Unbundling Work from Employment

Across multiple verticals, independent workers often lack predictable income, which presents an opportunity for lending. Early products in this space include Patreon Capital (merchant cash advances for Patreon creators), Shopify Capital, as well as horizontal creator business platforms Karat and Stir.

The benefit of building for a particular vertical is focus. Startups are able to align execution to a particular type of work and provide greater value for workers in a specific industry. A vertical approach also means more focused marketing, sales, and user acquisition strategies. Given that the online creative economy is growing at nearly 20% per... See more

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.

Vertical-specific tools can provide a depth of value for creators that is challenging for horizontal platforms to replicate. Shopify, which has stated that its mission is to “make entrepreneurship more accessible,” doesn’t just superficially enable the creation of an online storefront, but offers deeper functionality tailored to e-commerce merchant... See more

4. Learning, upskilling, and development

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.

What are some ideas for horizontal platforms? (not exhaustive)

. 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.