AIRBNB/UBER ... was yesterday - PlatformCooperativism ... will be tomorrow
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The document discusses the evolution from traditional platforms like Airbnb and Uber to platform cooperativism, proposing that while these companies have dominated the market, cooperative models could provide a more equitable alternative. It outlines the challenges and successes of existing platform cooperatives, emphasizing the need for a supportive ecosystem and collaboration among various stakeholders to thrive. The piece calls for building a mass movement towards platform cooperativism that prioritizes community ownership and sustainable practices in the digital economy.
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AIRBNB/UBER ... was yesterday - PlatformCooperativism ... will be tomorrow
- 1. AIRBNB ... was yesterday PlatformCoops ... will be tomorrow Thomas Dönnebrink OuiShare Connector Germany Freelancer Collaborative Economy Special thanks @AlbertCanig @TDoennebrink [email protected]
- 2. AIRBNB … was yesterday PlatformCoops … will be tomorrow. How does this juxtaposition of airbnb and platform cooperativism fit? airbnb is a specific company, a particular platform while the denomination platformcoop can be considered a more general and not yet familiar term. And then the presumptuous prediction: airbnb was yesterday, platformcoops will be tomorrow? Is this a prognosis, a prophecy, a pompous assumption or wishful thinking? Let's think about it.
- 3. >1,5 Mio. Listings in: 34.000 cities in 191 countries (Wikipedia) VC: 2.39 Billion. $ in 8 rounds by 32 investors – 10 acquisitions (Crunchbase)
- 4. Most of you will know airbnb: It is an online marketplace where people can - via Internet or mobile phones - list, discover or book private spaces. Two of the three founders began in October 2007 during a designer fair to rent out an airbed in their living room. This turned into a business model and in August 2008 into the foundation of a company. Today there are more than 1,500,000 listings in 34,000 cities in 191 countries. Airbnb managed in a fraction of time to offer more beds than the biggest hotel chains and they achieve this with a fraction of employees and an even higher valuation. Factor 10 could be a good approach for a rule of thumb. A fresh look into Crunchbasereveals that airbnb has collected almost 2,4 billion $ in 8 funding rounds from 32 investors from which also financed ten acquisitions. Of course airbnb is mentioned here just pars pro toto for a certain generic term. Often pitches of startup of this category start with: "We are the airbnb for X". Where X can then represent a arbitrary industry, area of life or need. In case you hear this phrase in the future you might want to check out if one of the jury, business angels or journalists makes a cross onto a paper in front of him or her. My assumption would be they playing bullshit bingo as a pastime.
- 5. in: 449 cities in 66 countries (Wikipedia) VC: 12.5 Billion$ in 15 rounds by 56 investors (Crunchbase)
- 6. As often - or maybe even more frequently one can hear: “We are the UBER for …” Hereby the second flagship of this category gets named which could have served just as well as pars pro toto. You know UBER? The online transportation network from Silicon Valley as well - or more simply and precisely a mobile App which connects passengers with private freelancer drivers. Today UBER is operating in about 450 cities in 66 country (continuously there are more added or dropped at times as they occasionally get prohibited to operate in certain cities). A quick check at Crunchbase tells us that Uber has collected until now more than 9 billion $ in 14 founding rounds 14 founding rounds by 55 investors. So the war chest is well stuffed. Nevertheless money gets also quickly burned above all for marketing, lobbying, lawyers and lawsuits. According to a study by the labour economists Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger the close to 400.000 UBER driver in the USA could constitute around 2/3 of all gig economy work. In addition to the enormous evaluation of currently more than 62 billion $ this circumstance also contributes to the high visibility of UBER.
- 7. Ein kleines interaktives Element
- 8. What is the secret of “success” of these platforms? Let’s approach the question in form of a quiz.
- 9. a) Founded after 2000 b) US Enterprise c) Zero d) 42 Question: What do the following brands have in common ?
- 10. Question: What do the following brands have in common ? a) Founded after 2000 (Not Alibaba) b) US enterprise (Not Alibaba) c) Zero d) 42 (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
- 11. after 7 year the world’s biggest taxi company owns ZERO cars > 1 Mio rides/day in 2015 after 12 years the most popular media platform produces ZERO content after 17 years the most valuable retailer in the world has ZERO inventory after 8 years the largest global provider of accommodation owns ZERO of its own real estate 80 Mio accomodations in 2015 The Power of ZERO 41 Bil. $ 62+ Bil. $ 184 Bil. $ 210 Bil. $ 20 Bil. $ 25+ Bil. $
- 12. And the winner is ... ZERO Since a) Alibaba was founded 1999 b) Alibaba is a Chinese company and d) the number 42 is quite important in the context of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but is irrelevant here. UBER: after 7 year the world’s biggest taxi company owns ZERO cars. FACEBOOK: after 12 years the most popular media platform produces ZERO content. ALIBABA: after 17 years the most valuable retailer in the world has ZERO inventory. AIRBNB: after 8 years the largest global provider of accommodation owns ZERO of its own real estate. These platforms are operating with external assets and collaboration forms which made them rapidly big, rich and influential. Here we see some figures from 2014 (in grey partially updated).
- 14. Alongside house and car there are still many realms in which thousand of platforms – partly with exponential growth rates – increasingly and rapidly changed and transform our economy and society and how we travel, live, work, think and act. There are different attempts to comprehensive overviews. One of the most known is the Honeycomb of Jeremiah Owyang of Crowd Companies. Here the latest edition 3.0 released March 2016 in which 280 startups were picked and categories out of 460 investigated.
- 16. The realms, industries and startups might have been multifaceted and the ideas and their implementation creative. Nevertheless when it came to governance and ownership models creativity and multiplicity quickly died out. The term Uberisation does not only translates into a description of the technical aspect of a platform, a mobile app, to enable the Peer-to-Peer transactions between customers and providers, but also into a narrowing of pathways of design and action to those of the neoliberal, libertarian Silicon Valley. They predominantly look like this: - Search and implementation of a marketable idea - Attraction of plenty of VC capital - Scaling and striving for monopoly positions in order to - Achieve rapid and lucrative IPOs to rake in high ROIs –> everything else is – at the most – just subordinated to this logic – at the latest when the VC capital and with it the inherent constraints have taken over the helm. The presence and the impression of success names like UBER and Airbnb – as well as the company, models and philosophies they represent – have left in the media, in the heads of young entrepreneurs and profit oriented investors, are enormous. It would seem that Margret Thatchers TINA: “There is no alternative” still reverberates strongly.
- 18. Is it surprising that in the end what goes into the process is what comes out? Sascha Lobo coined the term “Platform Capitalism” in one of his Spiegel Online articles in September 2014 and Jeremiah Owyang emphasized in one of his keynotes on the OuiShare Fest 2015 in May, that the VCs have invested – in a short space of time – almost 12 billion $ in the collaborative economy. This means: most startups belong the VCs, the Venture Capitalists. In a nutshell: the sharing economy is owned and steered by the 1%. And Douglas Rushkoff, author of the best-seller: „Throwing rocks at the Google Bus“ sums up on the South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference that “digital tech was supposed to usher in an age of prosperity, but so far it has put industrial capitalism on steroids. Social networks surrender their missions to data mining, and banks abandon investing for algorithms- all to stoke growth. Startups sell for billions but destroy more jobs and markets than they create.“ Rushkoff therefore calls for a new operating system for the digital economy.
- 19. Article in the Shareable Magazine (2015-11-03)
- 20. But what could this look like? Neal Gorenflo, editor of the Online Magazine Shareable describes it graphically impressively on the 03.11.2015 “How Platform Coops Can Beat Death Stars Like Uber to Create a Real Sharing Economy” The manuell for to be StarWars rebels consists of five main recommendations: 1. Incubate (new) templates. Experimenting with the interaction of new legal, financial and organizational aspects. 2. Offer a better Service at a competitive price. It can be assumed that users also turned into owners are easier to convince, retain and stay motivated. 3. Take cooperation to the next level. Platformcoops can share much more than proprietary and silo oriented enterprises. And Michel Bauwens – in his Open Coop call – recommends to do this globally and across industries. Also cities should get proactively involved. They should collaborate among each other and with the platformcoops in order to shape the Sharing and Collaborative Economy in the public interest. 4. Create an ecosystem to distribute wealth. Platform Cooperatives need an own ecosystem to be able to compete, but one that distributes wealth instead of concentrating it in the hand of a few. This seems asking for a lot, but platform cooperatives also have natural allies to create such a system. And they are not few: e.g. city governments, unions, NGOs, university, the free and open source (software) movement or social investors like social venture funds, foundations et al. And I would like to add the rapidly increasing crowd of millions and millions of individuals with a new commons sense ready for profound system change or already working on it. It has taken decades for the wonder of Silicon Valley to unfold. It needs a similar ecosystem to nurture and grow a platformcoop movement. Which brings us to the fifth recommendation: 5. Build a mass movement which should have the following characteristics: a) be populist & trans-partisan b) move from moral arguing to practical doing. c) develop from mono to multi stakeholder models.
- 21. The opening
- 22. Concerning the last point, creating the mass movement that is: On Nov. 13.-14. 2015 the first Platform Cooperativism Conference took place in New York City. Organised by Trebor Scholz, professor for culture and media at the New School in NYC and Nathan Schneider, journalist and assistant professor for media at the University of Colorado Boulder. Both released an article in Dezember 2014 which coined important terms. Nathan Schneider wrote the Shareable article: "Owning is the new Sharing“ and Trebor Scholz published in Medium the article: “Platform Cooperativism vs. The Sharing Economy.“ I recommend to read both. According to Trebor Scholz platform cooperativism “is about cloning the technological heart of online platforms and puts it to work with a cooperative model, one that puts workers, owners, communities, and cities in a kind of solidarity that leads to political power” (Quelle) The event brought together 100+ contributors and each day a 1000+ Coders, designers, scientists, researchers, cooperativists, platform entrepreneurs et al. 1.800 people followed the twitter account @platformcoop and the hashtag #platformcoop were leading on 13. of November the national chart for 5 hours. As intended the conference turned into a „coming-out party“ for the cooperative Internet. Participation, feedback and enthusiasm even surpassed all expectations and thus not only contributed to a decent dissemination of the concept of platform cooperativism, but set in motion a new and important political debate about the economy and society in general. For more information, videos etc. see www.platformcoop.net
- 24. After the conference more events around the topic took place. Just to name those I organized and attended myself these were after the common event with Michel Bauwens in NYC, Events in Barcelona, Madrid, Badajoz, Paris, and different in Berlin: like one with Michel Bauwens, one with Trebor Scholz, one at PlatformCoop fairmondo, one at Coliga. More to come. Interested parties are welcomed to join one of the corresponding Facebook groups like PlatformCoopBerlin for Information about further events. Or start your own PlatformCoop X group, where X stands for a certain city or region.
- 25. The Momentum Buildup of infrastructure
- 26. Further PlatformCoopX groups are currently forming. Recently in Valencia. I hear of interests an activities in Brussels, UK and of further events in Australia and I will be involved myself in events in Tenerife and Mexico City that that the same topic on the agenda this autumn. And the second conference in NYC is already scheduled: 11. – 12. of November 2016. Save the date! The facebook group: Rise of the Digital Cooperative serves as international pin board and on www.internetofownership.net one finds a „directory for the online democratic ecosystem“ with the enumarations of platformcoops, events und – very recently – a blog. The idea of platform cooperativism picks up pace and resonates with people.
- 27. PlatformCoops Still in its infancy
- 28. Despite of all atmosphere of departure and first established foundation and initiated momentum it has to be emphasized: platform cooperativism is still in its infancy. There are not many pure platformcoops – yet. Just a few can already look back on longer experience and none is as known, talked about or successful in financial terms as UBER, airbnb & co. – yet again. Nevertheless for more and more entrepreneurs about to launch a platform-based start-up are taking the cooperative model as an option into consideration. Or already incorporated entities are considering to transform into cooperatives – or have done so already. The founding of platformcoops is on the rise, the experience and exchange increases. I call it the beginning of the Collaborative Economy 3.0. In the directory of internetofownership.net or among the contributions of platformcoop.net examples can be found. In an article on May 18th 2016 Shareable presents the following: 1.Fairmondo a platform cooperative from Berlin consisting of 2000+ cooperativists that have collected more than 600.000€ in several funding rounds so far to work on a platform that wants to challenge ebay and Amazon. An offshoot in the UK has evolved, another in the US is in the making. 2. Stocksy is a Canadian based platformcoop for stock photography in which the featured photographer also become the proprietor of the platform. Stocksy is already profitable and growing rapidly. 3. Backfeed is a platform from Israel creating platform coops by means of blockchain technology.
- 29. 4. Juno is one of the growing examples of UBER challengers. Ist is not a cooperative, but the factor that 50% of shares a set aside for driver and that it is aimed at just taking 10% of commission instead of the current bite of 20-25% UBER takes out, makes this NYC based approach also an interesting case. Especially given that it is initiated by the Viber Founder who has sold his company for 900 million $ showing that he possesses the funds, connections and talent to pull this off. 5. Union Taxi is another UBER challenger from Denver. This one 100% driver-owned. 6. VTC Cab is a platform cooperative from Paris calling UBER out in Paris. 7. Modo is a car-sharing platform cooperative from Vancouver with 16.000 cooperativists and a fleet of 500 vehicles, which each member can easily rent out for 4$/h via the App. 8. Timefounder via this platform from Barcelona the contributions of project collaborators are tracked and turned into fair equity shares. 9. Enspiral is a fast growing and turning famous collective of social entrepreneurs and freelancers from New Zealand. With loomio and cobudget they have developed two open source programs which successfully address pressing questions of efficient as well as transparent and participatory decision making processes and fair value distribution and have made it available as open source. 10. Tapazz is a P2P carsharing cooperative from Belgium. 11. Peerby is not a cooperative, but a B-Corp from the Netherlands. Since they have recently raised – in what turned out to be one of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns – more than 2 million € from their users and promoters they are now predominantly owned by them. The conscious embedding and anchoring of certain cooperative principles in other form of organizations – like B- Corps in this case – is another interesting development and possible leverage.
- 31. In my contribution to the conference in NYC I had presented some more actors. If interested the presentation can be found on slideshare in English and Spanish, therefore I want to exemplify here only three: Goteo from Spain is the cooperative approach to crowdfunding platforms. The platform is open source and successful both for the provider as well as for the users of which more than 70% achieve their funding goal. Only open source and commons based projects are permitted. Good Data from London, is the worldwide first data cooperative, which allows their users to control their data at the browser level. User applying for membership turn into shareholder of Good Data. WeChange is a cooperative from Berlin and aims as becoming a kind of facebook for activists of change. On their open source platform they make available to activists and their groups a serie of interconnected open source tools for their work.
- 32. Cooperative Integral Catalana Katalonien FairCoop & FairCoin weltweit/ Katalonien Coop – Migros Schweiz+ Coop federation – Mondragon Weltweit/Baskenland
- 33. These were just solitary examples of undertakings trying to address particular problems in and with the form of cooperatives. Nevertheless for a sustainable standing in the market and a long-term transformation of the very same, more is necessary than solidarity and collaboration WITHIN a cooperative. What is needed is the solidarity and collaboration among cooperatives and the creating of more extensive ecosystems that nurture and protects them and that are oriented towards the commons. The exchange increases and first clusters are forming like for example 2010/11 the Cooperativa Integral Catalana, an integral Catalonian Cooperative which also was the breeding ground for the FairCoop Projekt in 2014, an open global cooperative which organize itself via the Internet and which operates beyond borders and the control of nation states. FairCoop aims at creating an alternative global economic system which is based on cooperation, ethics, solidarity, North-South balance and justice in economic relationships. FairCoop is well aware that the transition to a fairer monetary system plays a key role in this undertaking and therefore FairCoop supports Faircoin as cryptocurrency with which the intend to create and distribute commons and common wealth. New avenues are getting explored here and it is exciting to see how these social innovations and experiments will turn out in the future.
- 34. Likewise interesting will be the question in which direction traditional cooperative ecosystems will develop. For example Migros: founded in 1925 as a consumer cooperative. Turn-over today at almost 27 billion € and with almost 100.000 employees the largest employer of Switzerland. More than two million of the 7.2 million Swiss are member of this cooperative and 90% of the goods sold get produced by 90 subsidiaries. Migros is broadly positioned and 1% of the annual turn-over flow into cultural projects. Or Mondragón: founded in 1956 in the Basque region. Turn-over today around 12 billion € with more than 74.000 employees in around 260 companies and cooperatives in 41 countries. It is Spain’s fourth biggest industrial and tenth biggest financial cluster. Own cooperative financial institutes play a crucial role in this ecosystem. Mondragon is operating in accordance with the declaration of the cooperative conception of the International Cooperative Alliance. The business culture of this successful and resilient cooperative ecosystem is based on a general culture which derives from the 10 elementary principles in which Mondragon is rooted: Open access, democratic organization, sovereignty of work, instrumentalisation and subordination of the nature of capital, participatory management, compensation solidarity, inter-cooperation, social transformation, universality and education. And here the description of the term cooperative as defined by the International Coopertative Alliance. “A co-operative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically- controlled enterprise.” How does this resonate with the what was said here before? .
- 35. PlatformCapitalism was yesterday PlatformCooperativism will be tomorrow “The future belongs to enterprises that distribute control and wealth rather than concentrating it, and that's not a utopian dream, it's an increasingly practical necessity in order to attact and keep customers in a zero marginal cost world.“ Neal Gorenflo “Silicon Valley loves a good disruption. So let's give them one.” Trebor Scholz
- 36. And to wrap up with two quotes: “The future belongs to enterprises that distribute control and wealth rather than concentrating it, and that's not a utopian dream, it's an increasingly practical necessity in order to attact and keep customers in a zero marginal cost world” Neal Gorenflo’s interpretation of what Venture Capitalist Brad Burnham expressed in the SHARE conference in May 2014 as reported by Forbes in an article entitled, "Why Uber and Airbnb Might be in Big Trouble." "Silicon Valley loves a good disruption, let’s give them one.“ Trebor Scholz, organiser of the mentioned Platform Cooperativism Conference, in his opening speech.
- 37. Design the future or designed by it? "Cooperativism in general & cooperative banking associations in particular have the potential to give the rapidly changing economy and society an URGENTLY needed and in the meantime by more and more people wished turn, as they have two aces up their sleeves which are strongly needed by platform cooperatives and can give them leverage, and would help to co-create the necessary and supportive ecosystem: millions of members and billions of capital. What is still lacking is the knowledge, willingness and the action. CALL TO ACTION!
- 38. I would like to close with a round up that also includes an appeal. Sharing, commenting and critising is welcomed. In my humbled opinion: "Cooperativism in general and cooperative banking associations in particular have the potential to give the rapidly changing economy and society an URGENTLY needed and in the meantime by more and more people wished turn, as they have two aces up their sleeves which are strongly needed by platform cooperatives and can give them leverage, and would help to co-create the necessary and supportive ecosystem: millions of members and billions of capital. What is still lacking is the knowledge, willingness and the action. Cooperative banks are more than just banks or financial institutions. At least they should have this aspiration. They have the potential to become (again) the hearts of regional, healthy, sustainable, resilient, self-responsible, more human, social and solidary economy cycles which again foster the economy, which serve the societies and which stay within the ecological and planetary boundaries. Like this they do not only enable economical livelihood but recreate community and give meaning.
- 39. Vielen Dank! Thomas Dönnebrink OuiShare Connector Germany Freelancer Collaborative Economy www.about.me/thomasdoennebrink [email protected] @tdoennebrink +49 176 32335744
- 40. About Thomas Dönnebrink Lives in Berlin, is OuiShare Connector and Freelancer. His current focus is on characteristics of new economies and the convergence of ideas, concepts and movements in the context of the advancing transformation of our economy and society in general and platform cooperativism in particular. LinkedIn Profil - [email protected] - @tdoennebrink - +49 176 32335744
- 41. Community Building 1 Magazin ouishare.net 4 Globale Konferenzen 2 Touren (LATAM/Europa 8 Internationale Summits 100+ Facebook Gruppen 200+ OuiShare Events 2000+ Mitglieder 34000+ Facebook Fans > 30 cities in Europa, Lateinamerica & Near Osten 4. Internationale Konferenz. 18.-21.Mai 2016 “After the Gold Rush”
- 42. About OuiShare OuiShare originated four years ago in Paris out of a blog around the topic of collaborative consumption. In the meantime it has developed into an international peer-network with several thousand members and the object of study increasingly broadens becoming more holistic. As a movement, think and do-tank OuiShare has organized by now several hundred events in a few dozens cities in Europe, the Americas and the Near East. Since 2013 the three-day OuiShareFest takes place in Paris in May. As biggest event around the collaborative economy and society it attracts each year more than 1000+ participants and experts from around the world. Values Openness – Transparency – Independence – Impact – Feedback – Action – MPRL (Meet People in Real Life) – PermanentBeta – Inclusion - Play
- 44. About Collaborative Economy We distinguish four different fields, which of course overlap & reinforce each other. Best known and most widely spread is the field of collaborative consumption. Less known, but likely even more disruptive to the status quo in the future are the fields of collaborative production and collaborative finance. In a fourth field called openness or collaborative learning, concepts like open software, open hardware, open knowledge, open government and governance are summarized. Aspects of this field of openness play an important role in all three fields mentioned before.