Unbundling Work from Employment

There’s a massive opportunity for digital platforms that lower the barriers to micro-entrepreneurship to support the growth of these workers, in whichever directions they seek.

1. Single sign-on for fans

With increasing verticalization by content type, a single login/authorization system can help superfans pay for a single subscription and access all of a creator’s content. For instance, paying for a creator on Patreon could grant access to their private Substack group, private Zoom events, paid podcast, etc.

Freshbooks’ 2019 study on self-employment found that the primary motivations for those pursuing self-employment were non-financial: most individuals seek a combination of freedom, fulfillment, and career control.

3. Business services for 1099 workers: When workers are unbundled from institutions, they lose access to many of the services and benefits that traditional employment conferred: income smoothing with automated tax withholding (i.e. a paycheck), healthcare, employer-sponsored retirement plans, as well as a sense of comradery and community.

The notion of the “organization man”—a term popularized by William H. Whyte’s seminal 1956 book that describes the subsuming of individual agency in service of a large corporation—is giving way to the rise of “micro-entrepreneurs,” or free agents, creators, freelancers, and independent workers who utilize digital platforms to make a living by lever... See more

4. Learning, upskilling, and development

. Prior to Cameo being founded in 2017, it would have been strange for celebrities to charge fans for personalized shout-out videos, but Cameo normalized this type of paid interaction—and anticipates $100M in bookings this year.

Employment at a company is itself a bundle of various services and infrastructure, and there’s an opportunity for platforms to replace what workers lose when they leave traditional employment arrangements. For micro-entrepreneurs, the tradeoff of independence is a de-risked company environment for learning, pivoting, and risk-taking—and there’s an ... See more

Organizations spent $359 billion globally on training in 2016. Employer-provided learning, development, mentorship, and coaching programs means that independent workers need to piece together these resources on their own. Startups like Walden, Knowable, HireClub, Skillshare, Udemy, and more are creating standalone learning and development resources... See more