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Comment by parpfish | Hacker News Reader

I’ve often felt like there would be a lot of value for an app that’d simply let gig workers in an area find each other to talk and actually create a “workplace”.

But I’m not sure how you’d fund its creation. No VC would want it and there’s not a wealthy user base to bootstrap it.

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Typically such things are bootstrapped not by a wealthy user base but by a talented user base who write the code and set up the organization themselves.

However, if you do need some money for boostrapping, there are likely unions out there that would be willing to grant/lend the sums needed, which should be five figures.

Taking VC money would be counter-productive, making you beholden to conflicting interests.

P.S. The motivation for setting something like this up doesn't necessarily need to be purely selfless. It's not going to make you a billionaire, but if successful a non-profit or co-op you set up to do this can pay you a six figure salary for a job that has significant meaningfulness and significant agency (aka control over your own work). And by being a non-profit or co-op the lack of conflict of interest should make it more likely to be successful.

That's a smart idea. It seems like it shouldn't be too expensive to get something like this up and running, but scalability once it's available will be an issue.

Estimates for how many gig workers there are in the US vary between "over 20 million" and "about 60 million." They're already tech-literate, they probably talk to each other, so there's a chance that an app like this would experience very quick growth.

I wonder how gig services would react to something like this. They'd probably try to identify users and deplatform them, so in addition to the financial aspects, one difficult part would be how to protect and anonymize such a platform's users.

yeah, i think that the value proposition for a platform like this over just setting up some sort of discord/message board would be based having a central trusted entity that's able to provide user accounts that are verified AND anonymous.

you'd want to know that the people you're talking to are actually your coworkers and not corporate plants, but you also want to be sufficiently anonymous to avoid workplace retaliation OR weird stalkers.

> No VC would want it and there’s not a wealthy user base to bootstrap it.

More to the point, VCs invented these apps specifically to disenfranchise workers and vaccuum up the lost cost as a bullshit "service fee".

> I’ve often felt like there would be a lot of value for an app that’d simply let gig workers in an area find each other to talk and actually create a “workplace”.

What would that mean, to be a workplace?

it could be anything that just allows social connection between people that are doing the same job in the same geographic region but are largely invisible to one another.

i'd try not to be prescriptive about it, but it could cover anything from a light 'random chat' channel to vent about petty workplace annoyances, 'tips and tricks' for success, or more serious channels to talk about workplace safety/conditions/unionization

But if it's a gig, where's the workplace? E.g. if all the domestic builders in my town got together, who would they unionise against? They're not employed; that's not a gig.

Domestic builders aren’t really what come to mind for “gig workers”.

This would be for folks who have some app controlling their work- uber drivers, door dashers, etc.

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