A freelancer future?

by: Todd Nuckols

Recently I had the pleasure of meeting Charles Lattimer.  Who is Charles Lattimer you say?  Well, he is the founder of something called the Cooperatory.  (And I know that does not help either so let me just cut to the chase!)  In our conversation, Charles suggested that the future of business idea development was a loosely connected model of sole practitioners that shared capital, services and revenue.  This connection of freelance talent would be able to drive ideas forward without the associated hassle of building a business entity. 

Since one of my passions is startup culture which definitely needs to access all manner of talent from design to development in an efficient and low cost way the whole notion of essentially crowdsourcing the talent peaks my curiosity.  I certainly think that supplementing services outside your startup business entity is essential!  It helps control cost, interject innovative thinking and keeps focus sharp as details are tended to by outside experienced professionals.  But if the idea is to grow sustainably and challenge the market I think it needs to evolve to a dedicated structure of capital, resources and passionate people – a focused business – and not a mere collaboration.  But perhaps I am wrong?  Maybe absorbing full time talent is not the path to building a better business.  Perhaps, those in the startup world in particular should be thinking about how to collaborate first and own second? 

As far as I can tell many of the members of 804RVA are sole practitioners or related to smaller service firms.  So, I ask all of you. 

What is the future of business?

What is the best way to connect and harness talent for a growing business?  

Should startups jump into co-working spaces, as I have suggested to several   entrepreneurs, to find resources and personnel who can help them?  And how should they engage those professionals?

Do co-working environments need to evolve to provide even more organized connections to capital, projects and ideas or are the informal intersections best?  

Jump in.  I would love to know what you think.

---