Gigz

Inspiration

From our interviews with small business owners, we listened and empathized with their stories about being forced to close their stores, lay off workers, and struggling to seek financing in order to survive. Notably, we interviewed a local non-profit that had no social media presence prior to COVID-19. When COVID-19 hit, the staff (who were of older age), faced a technology gap due to their lack of digital skills. Not only that, the organization had little excess cash to spend on marketing. Unfortunately, this was not an isolated case- a study conducted by software company SEM rush showed that 67.5% of small business owners cited “limited marketing budget”, 46.1% cited “competition with the big companies”, and 34% cited “not having time to learn digital marketing” as their greatest challenges when it comes to marketing in the digital world. Essentially, there was no way for these small business owners to get important announcements or information out to their customers or members. They had been abruptly cut off from society.

On the other hand, COVID-19 has increased the need for small businesses to amplify their digital presence due to the trends towards working from home, ecommerce, and the overall use of digital marketing tools. With the explosive growth in hobbyist/casual freelancing due to the widespread use of the internet and increased remote work, we wondered how we could connect the two to help small business owners adapt and thrive in face of future shocks.

What it does

Gigz is an application that helps small businesses with their marketing and promotion efforts by leveraging the design talent of hobbyist freelancers. It is a win-win solution - (1) Businesses post microgigs of their design tasks, such as logo design or Instagram graphics post. (2) Businesses select a freelancer to offer the microgig to. (3) The freelancer completes the microgig and earns gift cards or store credit.

For small business owners: Gigz is a low-cost way to offer your design and marketing tasks to those who can do it faster and better. In exchange, business owners would offer a gift card or voucher to their business.

For hobbyist freelancers: Gigz is a platform allowing casual freelancers - such as university students who have spare time - to take up interesting projects and be rewarded with gift-cards to the small businesses they love. Additionally, they can expand their design skills, and develop their design portfolio.

How we built it

We used Figma to build the prototype of the application, which allowed us to collaborate easily and effectively.

Challenges we ran into

Determining the best way to ensure small business owners receive the quality of work they need from freelancers.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Creating Gigz with the idea of helping small businesses at the centre of everything.

What's next for Gigz

We are excited to keep improving the interface of Gigz. Our next step is to implement and incorporate the premium features offered as part of our freemium subscription model. For business owners, there is weekly, monthly or lifetime service subscription available. The prices are: weekly $12.99, Monthly $22.99, Lifetime $139.99. Features include Ad blocking 1 weekly spotlight: Make the business profile the top profile for 12 hours. This increases the chances for a match with increased profile views. Backtrack swiping
5 weekly superswipes: if business wants to show strong interest in having one specific influencer take the job Access advanced filters

Freelancers: Monthly or annual service subscription available. Features include Ad blocking 1 weekly spotlight: elevates the freelancer’s profile to the top of the stack for 12 hours. 5 weekly superswipes: if freelancer wants to show strong interest in taking the gig Backtrack swiping

What is the potential for scalability? How costly would this solution be to bring to scale?

We plan to earn recurring revenue with a freemium model. We offer a subscription model for both business owners and freelancers. With 5-10% generally willing to pay for apps, Gigz is expected to become more profitable as the number of users grows.

Furthermore, as more small businesses join to take advantage of freelancer’s work, more freelancers would be attracted since there are more variety of tasks they can choose to complete. Gigz would benefit from strong network effects, where increased number of users improve the value of the service.

Since Gigz is an online platform, we also benefit from low fixed costs, meaning we can add significantly more customers without increasing costs proportionally.

How original is this solution? Does it set itself apart from other solutions through innovative or non-traditional methods? Does it demonstrate outside-the-box thinking?

Knowing that similar platforms such as Fiverr exist, one of our challenges was to make Gigz offer something unique. Therefore, the main points that makes Gigz unique: Business owners have control by designating the amount of payment they are willing to afford, rather than hiring a freelancer at their price. Profile matching: We utilize matching alrgothitm to best match influencers to businesses. We will improve this algorithm using machine learning. Payment options: Other platforms like Fiverr receive payment using credit cards, paypal, etc. Small business owners are constrained in how much cash they have. So, Gigz allows them to pay for freelancer’s work using gift cards, which improves cash flows. It also helps build brand awareness that keeps your business top of mind. No transaction fee: Other platforms like Fiverr withholds 20% of every transaction, but Gigz does not in an effort to truly support the small businesses.

Our solution is also non-traditional since we leverage the design talent of casual/hobbyist freelancers, such as university or high school students who are highly skilled in programs such as photoshop. However, they do not rely on Gigz for their livelihood, but instead as a fun way to earn gift cards to local businesses they want to support.

How impactful is this solution?

With digital presence being more important than ever before, Gigz helps small businesses with completing basic yet necessary tasks, such as logo design, menu design, photoshop work, etc. This is a low-cost solution that helps small businesses build their digital brand, re-connect with their customers, and reach new customers.

Hobbyist freelancers, such as students, also have a chance to support small businesses through this tough time, and are incentivized by the gift cards they would receive. Overall, Gigz would provide a platform that builds these mutually beneficial relationships.

Built With

• figma