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What are the major trends that have shaped the gig work marketplaces and how have they impacted the industry?

Ved Sinha

Former VP Product at Upwork

As new technologies come out, these things completely change. I can talk about two big things, one, this is obvious, the rise of mobile completely created new categories of work. Because the level of coordination you get through the mobile device just wasn't possible before that. Obviously, I'm talking about Uber and DoorDash and those kinds of marketplaces, so that's a whole new category that could not have been possible without mobile. Mobile is unlocking a whole new supply and new services.

Another, which is more emerging is AI, or even like the no-code kind of tools. This is where the work to be done, instead of just hiring someone to do it, the service provider is injecting a lot of AI, and/or automation to do much of the work. Then there's just a thin layer of human labor that's ultimately delivering the work product to the end customer. You might put something like a Pilot.com, which is an accounting service or Smith.ai for customer service. Again, they're using AI, they're using automation, but then they put a thin layer of human service on top. You can see how, along these dimensions, more and more categories of labor  can inject AI to change the way the work gets done and delivered and the new kind of work-marketplaces you would want to create.

Find this answer in Ved Sinha, Former VP of Product at Upwork, on gig marketplaces
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