Up & Go: the gig booking platform owned by workers

Up&Go,  the U.S.’s first worker-owned booking app, increases workers’ wages, assets, and competitive edge in the digital gig economy.

Up&Go harnesses the technology powering today’s digital “gig” economy and places it in the hands of traditionally-excluded low-income immigrant service workers. Launched in May 2017, Up&Go is the first home services booking platform in the U.S. that is owned by and designed with the domestic workers who use it, ensuring workers have fair work and share in the wealth generated by technology.

The Problem

U.S. cities are seeing their economies radically reimagined with the growth of low-wage service industries dominated by independent work. In domestic work sectors like residential cleaning, workers largely rely on agencies, referral services, or self-promotion to cobble together income through gigs. These workers, most of whom are women, face meager wages, poor conditions, and challenging schedules; often independent domestic workers must negotiate terms across language barriers and without contracts.

Gig workers face even greater instability with tech startups entering service sectors with consumer-focused booking applications, which claim hefty commissions and disproportionately contract with younger workers with higher levels of formal education than those historically working in these service sectors. Additional barriers to participation in these apps include lack of information and tech literacy.

The Solution

Up&Go innovatively applies booking platform technology to create opportunities for low-income, immigrant, and women workers. On this inclusive platform, workers set their own wages and schedules, and develop and approve company policies and strategy.  Up&Go is defined by:

• Job Creation and Quality: Up&Go average wage is $21/hour, 30% higher than the local industry average and double the typical worker’s previous earnings

• Asset Development and Stability: Workers own Up&Go intellectual property (brand and software).

• Early Participation of Workers: Using human-centered design principles, the web-app was developed and is iterated in collaboration with workers. to respond to their work conditions and expertise and tech needs.   

• Inclusivity: Workers meet monthly on platform operations and receive training/TA to support their decision-making.

Up&Go is supported by the Center for Family Life (CFL), a nationally-recognized leader in incubation of worker-owned enterprises (“cooperatives”) in low-income immigrant communities. Since 2006, CFL-supported cooperatives have generated over $11M and stabilized families of over 200 NYC workers. Up&Go scales this model for job and asset development by wedding cooperative governance with technology.

Changing The World

Up&Go is a functioning and scalable wealth-building engine for workers who previously could only increase earnings by working longer hours into old-age. Unique among service-sharing platforms, Up&Go profits and ownership interest are shared entirely among worker-owners, not outside investors. Beyond expanding job access, Up&Go will change the world by:

• Creating a platform for workers to establish and lift industry standards, share best practices, and achieve economies of scale in low-margin sectors.

• Pulling back the curtain on essential business and technology tools and knowledge not typically accessible to marginalized workers

• Implementing a well-tested, scalable model of cooperative governance to ensure that fair work practices are embedded at every level of business operations.

Up&Go is demonstrating that low-wage gig workers can take ownership of technology and use it to create better jobs and futures.

Up&Go is a worker-owned application of existing marketing and gig scheduling technology.  Worker-owners collaborate with tech developers so that Up&Go reflects worker-approved digital marketing and customer management strategies. This fosters innovation: e.g. workers worried individual profiles (photos, ratings, biographies) undermined their professional expertise and privacy; through customer-user prototyping we identified alternative trust-builders: sharing that the platform is worker-owned and offering customer testimonials. CFL has extensive experience incubating low-income, and immigrant worker-owned enterprises with operating systems that ensure fair work and quality-control. Up&Go applies this tested worker-owned governance model to tech ownership to drive inclusive tech development.

Up&Go equips worker-owned enterprises with digital marketing and customer management tools to secure and manage gig work and compete with investor-backed tech startups. Before Up&Go, existing NYC worker-owned businesses used inefficient marketing strategies, such as flyering, spending up to $1,000/customer in acquisition costs. Workers use Up&Go technology to reduce risk. Credit card processing, for example, enables workers to enforce fees. Workers are innovating their service model with subscription plans, allowing them to focus on repeat customers rather than investing resources in one-off jobs.

• Double the number of worker-owners participating in the platform, from 25 to 50 in NYC

• Convert 50% of customers to recurring appointments monthly or more,  supported by development of: subscription tools, referral engine, and improved worker-facing tools to streamline scheduling.

• Develop geographic expansion plan for 2-3 U.S. cities over 3-5 years

• Study options for use/sharing of IP to serve workers in other industries/geographies, while maintaining asset value

• Develop worker leadership in Up&Go management and governance bodies. Offer workers trainings/TA in marketing strategy, customer service, and new tech.

Up&Go will fulfill its mission to bring more quality jobs to more workers throughout NYC and nationally through its:

• Portable and adaptable product, supported by strong and scalable management and governance systems. The Up&Go web app was designed flexibly for worker-owners’ different scheduling and communication systems/needs;

• Customizable product that can have relevance to new markets in a variety of industries. Company bylaws enshrine the mission of expansion;   

• Prioritization of interoperability and component-based development, and opportunities to license/share software;  

• Lean marketing, leveraging unique brand positioning for referral traction, bolstered by new app features.

Up&Go serves enterprises in Staten Island and Brooklyn, New York. Next year, we will grow this portable product, supported by scalable management and governance systems, to serve additional worker-owned enterprises to meet growing customer demand in Manhattan and in Queens. Plans to expand beyond New York City are scheduled on a 2-3 year timeline, as approved by Up&Go’s Board of Directors. As a member of the Federation of Worker Cooperatives, CFL has shared Up&Go technology with worker-owned enterprises nationally, and has received inquiries from across the country about accessing the technology and joining the platform as co-owners.

Since beta launch in December 2016, 65 workers have received jobs through Up&Go. Currently, 25 worker-owners are participating as co-owners and workers. There are six representatives (workers) meeting 3-10 hours per month on Up&Go operations and governance. All workers receive business training and TA from CFL. Beyond Up&Go, CFL serves 200 worker-owners annually.

Up&Go workers are primarily immigrant women with limited literacy, who typically speak limited English and confront discrimination. Many worker-owners were previously unemployed or working “off the books” under exploitative and unsafe conditions

Up&Go ownership will increase to 50 worker-owners in 1 year and 150 worker-owners in 3 years. Workers will benefit from:

• Increased wages (average $21/hour).

• Increased literacy in cooperative governance and decision-making, technology (including Up&Go tools as well as basic computer skills), business strategy and impact tracking, marketing strategy, customer service, cleaning hard-skills, and workers’ rights, OSHA, and safe non-toxic cleaning techniques. We routinely offer and evaluate these trainings.

• Co-ownership of a recognized brand and valuable technology, with company valuation increasing by 50% within 3 years.

Up&Go’s management team includes:

-Sylvia Morse, Project Coordinator, CFL, who has been embedded in Up&Go’s user testing and tech development, worker cooperative engagement, marketing, and funder stewardship as full-time project manager since September 2016.

-Steven Lee, Managing Director of Economic Security, Robin Hood, who leverages his experience in tech startups, expertise in workforce development, and organizational resources as thought leader of Up&Go.

-Rylan Peery, CoLab Cooperative Member, who has led the tech development process and advised on marketing strategy.

-Julia Jean Francois, Co-Director of CFL, who brings ten years of experience overseeing cooperative development to Up&Go.

Up&Go’s current revenue model includes:

• 5% earnings on all sales (worker-owners voted to increase to 8% in 2019);

• Annual worker-owner membership fees; and

• Grant Funding.

Additional potential revenue streams include licensing, increased presence in commercial cleaning industry and mark-ups on cleaning products.

Projecting revenues from the 8% referral fee, Up&Go would be self-sustaining after roughly 23,000 jobs. Advantages to our approach include:

• Worker-owners are incentivized to sustain the company by keeping jobs on the platform, rather than use it for lead-generation.

• Social impact story and service quality give Up&Go traction for growth through customer referrals and loyalty.  

• Worker-owners are incentivized to recruit new members, thus increasing revenues from member fees, because: 1) worker-owners benefit from platform’s financial success and growth, and 2) training and governance structures support a social mission to expand the platform’s benefits to more workers.

Up&Go is poised to expand through:

• Vast worker networks to engage fellow low-income workers, supported by competitive wages and ownership opportunities,

• CFL’s social franchise initiative Coopportunity incubates worker cooperatives under a common brand with a business model inherently linked to Up&Go, creating a supply of enterprises for the platform.

CFL has deep expertise in worker-owned governance structures and engaging immigrant workers through popular education methodologies. Up&Go is CFL’s first tech venture. We access significant expertise through project partners CoLab and Robin Hood, and we seek to gain insights from others immersed in the tech field -- ensuring that we understand the latest trends in tech development and have connections to talent and resources.

Solve’s approach of forging partnerships in order to challenge the current bias in technological development and advance workers rights is highly aligned with Up&Go’s mission and collaborative approach to work.

An immediate barrier to success is our continued reliance on a human interface to manage worker schedules in the job assignment flow. We seek to partner with worker-owners to imagine and iterate on a worker-facing technology interface to support post-booking digital communication between workers and the platform itself. A further barrier is the challenge of collecting and analyzing customer generated data including customer ratings of service quality. We require a technology solution that captures and archives customer-worker communication, like that found on online marketplaces for home rentals such as airbnb.com, or for custom ecommerce like etsy.com.