On Market Places
- The main challenge of scaling UpWork is the variability of the service
Lyft and Uber's model - getting you from point A to B
- UpWork connects you with contractor who does consulting work and the quality varies based on service provider
- Scaling a market place that is digital is easier than scaling one that is service based
border crossing is performed easily
- Uber spends a lot of money entering into each new territory because it is building a new market place each time
- Performing Market Segmentation helps understand which segment is growing
- Growth is the new marketing
marketers which are focus on traditional channels of marketing will have a hard time transitioning to digital channels
- 1st principal approach to funnel analysis and conversion rates optimization
understand where they are dropping
- understand the user psychology behind why they are dropping off
Elderly-care marketplace
- Founding approach
raised money from ex-colleagues
- founded team with 2 ex-colleagues
- Reason for starting elderly care marketplace
Did a bottoms up analysis - more folks listing tasks to be done for elderly on UpWork
- Did a top down analysis - aging baby boomer
- UpWork is focused on the digital tasks while elderly care is an offline tasks
- Reasons for shutting down
well funded entrants
- real service is harder to scale than digital service
- quality variability of service provider
- difficulty in quantifying trust that can be translated from one customer to another - its a highly personal service