9 Ways To Disrupt And "Hipmunk" An Industry
Source:   OnStartUps Blog Post by Jason L. Baptiste 

While reading  Jason Baptiste's  OnStartUps posts I was introduced to "Hipmunk" - the concept and the online business.    Below is a reprint of OnStartUps.  So what is "Hipmunk" and how can you "hipmunk"  your  industry?   

hipmunk [hip-muhnk]    1.  verb:  To bring sexiness and simplicity into an existing industry with a fresh approach that delights people.  Example:  The real estate mortgage industry really sucks.  Someone should hipmunk it.   2. noun:  Startup funded by Y Combinator that makes it easier to find flights. 

The word disruption is thrown around way too much.  It's often used to describe ideas that are not disruptive.  Recently though, I've noticed a trend of YCombinator backed startups that follow a similar theme:   Go after an industry or process that is excruciatingly painful and make it better. Sure all startups are about solving a pain point, but in the case of Hipmunk and others, the pain is chronic and unbearable.  

Find Something Tied To A Process That Consistently Sucks
Some things are just a pain and never ever change. The industries that can be hipmunked are ones that you repeatedly ask yourself "Why hasn't anyone made this better?" It can't be a temporary cure either, it needs to be a full blown relief of pain. In the case of HelloFax , it seemed like a silly idea at first to most. Fax machines are a thing of the past it would seem, but in reality they aren't. With all of the innovation we've had, trying to send a fax is still a pain. EFax is cumbersome and real fax machines are far worse. Every blue moon, there is no way to do anything other than send a fax. It's still horrible. With HelloFax, they took a process that consistently sucks and made it just work.

Simple And Clean Interfaces Come First
One of the best ways to make a product enjoyable and easy to use is with an interface that is simple+clean. Give the user what they want, the bare essentials, and make the information easy to digest. It's not about being the prettiest either.  I love the hipmunk interface, but it's not whiz bang beautiful. It's clean, simple, and organizes information well. The flow of information should come first and foremost in a clean interface. Problematic and painful industries usually have a high amount of friction between the customer and information. They usually want to access or deliver information in a fast manner, but it often takes way longer than they would like.

It Will Probably Be Unsexy...So Make It Sexy
The industries most ripe for disruption are usually the unsexy ones that no one wants to touch. That's okay, look at it like the startup version of the popular teen movie "She's All That". Find the ugly one and turn them into something absolutely beautiful. It's not in the DNA of unsexy industries to think about everything else in this article. That's why they're unsexy and people despise them. The travel industry? Absolutely boring. Look at email. Everyone thinks that email is long dead and gone, but at the end of the day it's still widely used. Companies like Groupon and Thrillist are growing faster than any other company before. They figured out how to leverage an unused, unsexy asset and make it work for the user.

Take a look at Square.  Payment processing is a sleezy, unsexy, and just headache of an industry.  Square took that and turned it on its head.  They added a beautiful interface and made it frictionless for real world merchants to have a payment processing engine without the headaches involved.  

Call Out Your Competitor
Don't be afraid to call out your competitor and wage war. You should be respectful of course, but it's okay to stir the pot. Look at Salesforce. They proclaimed the end of downloadable desktop software and Marc Benioff was no stranger to letting the world know the companies that are his enemy. His spat with Microsoft is supposedly one of the greatest things that ever happened to the company!

Deliver Great Support
Most unsexy industries don't have a love for customer support. It's not that they deliver bad customer support, it's just that they don't deliver GREAT customer support. Zappos for example... they sell shoes. Who would have ever thought that a shoe retailer could be an iconic company? Well, Zappos is really a company with great customer service that happens to sell shoes. If you have a passion for support that mirrors Zappos, you can extend the great experience you deliver with your application to the real human interaction you may have with customers.

Look For An Industry That Rarely Changes
I've always believed that those who get comfortable and think they are immune to disruption are the most likely to be disrupted. Having a large customer base makes large incumbents feel like they will never leave. In actual reality, they will, but they just need a great solution... your solution. Problems don't make people change. Problems make people search for a solution. Until a good solution exists, they stick with the current one. It's like a do while loop of seemingly neverending pain. Do deal with pain while looking for a better solution, until you find a better one.

Work Towards Building Fanatics
The hipmunk mascot is barely a year old I believe, but boy do people love that little critter. Some have even created fan art! In a short period of time, Hipmunk has created valuable brand equity and fanatical customers. Some companies never get to achieve that. If you're able to resolve pain, finding fanatical customers will happen a lot faster.

Be Disruptive, But Respectful
It's fun to shake things up, call out your competitors, and make a lot of noise, but always be a gentleman or a classy lady. Have logic and let people see the rationale behind your argument. You should always have an answer that is more than "just because". Show those trapped in the Matrix why your solution is better and will free them from the pain that currently exists. Use a loud mouth and PR to get the world's eyes on you, but deliver sound logic. There is a thin line between being passionate and just being insane. Rationale is usually the difference.

Focus On Power Users
Not every solution should do this, but I noticed that it worked very very well for Hipmunk. A lot of the people that I know who are Hipmunk users, travel VERY often. Sometimes you just want to focus on the normal users, but you can get fanatical users and strong advocates by solving the pain for those that have it the most often. A person that travels multiple times a month with long flights is much more likely to want your solution when you first launch/unproven than a person that travels a few times a year, often for vacation+light work travel. Hipmunk, padmapper, hellofax, and others are just the start. The number of processes that are beyond painful run deep and present a world of opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs. What other industries are ready to be "hipmunked"? My vote: the domain purchasing industry. Someone should "hipmunk" Godaddy :).

 

Source:  Feb 1, 2011 BloombergBusiness Week  Special Report
Meet the MicroWorkforce

The remote resourcing of  workers goes by many names:  outsourcing, off-shoring, crowdsourcing, the human cloud, microwork.    Outsourcing your workforce tasks and activities saves money and time.  But the real news story is that the micro workforce business is big and growing  over 8%  per year.  
 
The Bloomberg micro  workforce article reviews the process of "using the Internet to find workers around the world for short-term projects that can pay a few bucks to hundreds of dollars per hour.  The tasks might require a few minutes or a few days to complete.  Benefits to companies include finding large numbers of workers to complete projects quickly, finding niche expertise, saving money, and making better use of in-house resources. It also lets Western workers, in places with a high cost of living, compete directly with those in developing markets. For many freelancers, microwork gives them unprecedented flexibility to work almost anywhere at any time."

The Special Report includes  an interesting case study of how Pfizer structured an out-sourcing function for busy professionals, called  PfizerWorks  -  an on-demand support program to farm out  non-core tasks, such as data checking and  market research to out-sourcing companies.     

"Pfizer now lets [employees]  punt those tedious and time-consuming tasks to India with the click of a button.   PfizerWorks, launched early last year, permits some 4,000 employees to pass off parts of their job to outsiders. You might call it personal outsourcing.  With workers in India handling everything from basic market research projects to presentations,  professionals  can focus on higher-value work. "

Now that's awesome.  As a project management professional, I know that the key to high-level productivity is to delegate and schedule well defined tasks so that the PM can complete  targeted milestones quickly and efficiently.   What a great business model.  Many of these sites specialize in sourcing highly technical subject mater experts, testers, consultants, and thought leaders to assist and support your company's need to ramp up and down in a project as required by the life cycle of a project or product.

I read  Tim Ferris's account of out-sourcing in his book  The 4-Hour Workweek.  Tim introduces solo-entrepreneurs to the wisdom of hiring virtual assistants to save  time and and reduce your overall project or product costs.   He describes transactions with small, yet reliable micro worker companies, such Brickwork India and Your  Man In India.   He out-sourced assignments  such as email management, website design and programming, analysis report and slide presentation preparation, website management.  It's a great book for start-ups  and solo entrepreneurs in an expansion phase.

The Bloomberg magazine's coverage of the micro workforce  serves as a guide for CEOs  and freelancer professionals to meet and network online.  The  Micro WorkForce slide show webpage provides a great overview of  active and reliable  support services.    You too can source talent for your business intelligence and operational needs -  accounting, video production, business plan preparation, programming, data management, data analysis, copy writing, media design, meeting transcription, manuscript editing, and more.

Below is a summary of 17  crowdsourcing websites, including 12 websites from the Bloomberg micro workforce article.  

10EQS
www.10eqs.com
This virtual consulting firm started by a former McKinsey executive uses crowdsourced experts to create research reports for clients in banking, media, telecom, and other industries. For example, one project looked at the price elasticity of a key raw material in petrochemical products. The client paid $10,000 for a report that took two weeks. The team that delivered that report was an engagement manager with 25 years of experience in the chemical industry, along with 11 other experts.

99designs
www.99designs.com
Need a design for a logo or Web page or something else? The site 99designs is a community of more than 91,000 designers. Small businesses start a contest on 99designs, giving designers a clear outline of what they need. Designers submit work, and clients choose and pay for their favorite design. In December, 99designs paid designers $596,829. A single logo sells for $300 to $500.

Amazon Mechanical Turk
www.mturk.com
This service from Amazon (AMZN) helps businesses complete tasks online that once would have required hiring many temporary workers. Companies can hire hundreds or even thousands of workers at once on Mechanical Turk, meaning projects can often be completed in days rather than weeks. Tasks might involve identifying objects in a photo or video, transcribing audio recordings, or even translation work. Many tasks pay less than 10¢ and can be completed fairly quickly.

CloudCrowd
www.cloudcrowd.com
Workers can find a wide variety of tasks at this site, including translation, online researching, data, and writing and editing. Pay rates vary from 1¢ to $14.95 per task. Workers at this site are given Credibility scores, which CloudCrowd uses to rate the likelihood that a particular person will do quality work in the future.

Elance
www.elance.com
In 2010, no fewer than 377,184 jobs were posted on this site. More than half the money made by workers on Elance in the third quarter of 2010 was in technology. Skills that are in high demand on the site include search-engine marketing, iPhone development, Google App Engine, HTML5, and affiliate marketing.

Freelancer.com
www.freelancer.com
This site mainly connects small business clients with labor in developing countries. Jobs include everything from creating websites to writing articles. The average job is about $200.  About 2.1 million professionals are registered on this site.

Gerson Lehreman Group
www.glgroup.com 
Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG) is the global marketplace for expertise.  Since 1998, its technology-enabled platform for collaboration and consultation has helped the world's leading institutions find, engage, and manage experts across a broad range of industries and disciplines. GLG manages networks of over 275,00o Subject Matter Experts - consultants, physicians, scientists, engineers, attorneys, market researchers, and other professionals from around the world. 

Leapforce At Home 
www.leapforceathome.com
Leapforce At Home Independent Agents conduct in depth internet-based research and provide information evaluation for leading companies from around the globe. Ideal candidates are self-reliant, self-motivated, are very internet savvy, have a broad range of interests and enjoy online research and evaluation. Independent agents receive competitive pay as independent contractors. 

LiveOps
www.liveops.com
More than 20,000 independent agents work from home to staff LiveOps’ virtual call center. These workers can log on to take calls whenever they’d like, in blocks of 30 minutes. Rates for services can vary from 25¢ per minute of talk time to a base rate pay with a bonus for commission.

Maven
www.mavenresearch.com
This microconsulting business is a large online network of professionals from all walks of life, such as physicians, electricians, and race car drivers. These folks set their own rates, usually $250 to $500 per hour. Investors, lawyers, and others arrange short telephone calls with a specific expert when they need a question answered.

MavenLink
www.mavenlink.com
"Ray Grainger, a former partner at Accenture (ACN), says freelancers who specialize in niche skills are able to find higher-paying work in the U.S. He created Mavenlink, an online workspace for independent workers so they can easily collaborate with others, keep track of multiple projects, and network with other high-level professionals."

MicroWorkers
www.microworkers.comMicroworkers is an innovative, International online platform that connects Employers and Workers from around the world. Our unique approach guarantee Employers that a task paid is a task successfully done, while at the same time guaranteeing Workers that a job completed is a job paid. Just as its name suggest, the tasks assigned to Workers and paid for by Employers are simple and quick, mostly completed in a few minutes, thus, are called “micro jobs”. These tasks include simple sign-ups, social bookmarking tasks, forum participation, website visits, rating videos or articles, voting up contest entries, adding comments, suggesting leads, creating backlinks, writing reviews or articles, downloading applications and so much more.

oDesk
www.odesk.com
Hundreds of thousands of professionals, including Web developers, software programmers, graphic designers, writers, customer service reps, and virtual assistants, offer services on oDesk. Each month, companies post about $65 million worth of jobs on the site, and the average job size is about $4,000, with an hourly rate of $8.64. I've used their services during 2010 with great results.

Tongal
www.tongal.com
Ever dreamed of working for an ad agency? At Tongal, anyone can come up with ideas, shoot commercials, or create graphic designs. Such companies as Mattel (MAT), Allstate (ALL) insurance, and Benjamin Moore paints hire Tongal to create online videos. Typical projects range from $15,000 to $20,000. The process works much like a contest, except the money is divided among the top-ranking contributors to each project.

Trada
www.trada.com
Companies that need to create more effective paid-search campaigns on Google, Yahoo!, and Bing turn to this site. In the pay-per-click model, advertisers set a fixed price they’re willing to pay for all clicks in a campaign. If the advertiser is willing to pay 80¢ for a click, and an expert can generate a click for 60¢, the expert gets to keep the 20¢ for each click generated on that keyword. To become an expert, workers need to pass an entrance exam that tests their knowledge of paid search.

uTest
www.utest.com
Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG), Intuit (INTU), and Groupon are just a few of the companies that have turned to this software testing service for help finding bugs. More than 20,000 testers in 160 countries sign on to work whenever they want, day or night. The company says top testers can make thousands of dollars per month.

Zintro
www.zintro.com
This site is designed for investors, consultants, analysts, entrepreneurs, lawyers, researchers, operating managers, recruiters.   Zintro connects Clients (expert-seekers) with Subject-Matter Experts for consulting engagements (ranging from one half hour phone consults to multi-month on-site engagements).  I've been a member of Zintro since 2010. It is a very active inquiry generation website. The consulting fees  range from $150-$300/hour.

Source:   BloombergBusinessweek Special Report
Off-shoring your workforce is the resourcing paradigm for tough times . The Feb 2011 Special Bloomberg Businessweek Report on the Micro Workforce   describes the impact off-shoring has had on  U.S. jobs:

 "While the first wave of IT offshore outsourcing happened in the late 1990s during preparations for Y2K, it really took hold after the dot-com meltdown a few years later. There aren't any statistics yet as to how much micro-outsourcing might impact the U.S. job market but there's growing evidence that the movement of work to India and other developing countries is contributing to the jobless recovery in the U.S."
"About 1.1 million jobs in IT, finance, and other areas have disappeared since 2008 because of offshoring, improvements in productivity, and a lack of economic growth, according to a December 2010 report by the Hackett Group (HCKT), which provides business-consulting and technology-implementation services.  An additional 1.3 million jobs are expected to disappear by 2014, with offshoring becoming a bigger factor, the report says."

That's  an incredible shift in the direction of the U.S.  labor - decline not expansion in domestic job opportunities.   Undeniably outsourcing your workforce saves money and even time.    Read the complete  BloombergBusinessweek Special Report of 
CEO Guide to the Micro WorkForce.