{"id":47477,"date":"2023-10-20T15:53:50","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:53:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/how-uber-and-the-sharing-economy-are-winning-the-battle-for-hearts-and-wallets-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:53:50","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:53:50","slug":"how-uber-and-the-sharing-economy-are-winning-the-battle-for-hearts-and-wallets-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/how-uber-and-the-sharing-economy-are-winning-the-battle-for-hearts-and-wallets-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"How Uber and the sharing economy are winning the battle for hearts and wallets – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Sarah Kaine, Danielle Logue and Emmanuel Josserand<\/em><\/p>\n Street protests against popular \u201csharing\u201d economy firms Uber and Airbnb have become commonplace around the world.<\/p>\n Both these sector giants are succeeding in circumventing market regulations in many markets in areas including tax and labour law, creating concerns not just among workers but the broader public.<\/p>\n Direct action against these companies has not been the only response. Co-operatives and new platforms that offer workers equity or customers a \u201cpurpose\u201d are growing in number.<\/p>\n One example is Canadian firm Stocksy, which brings together more than 900 photographers and redistributes 90% of profits to the artists. Loconomics adopts a similar approach.<\/p>\n It is a co-operative owned by service professionals from massage therapists to dog walkers that operates with a strict principle of one member one vote.<\/p>\n These innovative co-operative startups are up against corporations with deep pockets. But they can build on the much broader worker co-operative movement, which emerged in the mid to late 19th century as a response to increasing pressure from changing market structures.<\/p>\n At that time, bigger companies undercut quality and used unfair labour practices, particularly low pay. They also restricted attempts by workers to organise better conditions \u2013 a situation that has obvious parallels in the platform-enabled economy.<\/p>\n Co-operatives and mutuals can also be customer and community owned. These organisations echo the increasing interest in social entrepreneurship and corresponding business models that enable the pursuit of both social and financial returns.<\/p>\n For instance, Fairmondo aims to change e-commerce by creating a global online marketplace based on a federation of national co-operatives. Scaling such models in order to compete globally is of course a challenge.<\/p>\n Co-operatives are also emerging as popular organisational structures for social entrepreneurs. For example, Hepburn Wind Farm is a locally owned co-operative in Daylesford, Victoria, that owns and operates two wind turbines.<\/p>\n These provide enough clean energy for more than 2,000 homes in the community.<\/p>\n There are about 2,000 mutual businesses and co-operatives in Australia. The top 100 of these businesses represented a turnover of A$28 billion in 2013\/14, growing at a yearly rate of 14%. This demonstrates the sustainability of such models.<\/p>\n There are also calls for co-operatives in Australia to be allowed to more ready access to funding opportunities beyond membership, including crowdsourced equity platforms, as is occurring in other countries.<\/p>\n