Watch this trial. U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, who has been hearing the GrubHub case without a jury, heard closing arguments Monday. She will be the first federal jurist to determine whether a gig-economy driver deserves the protections of employees under California law. Uber lost a similar case in the U.K. and is now […]
Month: October 2017
On-demand starts to blend with new user interface technology. ParkWhiz adds a Amazon Alexa skill to find available parking. Capital One added chatbot service on Cortana today, as well. Bots are important to engagement. The ParkWhiz skill for Alexa offers a hands-free method to find a parking space near an address, calculate the walking time […]
Another logistics startup, this for the French shipping and delivery market. Note the asset-tracking features, allowing business and consumers to track packages as they are in transit. Think in terms of transparency in the supply chain, and this is clearly a standard feature of any national infrastructure. French startup Convargo is a marketplace for shippers […]
Uber adds grown-up counsel. While at Morrison & Foerster he helped with Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008. That led to a position in the justice department when Mr Obama won, eventually rising to become associate attorney-general, the third most senior position in the department. Source: Uber hires ex-DoJ and Pepsi lawyer as chief legal […]
This “case” was offered by an existing Uber investor, who is obviously hoping for a higher valuation than the reported $48 billion SoftBank is using to value the existing shares it will possibly buy. Given its regulatory issues, legal peril, and the distractions of Travis Kalanick’s power plays, Uber is not worth $95 billion. What […]
THe Harvard Business Review looks at on-demand work and the psychological strategy for building confidence when attention is distributed across multiple jobs. Focus on each job until you gain confidence, but then forge connections. Holding multiple jobs can be overwhelming, and cognitively depleting. Therefore, it is critical for multiple jobholders to learn to manage their […]
A credit care loyalty program is a solid basis for linking services, but it doesn’t ensure those services will be attractive to users. Uber announced Wednesday at Money2020 conference in Las Vegas that it’s partnering with Visa and Barclays to offer its own branded credit card, complete with a full-fledged rewards system. Source: Uber Credit […]
Didi Chuxing will enter Russia. “Sovereign fund has a lot of opportunities to invest in technology companies such as China’s car-hailing service provider Didi, which we have invested in. We expect Didi will land in the Russian market soon, ” Dmitriev said, according to a report by Sina citing Russian media Sputnik. Source: Chinese on-demand […]
Lexology suggests a form of non-compete for gig workers, a job-like agreement that must be combined with premium wage and benefits access to justify the limitation on the worker. Fortunately, the on-demand economy is reaching an inflection point at which better documented and improved working conditions are recognized as necessary by workers and platform companies. […]
Chris Langford, managing director of Lowe’s Ventures, hits the on-demand nail on the proverbial head. Life in an on-demand economy involves long-term trusted service relationships. He goes so far as predicting a rise in service-supported rentals, or “Housing-as-a-Service.” I suspect home ownership will continue and fragment into a leasehold-like model involving subscription services and, among […]