Today let’s take a look at the top 5 crowdfunding websites. First, let’s obtain an understanding on what crowdfunding is and how it can be beneficial for you. Crowdfunding is a system or platforms that allow everyday people with limited funds to raise funds for an idea, project or charity requirements to successfully raise funds. […]
Ivan Smolnikov Contributor Ivan Smolnikov is the CEO and founder of Smartcat, the market network platform for the translation industry. The last few decades have produced many successful marketplaces. We went from goods marketplace pioneers such as eBay and Amazon to simple service marketplaces such as Uber, Lyft, Doordash, Upwork, Thumbtack, TaskRabbit, and Fiverr. But why haven’t we seen many successful B2B service marketplaces? Table of Contents Why Many B2B Service Marketplaces Failed Horizontal marketplaces are stuck at the discovery process Complex B2B services require workflow and collaboration tools Horizontal marketplaces suffer high attrition What Makes A Successful Service Marketplace? STEP 1: SaaS Workflow Platform Unlocks High-Value Collaboration STEP 2: Integrated Network and Payments Automation Strengthens Connections STEP 3: Embedding Into Content Solutions and Matching Automation Summary: Figure Out How to Unlock Value for All Why Many B2B Service Marketplaces Failed Some would argue that companies such as Upwork, Thumbtack, Fiverr, or TaskRabbit are horizontal B2B marketplaces in the sense that they provide access to suppliers of different services. But while businesses do indeed transact with freelancers on such “horizontal” marketplaces, for most service verticals these are limited-value, one-off transactions. They fail to enable long-term business collaborations. So, such marketplaces haven’t delivered more valuable services nor introduced a new paradigm for how businesses buy specific services at scale and on an on-going basis. Why is that? Horizontal marketplaces are stuck at the discovery process Horizontal services marketplaces don’t provide much value beyond matching clients with quality service providers. In other words, they don’t facilitate collaboration between buyers and suppliers, never mind provide ways for the two parties to collaborate more efficiently over time as they engage in follow-on projects. In essence, the model these marketplaces were built around is not much different from the likes of Craigslist, which put a convenient UX on traditional classified advertisements. Complex B2B services require workflow and collaboration tools In their article “What’s Next for Marketplace Startups?,” Andrew Chen and Li Jin found that there aren’t many successful service marketplaces because those offerings are complex, diverse, and difficult to evaluate. It’s challenging to define a successful transaction in a service marketplace because it’s harder to quantify success. One reason is that several service providers must often work together to complete a single job for a buyer, requiring a complex workflow from end to end. As a result, it’s difficult for marketplaces to not only mediate service delivery but also make it significantly more efficient for buyers and suppliers. If both the buyer and suppliers don’t see a significant efficiency gain other than being initially matched, why would they continue using the marketplace? (Image via Getty Images / Lidiia Moor) The $50 billion translation industry is a prime example of complex B2B services marketplaces. On the supply side are roughly 50,000 small agencies around the globe responsible for more than 85% of this $50 billion industry. (Note we are referring to agencies here as suppliers, though they play on both sides.) On the demand side are businesses that need to translate text from one language into another. Plus about 1,500,000 freelance linguists work in this industry, many of whom are more specialized than professionals in other industries. Anyone can find and hire a translator on Fiverr or Upwork. Both provide a vast selection of language translators. However, the quality and cost of the translation depends on the translation tools available to the translator as well as their subject expertise. Neither Fiverr nor Upwork provide computer-aided translation (CAT) and collaborative workflow solutions for users of their platforms. Additionally, neither provides an effective way for all parties to collaborate and continuously improve the efficiency and quality. But the problem with traditional marketplaces goes even further: Multiple translators and reviewers are usually needed to complete a single job for a customer. Multi-language translation projects are even more complicated. Such projects require multiple service providers and cost estimates, in addition to project management tools. This is why building a B2B service marketplace is difficult. Service marketplaces must not only connect buyers and suppliers, but also provide tools to enable an efficient and collaborative workflow that reduces wasted time and effort. Horizontal marketplaces suffer high attrition In addition to the problems already outlined, traditional marketplaces experience another issue that prevents them from growing and retaining market participants: Buyer and supplier attrition. Many business services are based on regularly recurring engagements. In some cases, a buyer and a service provider interact daily, requiring a different workflow than gig-marketplaces are built around. Buyers and suppliers have little motivation to continue interacting on a platform with no workflow automation solutions. They lack a way to improve service efficiency and quality, automate collaboration, payment, paperwork, and other basic processes required for a business. This is why many traditional marketplaces suffer from slow network effects and high attrition. (A network effect is what happens when a platform, product, or service delivers more value the more it is used. Think Facebook, eBay, WhatsApp.) Why wouldn’t companies work directly with service providers outside of a marketplace after they were introduced? What incentives keep the service transaction on the marketplace? These are critical questions to answer when building a marketplace. Traditional marketplaces target broad services, making it nearly impossible to provide workflow solutions for buyers and suppliers. Going forward, successful service marketplaces will be developed relying on an industry-specific SaaS workflow. This will focus buyers and suppliers on longer-term projects and interactions that serve the unique needs of collaborations and transactions in a specific vertical. Image via Getty Images / OstapenkoOlena What makes a successful service marketplace? In “The next 10 Years Will Be About Market Networks,” James Currier, Managing Partner at NFX Ventures, defines a new era of service marketplaces, which he calls market networks. A market network is a platform that combines elements of an n-sided marketplace, a network, and workflow solutions. An n-sided marketplace is one that requires coordination of multiple supply-side parties to provide a complex service for a single buyer. Market networks enable multiple buyers and suppliers to interact, collaborate, and transact on the same platform. They provide users with industry-specific workflow solutions that enable efficient, ongoing collaboration on long-term projects. This reduces costs and leads to a higher quality of services and increased overall value for all users. But how do you actually build a successful market-network platform? While the answer to that varies from company to company, here is our approach. We were able to build a market network for the translation industry that combines the components: network, marketplace, and workflow solution. STEP 1: SaaS workflow platform unlocks high-value collaboration The first step to building an effective complex market network is to develop a workflow that is easy for users to embrace. It might not seem like much, but this increases productivity by enabling teams to perform tasks that were previously impossible. ... Read More
Trash is a new startup promising to make it easier for anyone to create well-edited videos. Social video is an area that CEO Hannah Donovan knows well, having previously served as general manager at Vine (the video app that Twitter acquired and eventually shut down). She said that in user research, even though people had “really powerful cameras in their pockets,” when it came to editing their footage together, they’d always say, “Oh, I’m not technical enough, I’m not smart enough.” Donovan, who also worked as head of creative at Last.fm, said she “got curious about whether we could use computer vision to analzye the video and synthesize it into a sequence.” The result is the Trash app, which comes with a straightforward tag line: “You shoot, we edit.” Donovan demonstrated the app for me last week, shooting a few brief clips around the TechCrunch New York office, which were then assembled into a video — not exactly an amazing video but much, much better than anything I could have done with the footage. We also got to tweak the video by adjusting the music, the speed or the “vibe,” then post it on Trash and other social networks. Donovan founded the company with its Chief Scientist Genevieve Patterson, who has a Ph.D. from Brown and also did postdoctoral work with Microsoft Research. Patterson told me that Trash’s technology covers two broad categories. First there’s analysis, where a neural network analyzes the footage to identify elements like people, faces, interesting actions and different types of shots. Then there’s synthesis, where “we try to figure out what are the most cool and interesting parts of the video, to create a mini-music video for you with a high diversity of content.” The app should get smarter over time as it gets more training data to work with, Patterson added. For one thing, she noted that most of the initial training footage used “Hollywood-style cinematography,” but as Trash brings more users on-board, it can better adapt to the ways people shoot on their phone. It’s starting that on-boarding process now with what Donovan calls a “creator beta,” where the team is looking for a variety of creators — particularly talented photographers who haven’t embraced video yet — to try things out. You can request an invite by downloading the iOS app. (Donovan said there are plans to build an Android version eventually.) Trash has raised $2.5 million from sources as varied as the National Science Foundation, Japan’s Digital Garage and Dream Machine, the fund created by former TechCrunch Editor Alexia Bonatsos. Donovan said the startup isn’t focused on revenue yet — but eventually, it could make money through sponsorships, pro features and by allowing creators to sell their footage in the app. And if you’re wondering where the name comes from, Donovan offered both a “snarky response” (“I don’t give a damn and I don’t take myself too seriously”) and a more serious one. “We believe that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure,” she said. “With filmmaking, as you know, there’s a lot of things that get left on the cutting room floor. That’s one of the product concepts, in the longer term, that we want to explore.” View this post on Instagram You shoot, we edit. Throw some video clips into TRASH and we’ll use AI to edit them together with music in one tap. Share your videos to TRASH and elsewhere, watch and react to videos from other creators. Link in bio to download TRASH from the app store today #gettrashed A post shared by TRASH (@thetrashapp) on Jun 24, 2019 at 8:08am PDT ... Read More
The third flight of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy is set for this evening, and this launch is perhaps the most important one yet for the powerful rocket. The Falcon Heavy will be flying a mission for the Air Force known as STP-2 that’s ultimately meant to certify the vehicle as capable of launching future national security missions. If all goes well, the launch could help solidify the Falcon Heavy as a dependable rocket for the Department of Defense and potentially position SpaceX as a go-to launch provider for the military for most of the next decade. To evaluate the prowess of the rocket, the Air Force has tasked the Falcon Heavy with launching 24 satellites into space at once. The various spacecraft — hailing from NASA, the Air Force, the... Continue reading… ... Read More
Samsung is expanding the range of its SmartThings line of connected smart home gadgets today with the new $89.99 SmartThings Cam, $17.99 SmartThings Wifi Smart Plug, and $9.99 SmartThings Smart Bulb. The new products work within the SmartThings ecosystem and are available starting today. All three products fill some gaps in the SmartThings lineup with entry-level devices that are ideal for smart home beginners. They also are aggressively priced, either matching or undercutting the main players in their respective areas. The Cam and Smart Plug can be used with or without a SmartThings hub, while the Smart Bulb uses Zigbee 3.0 and relies on the hub for connectivity. All three devices work with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Samsung’s... Continue reading… ... Read More
Community asked to wait in the name of "preserving work-life balance"... Read More
Sensor Tower data shows more than 400,000 installs, $300,000 in revenue across the US and UK, but launch is flagging behind Niantic's best... Read More
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