Why Marketplace Startups Won’t Replace Full Time Employers
When you lean too far into the gig and creator economies, you’re just middleware
Don’t quit your day job just yet.
That’s the message that should be implied — if not explicitly stated — to every applicant of every gig and creator marketplace during the vetting process.
With the poorly named Great Resignation in full swing, talent is leaving the nest (prison?) of gainful full-time employment at record levels and sometimes seemingly on a whim. As a result, talent marketplace startups are popping up to backfill that labor with the promise of a full-time salary on a work-for-yourself basis.
As a 20-year entrepreneur who has dabbled in the service-for-hire world — and as a techie who grew up with the opportunity of gun-for-hire contract employment — I can tell you that a lot of those marketplace salary promises not only go unfulfilled, but they usually come crashing down on the marketplace startup like a strong breeze through a house of cards.
If you lean into the gig or creator economies too hard, you’re going to get burned. It’s just a matter of when and how much income is at stake.
