

What's Yours Is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy

by Tom Slee  · 18 Nov 2015  · 265pp  · 69,310 words

venture capital funding. The lives of those working in what are increasingly called “on-demand” services is the subject of Chapter 5, from early pioneer TaskRabbit (“neighbors helping neighbors”) to the newer entrants who have long since given up on any idea of community in their drive to establish growing and

…

, if you are in Australia, Open Shed (“why buy when you can share?”). If you don’t have the skills yourself, you could call on TaskRabbit to provide a helper; if you need an office space to work, try PivotDesk; if you need to raise funds, go to CrowdTilt; if you

…

), bike sharing (Spinlister, Divvy), and more. Sharing meals and sharing household goods are popular, and personal services such as house cleaning (Homejoy, Proprly) and errands (TaskRabbit, PiggyBee) all have a presence too. Almost all of these organizations have started in the last few years. Peers partners come from around the world

…

sharing organizations are missing. Sociologist Juliet Schor sums up the situation: There is great diversity among activities as well as baffling boundaries drawn by participants. TaskRabbit, an “errands” site, is often included, but Mechanical Turk (Amazon’s online labor market) is not. Airbnb is practically synonymous with the sharing economy, but

…

, and delivery service Instacart; Founders Fund, a firm set up and led by billionaire and ­PayPal founder Peter Thiel, has invested in Airbnb, Lyft, and TaskRabbit. ­Goldman Sachs is another investor in Uber as well as WeWork, which has also been funded by JP Morgan. Lending Club sends emails emphasizing that

…

the sector tells us what happens when competition forces an evolution of business models. TASKRABBIT The first company in the space was TaskRabbit, which started at the same time as Airbnb, Lyft, and others. The listing for TaskRabbit on the business information web site CrunchBase describes the moment when the company founder had

…

to connect with my neighbors—maybe one who was already at the store at that very moment—who could help me out?” From this experience, TaskRabbit (formerly RUNmyERRAND), an online and mobile marketplace that connects neighbors to get things done, was born . . . Neighbors helping neighbors—it’s an old school concept

…

reimagined for today.1 TaskRabbit was set up as an “eBay for errands,” and offers a range of services. The two that gained most attention could be done by any

…

concert tickets and for new iPhones, and assembling Ikea furniture (well, almost anyone). The going rate for a task was settled by an auction, with TaskRabbits bidding for a job. The practice reflected the way homeowners might negotiate with someone who offers to clear their driveway of snow, or the way

…

say how much they want to get paid is incredibly empowering. It has huge implications for the global labour force.2 The earliest investors in TaskRabbit came in 2009 when the company received $25,000 from fbFund, a joint venture of Founders Fund and Accel Partners. Founders Fund was co-founded

…

than about the neighbor-to-neighbor connection that Busque envisaged. And quickly, as with the other examples of the Sharing Economy, the idea that the TaskRabbits, as they were called for a few years, would be neighbors helping neighbors vanished, and the harsh world of the free market took its place

…

justify a new form of precarious employment. In an extended report written in 2013,3 journalist Kevin Carhart unpacked many of the problems with TaskRabbit. Carhart quotes a TaskRabbit blog post (now removed) “rhapsodizing over networked mobile devices as an exciting kind of metaphor for spontaneous order,” which goes back to Adam

…

Smith’s idea of the “invisible hand” of the free market. Here is TaskRabbit: [Adam] Smith is saying that governments should simply provide an unrestricted market system for people to easily exchange goods and services, and then get the

…

that they provided a way to earn some extra money by acting as a “micro-entrepreneur.” Carhart’s interviews with TaskRabbit workers showed another side of the coin. One middle-aged TaskRabbit told him that the company is “filling in the gaps. They’re opportunists. If they can go around labor law

…

do it, and if they can get young people, inspire people with their doublespeak rhetoric, they’ve got recruits.” She went on to say that TaskRabbit workers “would like to have a job and they can’t get one. I think they’re worth more. I think they’re great people

…

compensated for what they do . . . I feel really bad for them . . . People are making less than minimum wage for everything.” Reporter Alyson Shontell interviewed another TaskRabbit who supported the claim of less than minimum wage: No one is obligated to pay minimum wage, and that happens again and again and again

…

and it was all covered in cat diarrhea.4 Leah Busque responded to Shontell, and emphasized that “TaskRabbits take on only the jobs they want to complete. TaskRabbit is an open marketplace. As such, TaskRabbits are free to bid on the jobs they find ­attractive—taking into consideration the amount of time involved

…

, the nature of the work, etc. No TaskRabbit is ever forced into any job or task. One thing to note is one person’s imperfect task is another person’s ideal task. It

…

is not up to us but rather the TaskRabbits themselves to decide which tasks to bid on.” Carhart took up the claim “that violations of employment standards are ‘not our problem’ and ‘not up

…

’t set the price and they don’t set the hours. They try to cloak it as an independent, free exchange, which it’s not. TaskRabbit has gone through a range of business models and seems to be struggling. For some time they promoted a

…

“TaskRabbit for Business” program, which was essentially an all-purpose temp agency. Then in June 2014 they changed their model: no more auctions, work would now

…

was central to the appeal of this platform for many people. These changes have reduced that. The platform is exercising more power and control.6 TaskRabbit’s most recent change is to ally with Amazon with its new “Amazon Home Services” offering.7 The additional control that the company now exerts

…

they are really independent agents at all. It’s a question that continues to haunt some of the more recent startups that have followed in TaskRabbit’s path. HOMEJOY House cleaning is not an obvious industry for Google to expand into, but in 2013 the company’s venture capital wing, Google

…

it, especially if they have a rewarding and successful experience. My guess is their customers feel less guilty over time.” DELIVERIES Delivery was one of TaskRabbit’s common tasks, but now more specialized firms have moved in (as well as Uber, making a so far largely unsuccessful attempt to expand its

…

belief in the value of entrepreneurship,11 so now Sharing Economy companies have coined a word for “people as companies.” Airbnb hosts, Lyft drivers, and TaskRabbit errand-runners are “micro-entrepreneurs”: the self as corporation, and one’s reputation as personal brand. If investment in “reputation as an asset” gains ground

…

enrich the world through the sharing of space. We invite you to join the movement and become part of our story” (Airbnb); “Welcome to the TaskRabbit community, a marketplace dedicated to empowering people to do what they love.” For the owners of Zipcar, the company “isn’t just about the concept

…

://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/15/uber-offers-free-rides-after-backlash-over-surge-pricing-during-sydney-siege. Crunchbase. “TaskRabbit.” CrunchBase. Accessed June 19, 2015. https://www .crunchbase.com/organization/taskrabbit. Cushing, Ellen. “Uber Employees Warned a San Francisco Magazine Writer That Executives Might Snoop on Her.” Accessed May 23, 2015

…

Its Customers to Do Something New.” Fortune, June 26, 2015. http://fortune.com/2015/06/26/instacart-grocery-stores/. Raphel, Adrienne. “TaskRabbit Redux,” July 222014. http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/taskrabbit-redux. Rapkin, Mickey. “Uber Cab Confessions.” GQ, February 27, 2014. http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201403/uber-cab

…

25, 2014. http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/As-Uber-Lyft-Sidecar-grow-so-do-concerns-of-5240889.php. ———. “TaskRabbit Makes Some Workers Hopping Mad,” July 182014. http://www .sfgate.com/technology/article/TaskRabbit-makes-some-workers-hopping-mad-5629239.php. Salganick, Matthew J., Peter Sheridan Dodds, and Duncan J. Watts. “Experimental

…

-economy-consolidates/. Shirky, Clay. Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. New York: Penguin Press, 2010. Shontell, Alyson. “My Nightmare Experience As A TaskRabbit Drone,” Dec 72011. http://www.businessinsider.com/confessions-of-a-task-rabbit-2011-12. Silver, James. “The Sharing Economy: A Whole New Way of Living

…

.” The Guardian, August 4, 2013. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/04/internet-technology-fon-taskrabbit-blablacar. Sinclair, Hugh. Confessions of a Microfinance Heretic: How Microlending Lost Its Way and Betrayed the Poor. 1st ed. San Francisco, Calif: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

…

. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. Expanded ed., paperback ed. New York, NY: Portfolio/Penguin, 2010. TaskRabbit. “TaskRabbit Announces Novel Integration with Amazon Home Services.” TaskRabbit Blog. Accessed June 19, 2015. http://blog.taskrabbit.com/2015/03/30/taskrabbit-announces-novel-integration-with-amazon-home-services/. Taylor, Astra. The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power

…

after Email States Riders Aren’t Charged HST. Uber Canada Says Its Drivers Are Responsible for Collecting and Remitting the Tax.” Chapter 5 1 Crunchbase, “TaskRabbit.” 2 Silver, “The Sharing Economy: A Whole New Way of Living.” 3 Carhart, “The Ten Ninety Nihilists.” 4 Shontell, “My Nightmare Experience As A

…

TaskRabbit Drone.” 5 Raphel, “TaskRabbit Redux.” 6 Said, “TaskRabbit Makes Some Workers Hopping Mad.” 7 TaskRabbit, “TaskRabbit Announces Novel Integration with Amazon Home Services.” 8 Wohlsen, “Google Pours Millions Into New Tech Gold Rush: Housecleaning.” 9

Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection

by Jacob Silverman  · 17 Mar 2015  · 527pp  · 147,690 words

ReportYourEx.com allow women to warn others about deadbeat ex-boyfriends. And a range of products and services—from eBay to Lyft to Sidecar to TaskRabbit, many of them falling under the umbrella of the sharing economy—allow us to review independent contractors who have only a tenuous connection to the

…

I can work for free, and everyone wants you to work for free,” she said. When I first met Nandini, she had been working through TaskRabbit, an online marketplace where people offer to do menial jobs (handyman work, cleaning, cooking, dog walking), for about five months. She discovered

…

TaskRabbit after posting a Facebook status update in which she despaired about her employment situation. A friend responded, introducing her to the vast and murky world

…

my phone or digital screens of any kind.” Still, Nandini didn’t have much of a choice, so she dove in and committed herself to TaskRabbit with the same alacrity she had shown toward her job search. She had always liked cleaning, finding it a great stress reliever, so she sought

…

owned, sat on the floor staring at Nandini as she worked. Other challenges emerged. Because Nandini was bidding for jobs, she found, as many other TaskRabbit workers have, that she had to continually lower her rates in order to compete. That, combined with the 20 percent cut that

…

TaskRabbit takes on every gig, made it difficult to earn much more than minimum wage—a particularly tough prospect in an expensive city such as New

…

of wine after she’s cooked and served a big meal. She rarely gets tips and thinks that many employers don’t even realize that TaskRabbit takes a fifth of each transaction. She’s never quit in the middle of the job, even if some haven’t been what was promised

…

middle class (though they would probably live less comfortably in the new, booming Indian economy). Because she has few other choices, she continues working through TaskRabbit and applying for jobs, knowing that each résumé sent out is unlikely to be read by a human being. Entering strangers’ homes—some palatial residences

…

ends meet. What might be most draining is the daily race to find good tasks before the competition does. “You can bid on every single TaskRabbit job and never hear back,” she said. The most she might hear is a one-sentence apology telling her that the task went to someone

…

follow someone’s girlfriend; demands for people of certain ethnicities. A couple of weeks before we met, TaskRabbit had suddenly changed its bidding system, completely altering its mechanics and leaving some less experienced TaskRabbit members in the lurch. Under this new system, contractors such as Nandini no longer bid for jobs—a

…

plummet. “I don’t have any work,” she said. Although she’s accumulated nothing but good reviews, Nandini thinks that being a level 10 on TaskRabbit holds her back. “There are people who are like a level 36,” she said. These hierarchies, and the various rewards and gamified elements that come

…

said. Nandini’s experience isn’t unique. She’s one of millions of people coping with a broken economy and taking whatever she can get. TaskRabbit has filled in the gap, but it hasn’t done much to improve her lot. Instead, it is part of a broader trend in which

…

the best to which one can aspire. To understand the implications of this shift, we have to first look at the digital marketplaces, such as TaskRabbit, in which people are forced to jockey for even the most desultory rewards. ONLINE LABOR MARKETS Reputation management, influence metrics, and professional networking sites have

…

presence are always subservient to this nebulous sense of trust. Don’t have a weird Facebook profile photo, because that might not play well with TaskRabbit’s vetting system or your potential interlocutor on Cookening. Make sure you always give your employers good reviews, because they might retaliate if you pan

…

racist property owner on Airbnb, then perhaps you just need to recalibrate your public identity. The sharing economy includes some online labor outlets, such as TaskRabbit, in which independent contractors perform menial tasks, such as fetching groceries or assembling furniture, for small fees. Companies such as Lyft, Uber, and Sidecar provide

…

markets, the app serves as the ultimate mediator. No one ever has to meet, which is by design. As one TaskRabbit worker remarked: “That’s part of the strategy of TaskRabbit—to keep us apart from one another. We can’t message each other on the Web site. The only way you

…

get to meet another TaskRabbit is if you post a task, and I think they do this to keep us apart because they don’t want us fixing the process.

…

car while it was parked in the rental lot, but in this mostly automated system, there are no Zipcar employees to watch over parked cars). TaskRabbits have to keep their online profiles spotless, so as to earn people’s trust with small tasks, and many workers report agreeing to a task

…

only to find that the listing played down the amount of labor involved. Tasks sometimes end up being more dangerous than advertised, and TaskRabbit doesn’t offer insurance or other protections for a contract worker who falls off a ladder or gets sick on the job. Property owners using

…

on a more equal footing. It also allows one to refuse to do business with the other without suffering great consequences—unlike, for example, the TaskRabbit worker who was almost fired from the service after complaining about a misleading job listing involving piles of laundry covered in cat diarrhea. If I

…

family. People sell themselves and their basic possessions for below–minimum wage payments. Life becomes a pawnshop, to which workers are always in hock. And TaskRabbit and its ilk stand behind the counter, collecting its fees all the while. For consumers, most of these problems are invisible. That is by design

…

most fruitful work has come from people who have allowed her to take their relationship off of TaskRabbit, thereby saving her the 20 percent fee that the platform skims from each transaction. And with TaskRabbit’s rejiggered system shifting the balance of power even more toward employers, it makes sense that Nandini

…

and can pitch employers directly. Nandini now spends a lot of her time working for a twenty-nine-year-old man whom she met through TaskRabbit. This man—let’s call him Joe—works in finance, so he has a lot of disposable income but not much free time. Nandini contacted

…

think he was slightly discomfited by the fact that I wasn’t that much younger than him,” she said. “I’ve seen that with other TaskRabbit posters. They’d much prefer that I be a middle-aged woman who has children”—someone who might be thought of as traditionally fitting into

…

this kind of work. After quickly deciding that TaskRabbit was an unnecessary middleman, Joe and Nandini began devising more tasks for her to do. Now Nandini essentially runs Joe’s life. Laundry, dry cleaning

…

old woman, who apparently has another daughter in the New York area—one who doesn’t visit. From these experiences, Nandini has learned something about TaskRabbit, the sharing economy, and how the people who turn to it see this army of contingent laborers. These labor markets are, in her view, “how

…

, and a consequence, you don’t see your friends as much, and you begin to kind of live off Netflix and your credit card and TaskRabbit. “That’s the American dream, right?” she said, in a tone of tender irony. “You just swipe. You figure out how to pay for it

…

scores or follower counts measure up. This mind-set extends to the sharing economy, where everyone is cast as a micro-entrepreneur; a handyman on TaskRabbit hopes to accrue enough clients to shed the platform and set up his own shop. But the idea of being unconnected has become a bit

…

, contingent, and gig workers increases, a universal basic income would restore some equity to the system. It would also make the supposed freedom of those TaskRabbit jobs actually mean something, for the laborer would know that even if the company cares little for his welfare or ability to make a living

…

/21565007-geography-matters-much-ever-despite-digital-revolution-says-patrick-lane. 236 “That’s part of the strategy”: Alyson Shontell. “My Nightmare Experience as a TaskRabbit Drone.” Business Insider. Dec. 7, 2011. businessinsider.com/confessions-of-a-task-rabbit-2011-12. 236 deactivating drivers’ accounts: Rachel Swan. “Chopped Livery: StartUps Revolutionize

…

Surveillance: “Uber’s Algorithmic Monopoly.” April 9, 2014. mattstoller.tumblr.com/post/82233202309/ubers-algorithmic-monopoly-we-are-not-setting. 242 TaskRabbit worker almost fired: Shontell. “My Nightmare Experience as a TaskRabbit Drone.” 243 Airbnb taxes: Nitasha Tiku. “Airbnb Is Suddenly Begging New York City to Tax Its Hosts $21 Million.” Valleywag

…

-to-tax-its-hos-1553889167. 244 “we literally stand on the brink”: Tom Slee. “Why the Sharing Economy Isn’t.” 245 Nandini Balial background and TaskRabbit experience: Author interviews with Nandini Balial. July and August 2014. 249 “a human right”: Queena Kim. “Mark Zuckerberg: Internet Connectivity Is a Human right.” Marketplace

…

overview, 227–28, 236–37 college graduate’s experience, 222–26, 245–48 content moderators, 230–31, 244 sorting through queries on Twitter, 229–30 TaskRabbit, 222–26, 236–37, 242, 245 France, 267, 268 Free Art and Technology (F.A.T.), 359–62 frictionless sharing, 12–13, 60, 151, 268

…

–35, 247 Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, 90, 226, 228, 229–30 exploitative nature of, 228–30, 243–44 Gigwalk, 232 social media compared to, 227 TaskRabbit, 222–26, 236–37, 242, 245 workers trapped by, 231–33 See also employment; fractional work Landy, Andy, 187–88 Lanier, Jaron, 138–39, 328

…

a security issue to social media sites, 354–55 revenge porn Web site, 210 and sharing, 197, 238–40 support people for viral-wannabees, 83 TaskRabbit, 223, 245 Uber, 236 and videos, 254 mood graph, 41–43. See also sentiment analysis Moran, Robert, 191 Morozov, Evgeny, 4–5, 84, 322 Moves

…

plate readers, 307 nudges, 307 personalized deals delivered to smartphones, 301–2 and pricing, 318 smartphone tracking, 300–302 tracking industry, 295–98, 304–10 TaskRabbit, 222–26, 236–37, 242, 245 taxi companies, 240–41 taxi-type services, 235, 244. See also Uber tax-type services, 235 tech companies ethics

Masters of Scale: Surprising Truths From the World's Most Successful Entrepreneurs

by Reid Hoffman, June Cohen and Deron Triff  · 14 Oct 2021  · 309pp  · 96,168 words

, in a way that’s going to allow me to accomplish more.’ ” As luck would have it, Stacy soon met Leah Busque, the founder of TaskRabbit, a popular app connecting users looking to hire someone—or be hired—to do miscellaneous jobs. Stacy tried the service out and loved what it

…

a mission-minded person,” Stacy says. “We talk a lot in Silicon Valley about missionaries and mercenaries, and I’m definitely in the missionary bucket. TaskRabbit’s mission around revolutionizing everyday work really grabbed me, and it brought me back home to Detroit. It brought me back to the people who

…

lost their jobs because of the failure of an entire industry, who couldn’t find work but had strong work ethics.” In 2013, Stacy joined TaskRabbit as COO and soon realized it faced deep underlying challenges if it was going to scale. She dug into the numbers and concluded: “We’ve

…

bidding system that connected the two sides in the marketplace of taskers (those bidding for the jobs) and clients (those looking to hire) that drove TaskRabbit. Under the current system, taskers had to go through a bidding process for every task, which meant that many found themselves in a race-to

…

,” Stacy says. “That just wasn’t going to work for the long term. We had to change it.” This would require a significant pivot for TaskRabbit—a shift toward more structure and reliability, less choice and chaos. Stacy and her team had a strong instinct for this better system, but it

…

people could offer to just four popular and easy-to-understand categories: handyman work, home cleaning, moving help, and personal assistant. At the same time, TaskRabbit opted to give the taskers more agency—including an opportunity to decide when they wanted to work, how they wanted to work, and what hourly

…

to be. They chose London for their test market, because there was some awareness of the TaskRabbit brand there, but the service had never been available locally. To Stacy’s delight, the streamlined iteration of TaskRabbit tested well: The assignment rate went up, and the close rate rose from 50 to 80

…

to do this, and partly because they were going to have to work in a different way.” Stacy had implemented an objectively positive program at TaskRabbit—one that she knew would ensure taskers were more fairly compensated and also made the process more streamlined and easier to use for customers. But

…

changing the rules governing an entire platform is not trivial, especially if you forget to tell the users of the platform about it. Worse yet, TaskRabbit wasn’t just a platform, it was a community, where people felt a sense of ownership. And when people feel ownership, they expect to have

…

it online. In failing to involve the community early, Stacy had unwittingly undermined their sense of investment. In hindsight, it’s clear to Stacy what TaskRabbit should have done. “At that point, we had over twenty thousand taskers who were working and earning on the platform,” she says. “We should have

…

chain. Instead, we said, ‘You know what? They’re just users and they’re going to find out when everyone else finds out.’ ” But the TaskRabbit management should have tested that assumption by checking in with users to make sure everyone was ready to make this pivot with them. Even with

…

, the new system yielded higher customer satisfaction, happier users on both ends, and more profitability. The pivot had worked. It also led to improvements in TaskRabbit’s culture. Having learned—albeit the hard way—the importance of engaging the community in major decisions, “we created a Tasker Council,” says Stacy. “On

…

the council, we have some people who are really excited about TaskRabbit and others who are always skeptical. We tell them, ‘We really want your input, and once we get you on board, we also want you

…

she’d had the council during the pivot, the change would have gone down easier. And there was another unintended consequence—an extraordinary one: Once TaskRabbit got rid of the competitive bidding between taskers, a supportive, sharing community of taskers began to emerge. They started holding classes and posting videos to

…

teach each other skills and increase each other’s earning power—creating a dynamic, self-reinforcing loop that benefited everyone. Now TaskRabbit is harnessing the power of that growing community to do training and development. “Some of the taskers create courses, and we pay them to do

…

person had previously delivered a birthday cake for her. So Stacy asked how he went from delivering cakes to doing electrical work. “Because of the TaskRabbit community,” he told her. “I took some classes, I learned, and now I’m making like twice as much as I was making before on

…

’s all going to play out. But you can ask yourself: How do I want to be remembered in this crisis?” Stacy Brown-Philpot of TaskRabbit and Danny Meyer of Union Square Hospitality Group shared a similar thought: A crisis is a time to think big and look beyond your own

…

technology can and should work, even when horrible things happen, and we know how to communicate really fast and efficiently.” Stacy’s goal is that TaskRabbit be “there and ready right when we are needed, but also that we are coordinating with other tech companies—we all have millions of people

…

’s social mission on day one. But there are also plenty of examples of social good as an add-on feature. Tasks for Good, from TaskRabbit, is an example of add-on goodness done right. After improving the company’s relationship with taskers, Stacy Brown-Philpot wanted to bring more of

…

an element of community service into TaskRabbit. When Stacy joined TaskRabbit as CEO, its mission around revolutionizing everyday work really spoke to her. But Stacy gradually saw the possibility for a second purpose: How

…

do we use technology to enable many more middle-class jobs? She began looking closer at how TaskRabbit could be made more accessible to people who don’t have high school degrees or access to expensive technology. In 2016, Stacy became a fellow

…

Henry Crown Fellowship program. All fellows were asked to launch a venture designed to increase their impact on society. Stacy’s idea, TaskRabbit for Good, opened up the TaskRabbit platform for people and nonprofits that might not otherwise be able to access it. Along with partnering with community-based organizations to help

…

people in need earn a meaningful income as taskers, TaskRabbit for Good invited their current taskers to volunteer to be matched with regional nonprofits focused on homelessness, job creation, and disaster relief operations who need

…

to get involved in causes they cared about, it also allowed these organizations to access volunteers without having to pay for coordination and administration—the TaskRabbit platform does all of that for them. “We send people to these disaster-relief situations,” says Stacy, “because the extension of what

…

TaskRabbit is about is, yes, we’re helping people to make a meaningful income, but we also aim to impact the community, and that might mean

…

helping people in the community who can’t afford the service at all.” TaskRabbit for Good was a natural progression for TaskRabbit—it took advantage of the company’s existing resources and expertise and then applied that to a related area of need. And

The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism

by Arun Sundararajan  · 12 May 2016  · 375pp  · 88,306 words

as a home cleaner, handyman, plumber, electrician, or painter (or hire a freelance worker who has these or other skills) through the labor marketplaces Handy, TaskRabbit, and Thumbtack. Getting set up to receive these services from your peers is often as easy as installing an app and proving your identity by

…

might be considered a “part-time occupation” of sorts. The same is true for the providers of assorted forms of labor and services on the TaskRabbit and Handy marketplaces, and of the shoppers, contractors and part-time employees alike, who buy the groceries and bring them to you when you order

…

business in a specific area or a specific sector, but this is no different from what happens in traditional VC. Service Platforms: Trade School, TimesFree, TaskRabbit, Handy The final set of examples of peer-to-peer platforms I discuss focuses purely on service and, more notably, on leveraging participants’ spare time

…

set of “tokens”; one earns tokens by babysitting, and one spends tokens on getting sitters. By contrast, labor markets like TaskRabbit and Handy have few, if any, gift economy dimensions. On TaskRabbit, prospective providers (called “taskers”) are hired by clients at hourly rates chosen by the taskers, and can choose filters to

…

ensure that they are only matched with jobs that meet their preferences, such as their minimum hourly rate or the times when they are available. TaskRabbit is thus a matching market for labor services. You might make friends with your tasker, but in the same way you’d make friends with

…

all, why hire a cleaner or repairperson on Craigslist when you can hire one who has been background-screened on TaskRabbit or Handy?2 True, the cleaner or repairperson you hire on TaskRabbit may end up having pretty much the same skills as one you could have found on Craigslist. You may

…

all, while they may lose a potential repeat client, they won’t lose future customers. In contrast, if you hire a cleaner or mover on TaskRabbit or Handy, you not only get someone who has been vetted by the platform but, more importantly, if that person does a bad job, you

…

—and, as I discuss in chapter 8, spawns a new form of Darwinist evolution that is data driven. Similarly, if you’re a provider through TaskRabbit or Handy, you never have to worry about doing a job and not getting paid, since the platform facilitates the transaction. This addresses an issue

…

pure market and a hierarchy. Table 3.1 provides some dimensions associated with hierarchies and with markets, classifying four popular platforms (Uber, Airbnb, Etsy, and TaskRabbit) along each of 22 dimensions. (I return to many of these dimensions in chapter 8, showing how they may also be useful in assessing ways

…

cities, Uber’s staff may send information to drivers suggesting when to be available and where. ***Airbnb has a pricing tool built into the platform. ****TaskRabbit makes active suggestions, and perhaps restricts many customers from browsing all available providers. My MBA students Andrew Covell, Varun Jain, and June Khin at NYU

…

anticipate. Altering Capital “Impact” Whether it is the asset capacity (Botsman’s “idling capacity”) from peer-to-peer rental markets, labor supplied through markets like TaskRabbit, Handy and Spare5, or financial capital through a lending platform like Funding Circle—everything else being equal—tapping into “spare capacity” may increase economic productivity

…

such systems. In a September 2014 panel discussion I participated in at the Techonomy Detroit conference, the moderator, Jennifer Bradley of the Aspen Institute, asked TaskRabbit’s president Stacy Brown-Philpot whether the platform had “flags or protections or things that could alert you to discrimination in the system or bad

…

its business model was no longer viable, while Luxe and Shyp announced that their workers would henceforth be part-time or full-time employees. While TaskRabbit and Handy maintain a contractor relationship with their providers, other platforms like ManagedByQ and Alfred employ their providers full-time, and their CEOs, Dan Teran

…

Michelle Miller, the co-founder of coworker.org, after highlighting the opportunities created by the future of work heralded by platforms like Uber, Lyft, and TaskRabbit in an earlier keynote speech. But what exactly do these opportunities look like? On one side of the argument, there are the Liss-Riordans of

…

how “freelanceable” a job is. We have already seen “on-demand” freelance marketplaces emerge for a range of professions. Postmates offers simple delivery on demand. TaskRabbit and Thumbtack provides plumbers, event planners, and electricians. The platforms Pager and Heal get you a doctor on demand. Universal Avenue offers a sales force

…

others are making less per hour than the national averages. What explains the difference? Well, first, most services offered on a marketplace like Handy or TaskRabbit require the provider to be geographically collocated with the customers. Until Brynjolfsson and McAfee’s robots get really sophisticated, it is likely that a plumber

…

do a bit of home cleaning or plumbing on the side, the platform is not yet in the business of training or certifying new workers. TaskRabbit’s arrival in a city, for example, does not result in a sudden surge in certified electricians or a flood of new plumbers into that

…

grows, and more importantly, the average price and the average quality of used cars goes up, not down. Thus, the presence of Upwork, Handy, and TaskRabbit, and in particular, their screening process and review systems, plays a role somewhat analogous to vehicle inspections in the used car example. Prospective consumers of

…

the microtask platforms we have discussed seems limited. However, HourlyNerd, a platform backed by the Mavericks owner and “Shark Tank” investor Mark Cuban, brings a TaskRabbit-like marketplace to management consulting. Sweden-based Universal Avenue is creating a marketplace that allows a user to tap into a sales force on demand

…

capture these changes. Consider someone who used to work a full-time job but is now unemployed and drives an Uber or provides services on TaskRabbit. If that person reports this new work for profit in a response on a BLS survey, they would continue to be counted as employed. However

…

needed, and as suits them.”5 However, this description does not apply to all sharing economy providers. Many Uber and Lyft drivers, Handy providers, and TaskRabbit taskers make a significant percentage of their living through the platforms, and the fraction of the world’s workforce that fits this description will grow

…

to any provider-dependent platform—is especially likely for taxi or chauffeured urban transportation platforms like Lyft and Uber, and geography-specific platforms like Instacart, TaskRabbit and Handy, where a majority of demand from each consumer is concentrated in a specific city, making network effects from global reach a less effective

…

.3, there are a number of dimensions to independence. Many platforms require that providers acquire or otherwise “bring” assets to the provision of their services: TaskRabbit’s taskers may need to provide a vehicle, Lyft drivers and Getaround providers must own their cars, Airbnb hosts own or rent their space, and

…

its providers to use its own centralized assets. A second dimension relates to pricing, supply, and merchandizing. For the most part, most sharing economy platforms—TaskRabbit, Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, Getaround—allow their providers to choose when they, their assets, or their services are available. This forces providers to “learn” how to

…

in the level of pricing control. Uber and Lyft define prices in each of their cities, while Sidecar allowed drivers to set their own prices. TaskRabbit allows home cleaners to choose their own rates, while HomeJoy used to set a flat hourly rate in each city. Airbnb offers complete pricing flexibility

…

freedom for guests to choose their hosts and vice versa. (There is a “book now” alternative, but that’s a choice a host can make.) TaskRabbit allows customers to choose providers, but the system restricts fairly rigidly the set of providers a customer can choose from. Providers, on the other hand

…

a 2014 Fast Company article, Lisa Gansky summarized the early evolution of the sharing economy by indicating that “early companies like Uber, Lyft, Quirky, Airbnb, TaskRabbit, RelayRides, and 99 Designs garnered much visibility, but these companies were funded by venture capital, with an eye on big paydays for investors—and not

…

fitness might be rather noisy. What happens when we start to apply these product and merchant rating systems to individuals looking for work? In 2015, TaskRabbit began to present specific taskers to each potential customer rather than allowing customers and taskers to simply find each other based on requests and bids

…

KitSplit, 14, 81 Kiva, 41–42, 82 Kozaza, 121 Kozmo, 51–52 Krueger, Alan, 164, 179, 184, 185 Krueger, Liz, 131 Labor platforms. See Handy; TaskRabbit; Thumbtack; TradeSchool; Upwork Lakhani, Karim, 76 La Ruche Qui Dit Oui, 16–17, 45 La’Zooz, 94–95 Lehane, Chris, 136 Lending, peer-to-peer

…

Swarm, 199 Swift, 197 Taaki, Amir, 85–86 Tadelis, Steve, 61 “Tales from the Sharing Economy” (Stein), 3 Tambe, Prasanna, 75, 113 Tanz, Jason, 60 TaskRabbit, 3, 11, 77, 114, 157, 183, 197. background screening, 50–51 contractor classification and, 160, 161 new social safety net and, 191 platform, 43–44

Unleashed

by Anne Morriss and Frances Frei  · 1 Jun 2020  · 394pp  · 57,287 words

’ve permanently moved on from the team. This orientation becomes more important as your leadership mandate grows. When Stacy Brown-Philpot, now the CEO of TaskRabbit (more to come on Brown-Philpot) went from managing a fourteen-person team to ultimately more than a thousand, she realized she had to rethink

…

capture a reasonable surplus.16 Many companies have struggled to pull this off, but an inspirational exception is TaskRabbit, the company that in many ways launched the gig economy. One of the lessons of TaskRabbit’s evolution is that even gig companies can create business models where everyone wins: customers, companies, and

…

, yes, even suppliers. Strategic transformation at TaskRabbit TaskRabbit CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot (remember her from chapter 1?) made the leap from

…

Google to TaskRabbit (initially in the COO role) when she felt a calling to do something new. She was captivated by

…

I help a community of people do something more than they could otherwise accomplish on their own?”17 The breakthrough business model she encountered at TaskRabbit had proven you could build a business that connected consumers to freelance workers, but there were cracks in the model that Brown-Philpot felt she

…

could address. Almost a decade of slaying growth-related dragons at Google had prepared her for the role. TaskRabbit was founded in 2008 to create a space where supply and demand could be met for everyday tasks. The company connected people who could do

…

down in a race-to-the-bottom to offer the cheapest possible price for their labor. (See figure 5-5.) FIGURE 5-5 The original TaskRabbit value stick It also took a long time for taskers to sort through jobs and find the ones they wanted—taskers spent, on average, two

…

customer WTP by enabling users to find a qualified tasker in a single visit to the site. (See figure 5-6.) FIGURE 5-6 Improved TaskRabbit value stick The new model was a wild success in London, the first place it was tested, a greenfield market where the company could avoid

…

themselves. If you order the service today, there’s a chance Brown-Philpot herself may show up. Once she scaled the new model to all TaskRabbit markets, Brown-Philpot noticed something else surprising: instead of simply competing with each other, taskers were starting to help each other, holding classes and posting

…

employees of the bag transfer policy. When Stacy Brown-Philpot quietly joins the ranks of her taskers, she’s reminding everyone in the company that TaskRabbit’s front line is essential to the success of the business. Hiroshi Mikitani, CEO of Rakuten, transformed the Tokyo-based, e-commerce giant by embracing

…

Back.” Robin has been an important collaborator and inspiration to us personally and professionally. She makes us better. 2. David Gelles, “Stacy Brown-Philpot of TaskRabbit on Being a Black Woman in Silicon Valley,” New York Times, July 13, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/13/business/stacy-brown-philpot

…

-taskrabbit-corner-office.html. 3. Dave Lee, “On the Record: TaskRabbit’s Stacy Brown-Philpot,” BBC News, September 15, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49684677. 4. Reid Hoffman, “Keep

…

Humans in the Equation—with TaskRabbit’s Stacy Brown-Philpot,” Masters of Scale (podcast), October 9, 2019, https://mastersofscale.com/stacy-brown-philpot-keep-humans-in-the-equation-masters-of-scale-

…

15, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/15/upshot/gig-economy-limits-labor-market-uber-california.html. 17. David Gelles, “Stacy Brown-Philpot of TaskRabbit on Being a Black Woman in Silicon Valley,” New York Times, July 13, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/13/business/stacy-brown-philpot

…

-taskrabbit-corner-office.html. 18. David Lee, “On the Record: TaskRabbit’s Stacy Brown-Philpot,” BBC News, September 15, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49684677. 19. Casey Newton

…

, “TaskRabbit Is Blowing Up Its Business Model and Becoming the Uber for Everything,” The Verge, June 17, 2014, https://www.theverge.com/2014/6

…

/17/5816254/taskrabbit-blows-up-its-auction-house-to-offer-services-on-demand. 20. Lee, “On

…

the Record: TaskRabbit’s Stacy Brown-Philpot.” 21. James K. Willcox, “Cable TV Fees Continue to Climb,” Consumer Reports, October

…

, 73 Super Pumped (Isaac), 172–173 Super You, 139 suppliers, 144–148, 153–154 talent attracting diverse, 95–104 retaining, 120–122 task forces, 92 TaskRabbit, 5, 148–152, 161 Tatum, Lisa Skeete, 14 teams building, 54 diverse, 48–49 leadership of, 13 terminations, 84, 85–86 360-degree reviews, 117

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies

by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee  · 20 Jan 2014  · 339pp  · 88,732 words

’d never met before. We found them by posting a request for help with the task to TaskRabbit, a company founded by software engineer Leah Busque in 2008. Busque got the idea for TaskRabbit after she ran out of dog food one night and realized that there was no quick and easy

…

stayed in places booked via Airbnb; this is 50 percent more than could be accommodated in all the hotels on the Las Vegas Strip.29 TaskRabbit also grew quickly; by January 2013 the company was reporting “month-over-month transactional growth in the double digits.”30

…

TaskRabbit allows people to offer their labor to the crowd while Airbnb lets them offer an asset. The peer economy now includes many examples of both

…

grow. We like the efficiency gains and price declines that crowdsourcing brings, but we also like the work that it brings. Participation in services like TaskRabbit and Airbnb gives people previously unavailable economic opportunities, and it also gives them something to do. It therefore has the potential to address all three

…

other available levers. The peer economy is still new and still small, both relative to GDP and in absolute terms. In April 2013, for example, TaskRabbit was adding one thousand new people each month to its network of approved task completers.31 This is encouraging, but that same month there were

…

, doi:10.1177/1354856507084420. 28. Alyson Shontell, “Founder Q&A: Make a Boatload of Money Doing Your Neighbor’s Chores on TaskRabbit,” Business Insider, October 27, 2011, http://www.businessinsider.com/taskrabbit-interview-2011-10 (accessed August 12, 2013). 29. Tomio Geron, “Airbnb and the Unstoppable Rise of the Share Economy,” Forbes

…

-and-the-unstoppable-rise-of-the-share-economy/ (accessed August 12, 2013). 30. Johnny B., “TaskRabbit Names Google Veteran Stacy Brown-Philpot as Chief Operating Officer,” TaskRabbit Blog, January 14, 2013, https://www.taskrabbit.com/blog/taskrabbit-news/taskrabbit-names-google-veteran-stacy-brown-philpot-as-chief-operating-officer/ (accessed August 12, 2013). 31. Johnny

…

B., “TaskRabbit Welcomes 1,000 New TaskRabbits Each Month,” TaskRabbit Blog, April 23, 2013, https://www.taskrabbit.com/blog/taskrabbit-news/taskrabbit-welcomes-1000-new-taskrabbits-each-month/. 32. “Employment Situation News Release,” Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 3, 2013, http://www

…

of taxation of see also “winner-take-all” markets Sweden, income inequality in Systrom, Kevin Syverson, Chad Tabarrok, Alex Taipale, Kim Taiwan, automation in Target TaskRabbit taxes consumption on economic rents negative income payroll Pigovian value-added Tea Party technological progress adjusting to combinatorial nature of digitization in economic theories about

Platform Scale: How an Emerging Business Model Helps Startups Build Large Empires With Minimum Investment

by Sangeet Paul Choudary  · 14 Sep 2015  · 302pp  · 73,581 words

-Friction Matrix 3.6 Sampling Costs 3.7 Trust Drives Interaction 3.8 Uber Vs. Lyft And Interaction Failure 3.9 Interaction Ownership And The TaskRabbit Problem 4.0 SOLVING CHICKEN-AND-EGG PROBLEMS Introduction 4.1 A Design Pattern For Sparking Interactions 4.2 Activating The Standalone Mode 4.3

…

(e.g., eBay and Etsy), virtual goods (e.g., Medium, YouTube, and Facebook), standardized services (e.g., Uber and Airbnb), non-standardized services (e.g., TaskRabbit and Upwork), or data (e.g., Waze and Nest). Consumers may offer economic currencies like money or some other tradable item in exchange. In social

…

be matched to travelers. Listings must be set up on eBay or Etsy to enable any commerce. Service providers must be available and active on TaskRabbit for service requests to be fulfilled. In all these instances, the presence of value units sparks interactions among external producers and consumers. These units of

…

value, and the listing is the core value unit. 3.Non-Standardized Services. In contrast to the above, the service offered by a plumber on TaskRabbit cannot be standardized. In such cases, the listing describes the service provider. The availability of the service provider (not a specific service) and her active

…

traveler (consumer) to host (producer) 3.Transfer of accommodations-as-a-service from host (producer) to traveler (consumer) These flows, when visualized, appear as follows: TaskRabbit, a marketplace that allows consumers to find service providers, follows a similar pattern where information and currency (money) flow through the platform but services flow

…

a platform like Facebook, the status updates and other content create value. On Etsy, the goods listings act as inventory. The supply of value on TaskRabbit refers to the availability of service providers. On a data platform like Nest, the data captured by the thermostat creates the supply of value. In

…

interactions. By design, it scales the participation of the best producers and consumers on the platform.Cumulative value takes four forms. 1. Reputation Platforms like TaskRabbit may create greater stickiness for producers by allowing them to gather reputation. Reputation may take the form of explicit reputation, based on ratings and reviews

…

. That’s why social curation tends to be more inefficient on platforms with higher sampling costs. CURATING SERVICES Services marketplaces like oDesk, Fiverr, Airbnb, and TaskRabbit rely on social curation. In these instances, two additional factors need to be considered to determine the effectiveness of social curation: 1. The ability of

…

more likely to succeed in capturing user inputs on quality. For example, Upwork and Clarity enable the exchange of services on-platform, whereas Airbnb and TaskRabbit require the exchange of services to be conducted off-platform. When the actual exchange occurs on-platform, the consumer of services (and, in some cases

…

an ongoing discipline that all platform-scale businesses must embrace. 3.9 INTERACTION OWNERSHIP AND THE TASKRABBIT PROBLEM When The Ecosystem Avoids The Platform Platforms that connect non-standardized service providers with clients (such as TaskRabbit and Upwork) are faced with a unique challenge. Most such platforms cannot facilitate a transaction before

…

off-platform. This problem is further enhanced when the delivery of the service requires the buyer and seller to meet in person. A platform like TaskRabbit enables users to find service providers locally. Since the delivery of service may often involve an in-person meeting, the payments may also be executed

…

in person. This prevents the platform from extracting the transaction cut. Finally, on platforms like TaskRabbit, a client may want to continue using the same plumber for subsequent interactions once he finds a good one. Every time the platform enables a

…

its core interaction is repeated as often – and as efficiently – as possible. More rides on Uber, more payments on PayPal and more tasks booked on TaskRabbit, are good news for the respective platforms. To craft a framework for scaling interactions, it is helpful to revisit the structure of the core interaction

…

and discouraging undesirable ones should be implemented, as feedback loops, into the mechanics of the platform. Both Sittercity, a platform connecting babysitters with parents, and TaskRabbit, a platform aggregating service providers, invest in intensive background checks on service providers on their platform. A combination of ongoing social feedback, and occasional editorial

…

-Friction Matrix 3.6 Sampling Costs 3.7 Trust Drivers Interaction 3.8 Uber Vs. Lyft And Interaction Failure 3.9 Interaction Ownership And The Taskrabbit Problem Section 4 Introduction 4.1 A Design Pattern For Sparking Interaction 4.2 Activating The Standalone Mode 4.3 How Paypal And Reddit Faked

Growth Hacking Techniques, Disruptive Technology - How 40 Companies Made It BIG – Online Growth Hacker Marketing Strategy

by Robert Peters  · 18 May 2014  · 125pp  · 28,222 words

The Internet Is Not the Answer

by Andrew Keen  · 5 Jan 2015  · 361pp  · 81,068 words

Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future

by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson  · 26 Jun 2017  · 472pp  · 117,093 words

The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay

by Guy Standing  · 13 Jul 2016  · 443pp  · 98,113 words

Ours to Hack and to Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, a New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet

by Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider  · 14 Aug 2017  · 237pp  · 67,154 words

Gigged: The End of the Job and the Future of Work

by Sarah Kessler  · 11 Jun 2018  · 246pp  · 68,392 words

Uberland: How Algorithms Are Rewriting the Rules of Work

by Alex Rosenblat  · 22 Oct 2018  · 343pp  · 91,080 words

The Middleman Economy: How Brokers, Agents, Dealers, and Everyday Matchmakers Create Value and Profit

by Marina Krakovsky  · 14 Sep 2015  · 270pp  · 79,180 words

Modern Monopolies: What It Takes to Dominate the 21st Century Economy

by Alex Moazed and Nicholas L. Johnson  · 30 May 2016  · 324pp  · 89,875 words

The Lonely Century: How Isolation Imperils Our Future

by Noreena Hertz  · 13 May 2020  · 506pp  · 133,134 words

The Gig Economy: The Complete Guide to Getting Better Work, Taking More Time Off, and Financing the Life You Want

by Diane Mulcahy  · 8 Nov 2016  · 229pp  · 61,482 words

Open for Business Harnessing the Power of Platform Ecosystems

by Lauren Turner Claire, Laure Claire Reillier and Benoit Reillier  · 14 Oct 2017  · 240pp  · 78,436 words

Pandemic, Inc.: Chasing the Capitalists and Thieves Who Got Rich While We Got Sick

by J. David McSwane  · 11 Apr 2022  · 368pp  · 102,379 words

Collaborative Society

by Dariusz Jemielniak and Aleksandra Przegalinska  · 18 Feb 2020  · 187pp  · 50,083 words

The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power

by Max Chafkin  · 14 Sep 2021  · 524pp  · 130,909 words

Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America

by Alissa Quart  · 25 Jun 2018  · 320pp  · 90,526 words

WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us

by Tim O'Reilly  · 9 Oct 2017  · 561pp  · 157,589 words

Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?

by Brett Christophers  · 17 Nov 2020  · 614pp  · 168,545 words

The Gig Economy: A Critical Introduction

by Jamie Woodcock and Mark Graham  · 17 Jan 2020  · 207pp  · 59,298 words

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks From the Stone Age to AI

by Yuval Noah Harari  · 9 Sep 2024  · 566pp  · 169,013 words

Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World

by Clive Thompson  · 26 Mar 2019  · 499pp  · 144,278 words

The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-First Century

by Ryan Avent  · 20 Sep 2016  · 323pp  · 90,868 words

Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy--And How to Make Them Work for You

by Sangeet Paul Choudary, Marshall W. van Alstyne and Geoffrey G. Parker  · 27 Mar 2016  · 421pp  · 110,406 words

The Smartphone Society

by Nicole Aschoff

Peers Inc: How People and Platforms Are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism

by Robin Chase  · 14 May 2015  · 330pp  · 91,805 words

The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator, Silicon Valley's Most Exclusive School for Startups

by Randall Stross  · 4 Sep 2013  · 332pp  · 97,325 words

Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?

by Thomas Frank  · 15 Mar 2016  · 316pp  · 87,486 words

5 Day Weekend: Freedom to Make Your Life and Work Rich With Purpose

by Nik Halik and Garrett B. Gunderson  · 5 Mar 2018  · 290pp  · 72,046 words

The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty

by Benjamin H. Bratton  · 19 Feb 2016  · 903pp  · 235,753 words

The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World

by Brad Stone  · 30 Jan 2017  · 373pp  · 112,822 words

Platform Capitalism

by Nick Srnicek  · 22 Dec 2016  · 116pp  · 31,356 words

The Network Imperative: How to Survive and Grow in the Age of Digital Business Models

by Barry Libert and Megan Beck  · 6 Jun 2016  · 285pp  · 58,517 words

Rewriting the Rules of the European Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity

by Joseph E. Stiglitz  · 28 Jan 2020  · 408pp  · 108,985 words

The Economics of Belonging: A Radical Plan to Win Back the Left Behind and Achieve Prosperity for All

by Martin Sandbu  · 15 Jun 2020  · 322pp  · 84,580 words

The Autonomous Revolution: Reclaiming the Future We’ve Sold to Machines

by William Davidow and Michael Malone  · 18 Feb 2020  · 304pp  · 80,143 words

The Raging 2020s: Companies, Countries, People - and the Fight for Our Future

by Alec Ross  · 13 Sep 2021  · 363pp  · 109,077 words

Mattering: The Secret to Building a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose

by Jennifer Breheny Wallace  · 13 Jan 2026  · 206pp  · 68,830 words

Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone

by Sarah Jaffe  · 26 Jan 2021  · 490pp  · 153,455 words

The Ones We've Been Waiting For: How a New Generation of Leaders Will Transform America

by Charlotte Alter  · 18 Feb 2020  · 504pp  · 129,087 words

Amazon: How the World’s Most Relentless Retailer Will Continue to Revolutionize Commerce

by Natalie Berg and Miya Knights  · 28 Jan 2019  · 404pp  · 95,163 words

Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It

by Azeem Azhar  · 6 Sep 2021  · 447pp  · 111,991 words

No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram

by Sarah Frier  · 13 Apr 2020  · 484pp  · 114,613 words

Design for Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty

by David Kadavy  · 5 Sep 2011  · 276pp  · 78,094 words

Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream

by Nicholas Lemann  · 9 Sep 2019  · 354pp  · 118,970 words

Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

by Donald Sull and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt  · 20 Apr 2015  · 294pp  · 82,438 words

Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber

by Mike Isaac  · 2 Sep 2019  · 444pp  · 127,259 words

Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice From the Best in the World

by Timothy Ferriss  · 14 Jun 2017  · 579pp  · 183,063 words

The Mesh: Why the Future of Business Is Sharing

by Lisa Gansky  · 14 Oct 2010  · 215pp  · 55,212 words

Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups

by Ali Tamaseb  · 14 Sep 2021  · 251pp  · 80,831 words

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet

by Klaus Schwab and Peter Vanham  · 27 Jan 2021  · 460pp  · 107,454 words

What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing

by Ed Finn  · 10 Mar 2017  · 285pp  · 86,853 words

Frugal Innovation: How to Do Better With Less

by Jaideep Prabhu Navi Radjou  · 15 Feb 2015  · 400pp  · 88,647 words

The Age of Stagnation: Why Perpetual Growth Is Unattainable and the Global Economy Is in Peril

by Satyajit Das  · 9 Feb 2016  · 327pp  · 90,542 words

Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us

by Dan Lyons  · 22 Oct 2018  · 252pp  · 78,780 words

The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the Death of Capitalism

by Calum Chace  · 17 Jul 2016  · 477pp  · 75,408 words

Four Futures: Life After Capitalism

by Peter Frase  · 10 Mar 2015  · 121pp  · 36,908 words

Fair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn

by Chris Hughes  · 20 Feb 2018  · 173pp  · 53,564 words

Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are

by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz  · 8 May 2017  · 337pp  · 86,320 words

Exponential Organizations: Why New Organizations Are Ten Times Better, Faster, and Cheaper Than Yours (And What to Do About It)

by Salim Ismail and Yuri van Geest  · 17 Oct 2014  · 292pp  · 85,151 words

Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley

by Corey Pein  · 23 Apr 2018  · 282pp  · 81,873 words

The Airbnb Story: How Three Ordinary Guys Disrupted an Industry, Made Billions...and Created Plenty of Controversy

by Leigh Gallagher  · 14 Feb 2017  · 290pp  · 87,549 words

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

by Nir Eyal  · 26 Dec 2013  · 199pp  · 43,653 words

Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity

by Douglas Rushkoff  · 1 Mar 2016  · 366pp  · 94,209 words

The Business of Platforms: Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power

by Michael A. Cusumano, Annabelle Gawer and David B. Yoffie  · 6 May 2019  · 328pp  · 84,682 words

Laziness Does Not Exist

by Devon Price  · 5 Jan 2021  · 362pp  · 87,462 words

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet

by Klaus Schwab  · 7 Jan 2021  · 460pp  · 107,454 words

The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy

by David Gelles  · 30 May 2022  · 318pp  · 91,957 words

Trixie and Katya's Guide to Modern Womanhood

by Trixie Mattel and Katya  · 15 Nov 2020

New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World--And How to Make It Work for You

by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms  · 2 Apr 2018  · 416pp  · 100,130 words

Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions

by Temple Grandin, Ph.d.  · 11 Oct 2022

Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?

by Aaron Dignan  · 1 Feb 2019  · 309pp  · 81,975 words

New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI

by Frank Pasquale  · 14 May 2020  · 1,172pp  · 114,305 words

Markets, State, and People: Economics for Public Policy

by Diane Coyle  · 14 Jan 2020  · 384pp  · 108,414 words

Growth: A Reckoning

by Daniel Susskind  · 16 Apr 2024  · 358pp  · 109,930 words

A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend Them Back

by Bruce Schneier  · 7 Feb 2023  · 306pp  · 82,909 words

Cashing Out: Win the Wealth Game by Walking Away

by Julien Saunders and Kiersten Saunders  · 13 Jun 2022  · 268pp  · 64,786 words

The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

by Scott Belsky  · 1 Oct 2018  · 425pp  · 112,220 words

Vassal State

by Angus Hanton  · 25 Mar 2024  · 277pp  · 81,718 words

Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation

by Anne Helen Petersen  · 14 Jan 2021  · 297pp  · 88,890 words

J.K. Lasser's Your Income Tax 2022: For Preparing Your 2021 Tax Return

by J. K. Lasser Institute  · 21 Dec 2021

Data and the City

by Rob Kitchin,Tracey P. Lauriault,Gavin McArdle  · 2 Aug 2017

Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future

by Mike Maples and Peter Ziebelman  · 8 Jul 2024  · 207pp  · 65,156 words

On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane

by Emily Guendelsberger  · 15 Jul 2019  · 382pp  · 114,537 words

Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks

by Scott J. Shapiro  · 523pp  · 154,042 words

Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization

by Parag Khanna  · 18 Apr 2016  · 497pp  · 144,283 words

100 Things We've Lost to the Internet

by Pamela Paul  · 14 Oct 2021  · 194pp  · 54,355 words

Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World

by Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott  · 9 May 2016  · 515pp  · 126,820 words

The Twittering Machine

by Richard Seymour  · 20 Aug 2019  · 297pp  · 83,651 words

No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Global Forces Breaking All the Trends

by Richard Dobbs and James Manyika  · 12 May 2015  · 389pp  · 87,758 words

Work Rules!: Insights From Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

by Laszlo Bock  · 31 Mar 2015  · 387pp  · 119,409 words

Dead People Suck: A Guide for Survivors of the Newly Departed

by Laurie Kilmartin  · 13 Feb 2018  · 119pp  · 36,128 words

Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World

by Jeffrey Tucker  · 7 Jan 2015

Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era

by Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith  · 17 Aug 2015  · 353pp  · 91,520 words

Financial Freedom: A Proven Path to All the Money You Will Ever Need

by Grant Sabatier  · 5 Feb 2019  · 621pp  · 123,678 words

Trees on Mars: Our Obsession With the Future

by Hal Niedzviecki  · 15 Mar 2015  · 343pp  · 102,846 words

The Glass Cage: Automation and Us

by Nicholas Carr  · 28 Sep 2014  · 308pp  · 84,713 words

The People vs Tech: How the Internet Is Killing Democracy (And How We Save It)

by Jamie Bartlett  · 4 Apr 2018  · 170pp  · 49,193 words

Wild Ride: Inside Uber's Quest for World Domination

by Adam Lashinsky  · 31 Mar 2017  · 190pp  · 62,941 words

Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations

by Thomas L. Friedman  · 22 Nov 2016  · 602pp  · 177,874 words

Give People Money

by Annie Lowrey  · 10 Jul 2018  · 242pp  · 73,728 words

Inequality and the 1%

by Danny Dorling  · 6 Oct 2014  · 317pp  · 71,776 words

The Purpose Economy: How Your Desire for Impact, Personal Growth and Community Is Changing the World

by Aaron Hurst  · 31 Aug 2013  · 209pp  · 63,649 words

Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World

by Bruce Schneier  · 2 Mar 2015  · 598pp  · 134,339 words

The Complete Guide to Property Investment: How to Survive & Thrive in the New World of Buy-To-Let

by Rob Dix  · 18 Jan 2016  · 228pp  · 68,315 words

More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy

by Philip Coggan  · 6 Feb 2020  · 524pp  · 155,947 words

The Fourth Industrial Revolution

by Klaus Schwab  · 11 Jan 2016  · 179pp  · 43,441 words

Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took on Silicon Valley's Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime

by Julian Guthrie  · 15 Nov 2019

Slow

by Brooke McAlary  · 22 Aug 2017  · 149pp  · 44,375 words

Mine!: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives

by Michael A. Heller and James Salzman  · 2 Mar 2021  · 332pp  · 100,245 words

The Theft of a Decade: How the Baby Boomers Stole the Millennials' Economic Future

by Joseph C. Sternberg  · 13 May 2019  · 336pp  · 95,773 words

A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

by Bruce Cannon Gibney  · 7 Mar 2017  · 526pp  · 160,601 words

Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside

by Xiaowei Wang  · 12 Oct 2020  · 196pp  · 61,981 words

Side Hustle: From Idea to Income in 27 Days

by Chris Guillebeau  · 18 Sep 2017  · 206pp  · 60,587 words

Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter

by Dr. Dan Ariely and Jeff Kreisler  · 7 Nov 2017  · 302pp  · 87,776 words

Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane

by Brett King  · 5 May 2016  · 385pp  · 111,113 words

Silicon City: San Francisco in the Long Shadow of the Valley

by Cary McClelland  · 8 Oct 2018  · 225pp  · 70,241 words

The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters

by Diane Coyle  · 15 Apr 2025  · 321pp  · 112,477 words

Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America

by Erik Baker  · 13 Jan 2025  · 362pp  · 132,186 words

Essential: How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for Worker Justice

by Jamie K. McCallum  · 15 Nov 2022  · 349pp  · 99,230 words

These Strange New Minds: How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means

by Christopher Summerfield  · 11 Mar 2025  · 412pp  · 122,298 words

Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World

by Malcolm Harris  · 14 Feb 2023  · 864pp  · 272,918 words

Radicalized

by Cory Doctorow  · 19 Mar 2019  · 444pp  · 84,486 words

The Globotics Upheaval: Globalisation, Robotics and the Future of Work

by Richard Baldwin  · 10 Jan 2019  · 301pp  · 89,076 words

Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech

by Brian Merchant  · 25 Sep 2023  · 524pp  · 154,652 words

Don't Be Evil: How Big Tech Betrayed Its Founding Principles--And All of US

by Rana Foroohar  · 5 Nov 2019  · 380pp  · 109,724 words