Living Fair

Laborfair sister site in India, different worlds, same message

Today, I was thrilled to see a feature article appear in the Technology section of the New York Times about a former Microsoft employee and internet entrepreneur that is using the power of social networks to bring more jobs to India's masses making less than $3 a day. The title of the article is: "In India, Poverty inspires Technology Workers to Altruism." Check it out at:

Check it out here:

New York Times article about Babajob

He's beginning in Bangalore where there is an endless flood of expatriates with a need for local services and the money to purchase them. It's a great idea--one that I’m proud to say we had first in the US ;-) and have worked on for the better part of two years. I feel well-qualified to comment then on this subject.

The people Babajob aims to help are those service sector personnel, e.g. painters, cooks, childcare workers, handymen and chauffeurs (yes, you definitely do not want to drive yourself in India), who lack a viable social network and the ability to connect with potential employers. The company has identified low (if any) computer literacy and limited access to a computer as the primary roadblocks to that connection. Oddly enough, the problem in India and its growing economy, is the same one here: how to connect independent, qualified service providers with those looking to hire them in order to increase their opportunities and simultaneously redistribute a bit of wealth back into the economy. Laborfair tackles that head-on here in the US by making the hiring process for those same types of services far more efficient – resulting in cost savings for consumers, more consistent job opportunities, and a resulting higher wage for independent service providers.

In India, without social networks and the connections they foster, these service providers are relegated to a life of poverty. In America, there is less overall poverty, but our challenges are of a strikingly similar nature--access to living wage employment, health care, affordable childcare, etc. Laborfair and Babajob share the same ideological genetics. We both believe in using business to create social change, and in supporting the entrepreneurial drive of the world's people to have better paying and more consistent work opportunities. We're proud that Laborfair began by helping non-profit worker centers throughout the Bay Area find more employment opportunities for their in-need clients (and continues to do so).

But there are also differences in our approaches necessitated by the unique cultural differences. Where Babajob charges the employer to contact providers and pays intermediaries to interview computer illiterate workers and post their profiles on the web, Laborfair sells a highly efficient and affordable marketing and communication platform to the provider in order to keep the service free for the consumer. We believe that in order to help service providers build their businesses, they must make the barriers to entry as low as possible for potential employers. There is also much greater computer access in the US, meaning that we do not have to carry the overhead of intermediaries to interview and post worker profiles. And like Babajob, we’ve made it much easier than previously possible for consumers who need quality, trustworthy personal help to find it at a fair price. With Laborfair, you can forget the hassle and expense of contacting an overpriced housecleaning service or mining the yellow pages for service professionals without a review or ratings. Instead, there's a great independent local service provider waiting to do your job.

I find this article incredibly encouraging. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a giant corporation or a small startup approaching the issues of poverty alleviation and the growing income divide, whether they’re focused globally or domestically, or even if they treat it as a business opportunity or a philanthropic effort. The point is that there's room for everyone to be the catalyst for change. Your consumer choices and the conscious capitalism you display in your daily hiring decisions are the real and genuine power here. Businesses like Laborfair and Babajob demonstrate how innovative businesses concepts, both in the US and abroad, can create social change --the main ideology behind our mission here at Laborfair.com. Kudos to them. Perhaps there's a partnership in the making.

Ah, the Life of an Entrepreneur

Do you want to give up your nice day job, your guaranteed salary, any free time with your partner or close friends, and devote any and all waking hours to your novel business idea for an indefinite amount of time? If the answer is an unequivocal “yes” –become an internet entrepreneur. You’ll do fine! While my partner, also an internet entrepreneur, adores the frequent vicissitudes and gyrations of startup life – an experience I equate with a log flume ride at an aquatic park with your mouth open--I hang on with clenched teeth and nails dug hard to the side of the boat. Just last week, I cracked a tooth from clenching my teeth repeatedly in my sleep for the past year. I’m serious. I haven’t had a dream that didn’t involve Laborfair.com in over two years. Intellectually, I was ready to be an entrepreneur. Emotionally, phewee! You take a serious beating. As he likes to say and says often, “Fear is a great motivator.” Without Sunday morning meditation at the Zen Center, weekly yoga classes, and my infrequent walks on Muir Beach with the dogs, I’d be a goner.

Starting a business that delivers on social mission and profitability is not for the faint of heart. You have to make tough choices. You need a combination of blinding innocence and a stalwart, unfailing belief in yourself and your business to pull through. Honestly, the hardest part has been growing the business, not starting it. By nature, I'm a human rights advocate and overall multi-faceted kind of gal- so business analysis--it's a steep learning curve for me. Have you ever had to do everything and learn everything simultaneously? I’ve learned not to “make perfect the enemy of the good” as Jim likes to say. Working alone, finding solutions for problems together with the team, raising awareness, being passionate about using business to create social change—I am all about that. But holy heck, put me in front of pie chart analysis, cost margins, average revenue per user, spreadsheets, cost per click, html code, non-disclosure agreements, seo, sem, linux vs. linus--Is that the Peanuts character? Well, you get the picture. I wish I had a twin sister with the MBA. I’d never talk to her but I'd sure like to know her. Like a lot of people, I learn best under pressure, so it's been going well. I'll check in later when I get a spare second to think about this again.