Crowded.com Brings Together Experts in On-Demand Economy Revealing Insight from Top VC Investors
NEW YORK, Oct. 30, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, startup Crowded.com, a marketplace for on-demand workers, released insight from a recent roundtable event that they hosted on the growth of the on-demand economy. The New York quarterly event was attended by an audience of over 50 on-demand platforms and investors and was led by 10 industry experts from top Venture Capital funds including LLR Partners, ARC Angel Fund, Coventure, 645 Ventures, Scout Ventures, Rubicon Venture Capital, Corigin Ventures and FirstMark Capital.
Overall, the panelists agreed on the significance and growth of the on-demand industry and had the following insight to share.
"As an investor, I used to look for problems, thinking that there would be a well-paid proposition to find. But now, beyond problems and pain, there's a whole category in the on-demand industry which are opportunities to do things that include more sharing from a data and collaborative perspective."
Charles Sidman, Managing Partner and Member, Angel Investor & ECS Capital Partners
"As the industry grows, there are also companies that serve the needs of other entrepreneurs. It's like Zen99, which helped Uber drive. But in the underserved markets where there are minority women who need to get their hair styled, people like Trish Morris (Special People Special Needs Foundation) are solving real world problems that's far more interesting to us. It's the same reason that we don't invest in companies that solve problems for wealthy college students. Conversely, there are companies solving problems that a lot of people think is interesting but the field is probably too crowded in terms of the funding, and you have to be more creative in order to stand out."
Ali Hamed, Managing Partner, Coventure
"As you get more people aware of these services, and interested in accessing the services in an alternate way, you're getting companies or opportunities that are popping up, that are a little more niche and a little more verbalized... Instead of the next Uber coming up and saying, 'We're going to provide ride-sharing for the masses.' Now you have an opportunity for a company like one of ours, HopSkipDrive, which says, 'We're going to provide really safe ride-sharing for children between the ages of seven and 14.' You wouldn't have that opportunity you have come up five years ago, that idea of putting your child in a car five years ago and saying like, 'Oh, I hope you get to karate okay,' was not quite there yet."
Sutian Dong, Senior Associate, FirstMark Capital
Crowded.com will host its next roundtable on Wednesday, November 4th in San Francisco. Speakers from Band of Angels, HOTventures and Vedas Group will be on-hand to discuss the industry at large along with executives from the on-demand industry. For more information and to attend, please visit http://bit.ly/1GtFaBL.
About Crowded.com
Crowded.com is the leading marketplace for on-demand workers. The on-demand market today has problems – independent workers struggle to find enough consistent gigs and platforms are unable to tap into enough consistent workers. With extensive regional and national data on the on-demand industry, Crowded.com provides a solution to this problem and creates its marketplace by recruiting independent workers at scale and aggregating gigs from hundreds of on-demand platforms.
Media Contact: [email protected] 212-334-9753, x123
SOURCE Crowded.com
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