DP #25: HQ - a decentralized design and innovation platform

[AlexDistill]

Purpose

HQ is a decentralized design and innovation platform on a mission to dramatically improve how freelancers work and how entrepreneurs build businesses.

The consulting industry, like most professional services, is being attacked by rent-seeking centralized networks. Companies like Upwork, Toptal and Gigsy threaten the IDEOs and the McKinseys of the world. But those freelance marketplaces derive their value primarily from the network effects generated by their members.

As a decentralized network owned by its members, HQ can compete with consulting companies and freelance marketplaces using content, courses and workshops that freelancers are already making.

HQ for Entrepreneurs

• HQ.design features high quality content about design and how the design process can be applied to creating businesses, products and services.

• HQ offers courses and workshops on how to using the design process to create businesses, products and services.

• HQ provides free account management services to help entrepreneurs develop a creative brief for their project and get connected with the right talent.

HQ for Designers, Developers and Creatives:
HQ helps freelancers run their career like a business, not a job.

• HQ members use our platform to sell workshops, courses, and consulting services.

• HQ enables members to create ad-hoc teams that can be spun up for one project and then dissolved when the last .01 ETH is distributed.

• Members have a public reputation fingerprint that is a product of their activity on the network.

• Each member brings their own audience to the network and with that audience a stream of potential job leads. Members can pay/stake tokens to get more job leads or can give their job leads to the network to earn fees.

• A reputation system ensures members maintain a level of quality in their work and can safely refer work to other members.

HQ was inspired by successful creatives cooperatives like Pentagram and Stocksy, modern web platforms like Dribbble, Upwork and Medium, and innovations around decentralized applications.

Description:

HQ helps freelance designers and makers attract an audience to their work and build systems and processes to sell their services. For entrepreneurs, we provide access to a trusted network of designers and creators and an easy way to grow design capacity and build new value for your company.

When you're a freelancer you run your own business, which is amazing and liberating. You also run your own business, which is quite a bit of work. Many freelancers, overwhelmed by the sales and marketing part of their job, fail to do it or they outsource the job to an agency or platform. At best this costs X% of their total earnings. At worst they end up working like full time employees but without benefits or job security.

On the other side of this market, entrepreneurs looking to buy design services find most agencies charge 4x the hourly rate one would pay a freelancer, simply to cover overhead. But those higher fees don't always equate to more effective outcomes.

Competitive Landscape

There are many successful professional services companies like WPP, Omnicom, Kyu Collective, Pentagram, Teague, AKQA, Goodby Silverstein Partners, McKinsey, Bain, Accenture and others. They attract talent and clients through their good reputations. People work at those places, are 'proven' as experts and then go off on their own to charge high prices as independent consultants.

Now platform companies are disrupting consulting companies. At the low-end of the market, companies like Upwork, Freelancer.com, Design Inc. and Crew are putting downward pressure on prices for consulting services. At the same time, platforms like LinkedIn, Medium, Behance and Dribble are making it easier to rapidly create a reputation and audience.

Independent Consultants are Underserved.

Despite the growth in platforms and freelance work, the cards are still stacked against independent creatives. Most have few options to solve their most basic business challenges. One could join a consulting company, go to a placement agency, or join one of the platforms, but each will take a large portion of your earnings in exchange for some kind of certainty or ease of use.

Decentralized networks offer an appealing alternative to those models.

About our team and the HQ project:

Our current team which we are actively looking to DIVERSIFY and GROW is...

Alex Ryan
Amadeo DeSouza
Tracy Deluca
Jasper Speicher
Kai Hsing

HQ was inspired a project that Amadeo and I built in 2014, Talkshop. That (now inactive) project taught us a lot about networks and how to sell creative services.

You can join us on the HQ community Slack here

We are working on a prototype of the app and will share here as soon as it is ready.

We look forward to your feedback and collaboration!

username on district0x Slack: alx

[AlexDistill]

I created 2 Lean Canvases to better describe the way the business is structured

This is the canvas for the Entrepreneur facing part of the platform

This is the canvas for the consultant facing side of the platform:

[joeyurgz]

This looks great! Looking forward to taking a deeper dive after things settle down following the fundraiser.

[AlexDistill]

We added some design comps of the marketing site we are working on, these should help explain the concept more clearly. More updates coming soon!

[tallneil]

Afaik, the industry leader in the freelancing space is And Co. They provide resources (ie contract templates, requests for payments) & content marketing (Hustle&Co). What they may be missing is a strong community & job opportunities.

Re: community & jobs, my mind goes to Spec.fm & Design Inc (though Design Inc is currently on hiatus... perhaps indefinitely). Design Inc had an interesting model for freelance proposals, but they weren't able to make it profitable. In addition to Upwork, which you mentioned, there's Fiverr, AngelList, and a bunch of other platforms for freelancers.

If I'm reading this correctly, what you're proposing is a one stop shop for freelancers, yes? Somewhere a freelancer can go for resources, job listings, community, and more. I'd be very interested. Lmk when a prototype or beta launches.

[AlexDistill]

@nshankar2014 thanks for your comments! I was definitely inspired by &co and the contract generator they made with the freelancers union.

Will let you know when we launch the prototype.

[AngeloAdam]

please send me a direct message on district slack regarding your proposal. @angelo

[Bradymck]

Hey @AlexDistill

I'm not sure if you're aware but we recently launched a new bounty to migrate your proposals to the actual District Registry: https://registry.district0x.io/

We're replacing the old voting app with the registry. Let me know if you need help but I would love to see you migrate this over so you can claim your DNT.

It does take a 10,000 DNT submit to submit your proposal but this gives you an extra 2000 you can stake in the registry beyond the deposit amount.

Hit me up on Telegram or Discord if you need help or have questions.

Telegram: https://t.me/district0x/75217
Discord: https://discord.gg/P9RQejv

PS, please excuse the canned response. I am encouraging everyone here to start migrating so they can claim their 12000 DNT.