Uber
The Uber creation story has several versions. According to the Uber website, “on a snowy Paris evening in 2008, Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp had trouble hailing a cab. So they came up with a simple idea—tap a button, get a ride.”75
True to its high-end roots, the first iteration—UberCab—was a black car service that allowed a user to call a car by pressing a button on a smartphone or sending a text. The price hovered around 1.5 times as much as a typical San Francisco cab.76 The service ran into regulatory issues almost from the start. After an October 2010 cease-and-desist letter from the San Francisco Metro Transit Authority and the Public Utilities Commission of California claiming they were operating an unlicensed taxi service, UberCab removed the word cab from its logo and started to operate under the brand name Uber. On its Facebook page, the company commented that it was “more uber than cab.”77
When Uber began in New York, it also billed itself as an app-driven dispatch service catering to people who were willing to pay more. Early articles describing Uber’s entry into New York included one by CEO Travis Kalanick explaining that Uber’s cost was about 1.75 times as much as a taxi, and that the appeal would lie primarily in the app’s “efficiency and [the] elegance of the experience.”78
In 2012, Uber announced a cheaper version—only 10 to 25 percent more than a cab—that used hybrid cars.79 Later that year, Uber announced a taxi partnership that allowed cabs to use its smartphone app to find potential customers. Within days of the announcement, the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission reminded drivers that taxis were limited to street hails, and that drivers were not supposed to be using cell phones while driving.
Not to be thwarted in its efforts to gain market share, Uber increased its efforts to recruit drivers of cabs and car services. In addition to offering recruitment bonuses, Uber began advertising for drivers on the rear of Metropolitan Transit Authority buses—the better to reach people sitting in traffic. The ads guaranteed drivers anywhere from five thousand dollars a month to thirty-five thousand dollars in six months. Other ads promised workers the opportunity to be their own bosses, drive without limits, and escape dispatcher favoritism (see fig. 7). Lyft, Gett, and Via soon followed with their own ad campaigns.
Figure 7. Uber advertisement on the back of a Metropolitan Transit Authority bus in New York City. Photo by author.
The advertisements were successful—nearly two thousand for-hire vehicle licenses were issued each month during the 2015 fiscal year (July 1–June 30), a 63 percent growth in the for-hire fleet after Uber entered the New York City market in 2011.80 By March 2015, the New York Post, citing numbers from the Taxi and Limousine Commission, reported that Uber alone had more than 14,088 black and luxury car affiliates operating in the five boroughs, compared to 13,587 medallion cabs.81 Uber’s own projections estimated that the service would add another ten thousand drivers in the next year. By January 2017, the New York Times reported that 46,000 vehicles in New York City were connected to Uber, out of 60,000 black cars, and that Uber vehicles outnumbered the 13,587 yellow cabs by almost four to one.82
In the summer of 2015, concerned about the unchecked growth of Uber and other for-hire car services, City Council Transportation Committee chairman Ydanis Rodriguez of Manhattan and Brooklyn councilman Stephen Levin proposed legislation that would limit the number of for-hire licenses issued while the city studied congestion.
As UCLA sociologist Edward Walker explained in a New York Times opinion essay, Uber quickly went on the offensive, mobilizing its customers into a “populist social-media assault, all in support of a $50-billion corporation. The company added a ‘de Blasio’s Uber’ feature so that every time New Yorkers logged on to order a car, they were reminded of the mayor’s threat (‘NO CARS—SEE WHY’) and were sent directly to a petition opposing the new rules. Users were also offered free Uber rides to a June 30 rally at City Hall (see fig. 8). Eventually, the mayor and the City Council received 17,000 emails in opposition.”83
Figure 8. Protest organized by Uber in response to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s proposed limits on the number of for-hire vehicles. Photo by author.
In addition to the social media campaign, as part of its entrepreneurial ethos, Uber launched a series of television ads highlighting the company as a “champion of racial equality and an indispensible tool for economic mobility in the working class.”84 Meanwhile the mayor, who accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from yellow-taxicab interests during his 2013 campaign, was accused of being in the pocket of “Big Taxi.”
The mayor’s proposed limits on Uber and other car companies were quickly tabled in favor of a four-month study on the effect of Uber and other for-hire vehicle operators on New York’s traffic. The agreement required Uber to release a trove of data the city had been seeking for its analysis. The city’s analysis was released in January 2016, six weeks later than expected, and although it noted that for-hire vehicles contribute to congestion, the report did not recommend a cap on for-hire vehicles.
In much the same way that Airbnb divides its website into distinct sections for potential workers and potential consumers, Uber’s main website, uber.com, is marketed to separate groups. The section for clients features a large banner noting, “Your Ride, on Demand: Transportation in Minutes with the Uber App” (see fig. 9). The careers section of the website lists only corporate jobs, such as those for account executives and account managers. Clicking the “Become a Driver” button brings the visitor to a new website: https://partners.uber.com/drive/.
Figure 9. Uber’s client-focused webpage. Screenshot by author.
Whereas the main Uber site focuses on convenience (one tap to ride, reliable pickups, cashless payments), the driver-partner site is all about the service’s income possibilities and entrepreneurial ethos. Drivers are told that “Uber needs partners like you,” and that they can “be your own boss” (see fig. 10). Other sections of the website note that the “app lets you earn money with the tap of a button” and “get paid automatically.” And once a driver is approved, he or she is “ready to start earning money.” Uber’s billboard advertisements to drivers focus on the entrepreneurial ethos by emphasizing monthly or weekly income guarantees for new drivers; noting that driving for Uber means “no shifts, no bosses, no limits”; and advising potential drivers seeking a bright future to “consider us the headlights.”
Figure 10. The bottom text reads, “Drive with Uber and earn great money as an independent contractor. Get paid weekly just for helping our community of riders get rides around town. Be your own boss and get paid in fares for driving on your own schedule.” Screenshot by author.
Approximately half of the Uber drivers I interviewed were immigrants. An equal number of drivers identified as white (21 percent) and black (21 percent), while 14 percent described themselves as Hispanic and one driver was racially mixed.85 In the same way that a high percentage of cab drivers in New York are male (estimates range from 90 to 97 percent), all Uber and Lyft participants were male. Their ages ranged from twenty-two to fifty-nine, with 60 percent falling between twenty and thirty-nine years of age; the average age was thirty-six. Of those who answered education questions, 50 percent had at least a bachelor’s degree. Two participants listed their educational level as “some college,” one individual was currently enrolled in a local college, one had an associate’s degree, and one had a GED. Four of the participants described their incomes as between $50,000 and $74,999, and three described their incomes as less than $25,000 per year, with one respondent making between $75,000 and $99,999 and one making within a range of $25,000 to $34,999 a year.
TaskRabbit
In the origin myth of TaskRabbit, founder Leah Busque developed the idea when she and her husband realized they were out of dog food for their one-hundred-pound yellow lab. Busque was certain one of her neighbors must be at Safeway, a grocery store chain, picking up food for their own dog. Wouldn’t it be great if she could get in touch and ask them to pick up food for
her dog too? The ethos of friendly neighborhood help continues today. The TaskRabbit website describes itself as “an old school concept—neighbors helping neighbors—reimagined for today.” The company allows people “to live smarter by connecting you with safe and reliable help in your neighborhood,” and it does so by outsourcing “your household errands and skilled tasks to trusted people in your community.”
TaskRabbit started as a bid-focused marketplace, almost an eBay for personal-assistant work. Clients could post tasks, and “rabbits” (as they were then called) bid on the work, giving short marketing spiels about why they were the best worker for the task. The marketplace model allowed for a wide variety of tasks, including creative projects such as making a short video or taking a headshot, in addition to cleaning, errand-running, and handyman work.
In July 2014, TaskRabbit retooled its business model, shifting from an open-bidding market to more of a temp agency format. Instead of bidding, workers provided their availability in four-hour chunks of time and were shown, via an algorithm, to prospective employers. Potential employers chose a job category (cleaning, delivery, Ikea assembly, etc.), clicked a time window, provided a job description, and picked from an algorithm-selected listing of up to fifteen potential workers. Taskers were then required to respond in thirty minutes or less, regardless of time, or lose the task, at which time it was up for grabs by other Taskers. The categories for creative tasks were also phased out at this point.
Workers who didn’t respond within the thirty-minute time limit often enough found their profiles were temporarily deactivated. In addition to the problem of being on call at all hours, the new system meant that Taskers didn’t get to choose which specific job they were interested in—they just received notifications that they were needed in a preset category. The sense of freedom and of being one’s own boss quickly dissipated. “‘Anyone left working for TR is an indentured servant,’ wrote one commentator on a popular TaskRabbit Facebook group. . . . ‘You are not growing your own business, you are growing TR as a business.’”86
In the summer of 2015, TaskRabbit increased its service fees from 20 percent to 30 percent, tacked on an additional 5 percent trust-and-safety fee to be paid by the consumer, and offered a fee reduction to 15 percent for any repeat business from the same client. A task that had previously cost the client $100 and netted the worker $80 now cost the client $105, and the Tasker received $70, before accounting for taxes and expenses. Even as many TaskRabbits watched their incomes drop, they were told that the change was intended to “incentivize entrepreneurship” so that workers would obtain repeat clients. In 2017, TaskRabbit changed the trust-and-safety fee to a trust-and-support fee and increased it from 5 percent to 7.5 percent. The change meant that for every $107.50 spent by a customer, TaskRabbit received $37.50 and the worker earned $70.
The TaskRabbit listing on Peers.com, a now defunct nonprofit created to support the sharing economy, further highlighted the company’s entrepreneurial ethos. Before the Peers.com website content disappeared, the site noted that, “as a Tasker, you can use your skills and free time to become a microentrepreneur and build your business.” The TaskRabbit Tasker resource site even included a link to print-quality logos so that workers could “create your own marketing materials to promote your business on TaskRabbit,” along with the suggestion that Taskers “build their business” by customizing their TaskRabbit URL.
However, research suggests that there were limits to the type of small business formation supported by TaskRabbit. Juliet Schor’s graduate students at Boston College found that Taskers had generally positive views of the service before the first pivot, and several respondents were using it as an entrepreneurial opportunity. As noted in a Work in Progress blog post, “One TaskRabbit with good linguistic skills started a small translation business, and outsourced jobs to digital workers on other platforms. Another who specializes in virtual assistant work was also outsourcing tasks from the platform.”87 Later follow-up interviews found that the pivot—partnered with a TaskRabbit crackdown on such outsourcing—led to an end to those fledgling companies.
My interviews with TaskRabbits occurred between March and November 2015. Roughly half of my respondents had been active on the platform before the first pivot (from bidding marketplace to temp agency) and all of my participants were active during the service fee change.
Study participants were generally diverse, with 48 percent identifying as white; 24 percent describing themselves as black, 14 percent as Hispanic, and 10 percent as Asian. The remainder identified as multiracial. Sixty-four percent of participants were male, and 36 percent were female. Their ages ranged from twenty-one to sixty, with 66 percent falling between twenty and thirty-five years of age.
In 2013, the TaskRabbit company reported that 70 percent of its marketplace workers held a bachelor’s degree, 20 percent had a master’s degree, and 5 percent had a PhD.88 The education levels of my respondents, too, were high. Forty-one percent of respondents listed their educational level as including a bachelor’s degree, and 29 percent were currently college students. Eighteen percent of the sample had a graduate degree, and one person had a PhD. The majority of my sample described their household incomes as below $50,000 (68 percent), while 18 percent reported incomes between $50,000 and $74,999. One participant had a household income of $75,000 to $99,000, and two participants declined to provide income numbers.
Kitchensurfing
Kitchensurfing was started in 2012 as a way to hire professional chefs for home dinner parties. Like TaskRabbit, the platform was originally a marketplace; the service vetted chefs by having them cook a sample meal within the company’s test kitchen. Approved chefs were then given the opportunity to post a profile and sample menus (ranging from an intimate dinner to a cocktail party for fifty) and related food images. In addition to providing marketing and advertising, Kitchensurfing processed client payments, serving as an escrow service for chef and client and taking a 10 percent finder’s fee.
In 2015, the service pivoted, and while the chef-driven platform remained active, the company launched, and began extensive marketing of, its Kitchensurfing Tonight, an on-demand alternative to eating out or ordering takeout. Kitchensurfing Tonight was launched in select neighborhoods in Manhattan and, eventually, in parts of Park Slope, Brooklyn. Clients picked one of three meal options (which changed daily), and a chef would arrive at a preset hour with all of the ingredients and tools necessary to cook and serve the meal. The cost, which started at twenty-five dollars a head, included labor, ingredients, transportation, tip, tax, cleanup, and even disposable plates.89 The portions were generous, featured a main dish and side, and often also included a salad and small after-dinner treat. The entire process—from the time the chef arrived to when she or he left—usually took about thirty minutes. Workers were paid sixty dollars for a four-hour shift, even if the shift ended early, and those who worked at least four shifts a week were also given a weekly MetroCard, worth thirty-one dollars.
The increased focus on the on-demand chef service occurred soon after the company’s cofounder and CEO, Chris Muscarella, stepped aside and Zynga senior vice president Jon Tien took the reins. The strategy change allowed for one-click bookings—as opposed to emailed negotiations with chefs—and lower-cost meals, and resulted in increased rebooking rates.90 Eventually, the platform discontinued the marketplace feature and focused entirely on Kitchensurfing Tonight.
The company’s entrepreneurial ethos was highlighted from the start. Cofounder and former CEO Chris Muscarella developed the idea for Kitchensurfing after helping a friend open the Brooklyn Italian eatery Rucola in 2010. Although Muscarella met a number of gifted chefs, he realized that many chefs would never open their own restaurants, because of the prohibitive costs. An article in Mashable quoted him as saying, “Restaurants are great, . . . but they are bad businesses.”91
Perhaps because of this founding focus on small-business possibilities, Kitchensurfing’s focus on the entrepreneurial et
hos was especially high, an emphasis I describe as “entrepreneurialism plus.”92 The main Kitchensurfing website was geared to clients. Just like with Uber, information on available Kitchensurfing jobs was limited to opportunities to work on the back end, such as jobs for product designers and data analysts. But the chef recruitment page, available through a Google search, provided chef testimonials that were quick to promote the idea of Kitchensurfing entrepreneurship as taking the hassle out of small business ownership. “Kitchensurfing is the perfect tool for me to mimic a restaurant experience in completely different surroundings without all of the chaos and uncertainty that inevitably comes with running a NYC kitchen,” said Anthony Sasso, chef de cuisine at Casa Mono (emphasis added). And chef Warren Schierenbeck stated, “Kitchensurfing is a gift from the food gods. It takes all the boring aspects but necessary evils of the food world, such as PR, advertising and collection of money out of your hands. It lets you do what you do best: cook!” (emphasis added).
In case the chef testimonials weren’t clear enough, the copy below the revolving quotes further reiterated that Kitchensurfing would allow you to “grow your business” with a “100% free web presence.” After pivoting to a nightly prix fixe, on-demand chef service, the company continued to focus on the possibilities for future entrepreneurship. Its ads for part-time-employee chefs noted that the job provided the opportunity to develop “private chef skills,” and that it was an “alternative to the traditional restaurant career.”
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