Case Studies - Crowds

ExOs are uniquely adept at aggregating and tapping into Crowds. The epitome of leveraging the crowd, of course, is the XPRIZE Foundation. Here are some others:

• GoFundMe. This Silicon Valley–based, for-profit crowdfunding platform helps people raise money to cover the costs of life events that can range from injuries and accidents (often subjects of major media attention) to weddings and personal debt. Between 2010 and 2020, GoFundMe raised nearly $10 billion from more than 120 million donors. Strictly speaking, GoFundMe is a Crowd play, with only a minority of regular donors and just 500 employees.

• TaskRabbit. Founded in 2006, TaskRabbit is a mainstay of the gig economy. This mobile online marketplace connects consumers with 60,000 freelancers (“taskers”) to tackle basic, everyday tasks, such as handyman work, moving, and product assembly. In 2017, TaskRabbit was purchased by furniture giant IKEA, although it still operates independently.

• TikTok. Founded in 2018 in China (where it is known as Douyin), TikTok allows users to create and post short videos. By 2020, the company had achieved 2 billion downloads and was rated the world’s third-fastest-growing brand. By 2021, it was rated the most popular website in the world. Given the autonomous nature of its postings, TikTok is essentially a giant, Crowd-based company with almost no organized Community. It’s been so successful that lawmakers are alarmed at the addiction it creates in users and are considering banning the application altogether.

• Kiva is the world’s first online lending platform, connecting online lenders to entrepreneurs across the globe. Kiva’s MTP is “to expand financial access to help underserved communities thrive.”

• Wikipedia. The Crowd populates, but the Community validates. The world’s encyclopedia, Wikipedia, averages more than 18 billion page views per month, making it one of the most visited websites in the world. The site adds more than 20,000 new articles each month and has 27 million registered users. It contains many times the content of the traditional encyclopedia, can be accessed at light speed, links from one topic to another, and it is updated every second of every day. Best of all, it is free.