Recently took a look at a new app called Rogomo (logo below):
It basically connects self-proclaimed experts to people in need of said expertise through a fee-based remote consultation model. There are other services like it (think Guru, Elance, Rentacoder, etc) but this one is one of the newest incarnations and is done very well (very clean UI, simple to find and effective features, etc). Started by a bunch of AOL guys.
I’m very bullish on what I call the “Ebay for services” space. There’s been some hype here and several companies that have tried to exploit the opportunity, with limited success. When you look at the next 10-20 years, there are significant supply and demand trends in its favor. On the supply side, you have millions of highly-skilled baby boomers with insufficient retirement income looking for flexible job models. On the demand side, you have an increasingly knowledge-based economy that is increasingly reliant on remote communication models and increasingly deep and narrow areas of expertise. This all creates tremendous opportunity to build a marketplace where skilled baby boomers can provide advice, counsel, and part-time labor to those with specific questions and tasks.
Immediate markets that come to mind range from law (”can someone look over a property or divorce contract for me?”) to business (”can anyone talk to web 4.0 ad models?”) to education (”quick, i need 15 minutes with an expert on shakespearean lit!”).
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk targets the low-end of this market, and services like Gerson Lehrman (GLG) target the high-end. Rogomo is an attempt to push into this middle end, and it faces a crowded space. While the market has yet to reach its tipping point, it’s definitely coming…
Filed under: Cool startups | Tagged: AOL, ebay for services
How are they different from Kasamba or Keen?
Great analysis of supply and demand trends. The global labor market will also be a factor, providing relatively lower cost experts in suitable categories (to date, languages, tech help and math). I too like the “eBay for services” analogy. – John (Rogomo co-founder)
I agree. great analogy.
Brian: Kasamba and Keen offer limited communication options – proprietary chat and voice features for Kasamba (software download required), and call-connect for Keen. Rogomo works with any IM, voice or video communication service, such as Yahoo Messenger, Skype, Jaxtr call widgets, or just a telephone.
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Back when FB released its API I thought of writing this as a social networking widget where students could socialize over interests and seek needed expertise.
The problem with an for-profit expertise INDUSTRY is this though: Think about the things in your life you actually NEED consultation for, and isn’t easily available through an ultra-conveniently accessed source like friends or wiki-ish resources.
If you think about it you actually do tag your friends with metadata associated with them. For example: you might think of me and say “Hmm… Ambert knows a lot about swords and guns, so I should call him if I ever have a question on these.” There’s a “threshold” for where the level of competency needed in a field exceeds what is commonly held or ultra-conveniently accessed and requires a paid consultant to proceed in a satisfactory fashion (example is car maintenance. Most of my neighbors can probably change their own oil and they could show me for free in their spare time, but in the rare case I explode my engine, this exceeds that threshold and I’d have to buy a consultant – a highly trained technician – to rebuild the entire engine) The fact is, in our life we rarely exceed that threshold.
You might say: yes but what about long tail? Surely across the enormity of society there is enough demand distributed to warrant having expertise in every conceivable random service available!
Well, that brings us to my next point. The social collaboration afforded by the internet (through forums, chats) has raised that threshold I spoke of. I point to the threshold being raised by the declining necessity of real estate agents and travel agents, and the change in the tactics of car sales from “sales tactics to fleet sales”. Legal and tax services also face a changing landscape due to expertise being for more readily available, and efficiently available.
Of course a future change in our lifestyle as a culture could definitely warrant a proliferation and expansion of consulting services for every aspect of life, and this could well be a possibility that facilitates the growth of “ebay as a service”.
Now let’s say I need REALLY skilled labor – to pay $50-$200 an hour to design a database or build me a VOIP network in my SMB. Things like http://www.guru.com/index.aspx exist for freelance experts, and sites like these have been well known and thrived for quite some years now.
Do I think there’s a huge potential for social networking to aggregate practically needed skills and knowledge? Definitely. But can I see this being an INDUSTRY? No.