After tapping an all-time high of over $72 last month, LivePerson shares had shed roughly 30% of their value through yesterday’s close. 92 Snapchat, which, at the time of our last report was a niche app specializing in rapidly vanishing photos has since become a media powerhouse. It now enjoys partnerships with major traditional media publishers such as NBC and National Geographic as well as newer publishers Vice and BuzzFeed and has surged to over 10 billion views per day. Once your ownership with Google is complete, you have access to major sections. 80 Characteristics of the platform-enabled on-demand economy include: Access over ownership (consumer point of view) Flexibility over fixed hours (worker point of view) Options and modularity of choice e.g. a spare room instead of hotel, a shared ride instead of a cab We divide this category into two sections: The platforms that enable on-demand goods and services (and the revenues these firms derive from fees and commissions) The workers who provide the on-demand services that power this new economy On-Demand Platforms & Services The firms that make such work possible are known as platform firms, which, rather than build the infrastructure of taxi fleets or delivery services, create a platform for matching buyers and sellers of services.
Among the most well-known of such firms are Airbnb, taxi alternatives Uber and Lyft, and delivery on-demand services Instacart, Grubhub, Task- Rabbit, and Postmates. 82 To assist us with distributing the on-demand economy work geographically we factored in the following findings: Between 2010 and 2014, the 25 largest metros accounted for more than 80 percent of the net growth in gig economy firms in the ride-sharing sector, with 90 percent concentrated in the largest 50 metros. Similarly, the company s R&D costs index higher than competitors, running at approximately 28 percent of revenues. Take for example the credit marketplace Lending Club, which in 2015 managed $460 billion in assets, employed 1000 people, and had revenues of $730 million with a business based on technology-enabled peerto-peer lending that offers borrowers better rates than traditional banks and provides lenders with more attractive returns than the fraction of a fraction of a percentage that has been the norm for bank deposits over the past several years. McKinsey estimates that up to 30 percent of workers in Western Europe and the United States (162 million people, of which almost 60 million are located in the U.S.) are independent workers, covering the gamut from those who supplement their main income with a handful of hours of on-demand economy work weekly to those who are able to perform such work as a primary source of income.
FinTech covers businesses ranging from robo-advisors that offer automated personal wealth management for a fraction of the price of financial advisors (usually 0.25 percent in lieu of the mutual fund industry average of 1.3 to 1.5 percent), peer-to-peer lending powered by predictive analytics and algorithms, digital payment systems that allow individual payments, group payments, and even micropayments, and crowdfunding platforms that support everything from artistic endeavors (e.g. Kickstarter, Indiegogo) to honeymoons (Honeyfund) to personal needs, charities, and community projects. The status of the physical bank that occupied a building resembling a Greco-Roman temple and operated in a formal, almost governmental, manner, is now unquestionably being challenged by companies that operate entirely in the digital sphere and offer efficiencies unimaginable in a pre-internet world. 83 The evolution of work flow in the banking industry from face-to-face encounters with tellers in brick and mortar bank offices to online and mobile transactions times and places convenient to customers has merely been phase one.
Mozido, a mobile payment platform focusing on the two billion owners of mobile phones who are unbanked (i.e. do not have bank accounts). 87 The McKinsey report divides on-demand economy workers into four segments: 30 percent who are free agents by choice, 40 percent who are deriving supplemental income from their activities, 14 percent who make their primary living with on-demand work (but who would prefer traditional employment), and 16 percent who are in financially unstable situations and perform the work out of economic necessity. In the case of the latter segment, GoFundMe, the primary platform of its kind, now raises $100 million per month for such non-commercial activities, with the company retaining a five percent fee for facilitating transactions. When David’s Bridal was forced by the COVID-19 pandemic to temporarily shut down retail stores, the company transformed from a 90 percent in-store business to a 100 percent digital business in two weeks, leading to a 7.5 times increase in messaging volume and 700 percent increase in sales via messaging. The problem with Twitter, then, is not its ability to generate revenue, but its ability to continue to grow its user base, while reining in what are reportedly very high sales and marketing costs.