#47: Is Mailchimp The Turning Point For Freelancing As A Third Option To Build Your Company? Can An AI System Predict Success of Startup Companies?
Entrepreneurs rejoice! No more burning through savings or getting yanked by VC's. The Human Cloud is here to sustainably build game changing companies that we can ALL be proud of.
Important Updates
🚀 Mailchimp sells for $12B to Intuit. Who cares in relation to the Human Cloud? It shows the power of following the third model - building a company through freelancing. Mailchimp founders Ben and Dan started as a web design agency called Rocket Science Group. They ran into their own massive problem (oversized, expensive email software), then built Mailchimp without taking a dime of venture capital.
🚩 On the topic of VC and the Machine Cloud, scientists developed an AI system that predicts the success of startup companies. Sounds good on the surface, but if it is trained using historical data, will it just propagate the biases inherit in VC funding? Will it predict a future that is still white, male, affluent, and coastal?
🤬 HBR study finds only 3% of VC funding goes to women. Combine this with the disproportionate displacement of women in the workforce due to COVID-19, and we’re looking at a historic setback that pushes working women’s progress back by half a century. How do we fix this? The Human Cloud provides one clear path for all. Government-assisted childcare helps too, studies show.
Hats off to Stephanie Nadi Olson of We Are Rosie and Liza Rodewald of Instant Teams, two of our 2021 Global Change Change Makers leading the charge for this!
💣 $57 BILLION dollars will be lost and over 60 million livelihoods destroyed if the PRO Act passes according to the American Action Forum.
❓Is ‘Decentralization’ the term we should use for the ‘Future’ of Work?
As an industry we’ve confused the CRAP out of you. Open talent…gig economy…sharing economy…the list goes on and on.
BUT I think we’re narrowing in on the right foundation, and it’s driven by decentralization.
Decentralization: the shift from large central planning to small distributed planning (100,000 person companies to groups of 5-50).
How’s this for a definition?
The Future of Work = Using decentralization to create positive sum value.
Simple…definitely needs expansion…but as a foundation to build on what do you think?
What does this look like in action? Enjoy our BLAST FROM THE PAST: In 2018 I wrote the power of freelance teams.
It touches on the power of combining remote work and freelancers to create self directed teams.
The Breakthrough - my freelance team, a team on multiple continents and that had never actually met each other, started collaborating on each other’s work, self-organizing, and planning. All without any “order” or directive from management. And most inspiring, all without ANY of this included in their “contract.”
Want to be featured on The Human Cloud Podcast?
We’re booking for November. If you’re freelancing, hiring freelancers, or tapping into technology to ethically shape the Future of Work we want to talk with you!
Don’t worry if you don’t have a personal brand or following. We actually prefer that since you’re probably busy driving change :)