“So… it’s free?”

Skilltapp’s mission is to increase access to human capital. We help people sharpen their skills and build sustainable wealth through human connection. Our new platform launches January 2016.

The other day, a Skilltapp user — I’ll call him Mark — freaked out when a web developer offered to improve his personal website in exchange for a Skilltapp service credit. Mark thought he did not have anything to give the web developer in return. He was shocked that it was possible to get something he valued on Skilltapp without having to dig into his wallet. I told him that each time a Skilltapp user does a favor for another user, he or she earns credit. That credit represents an opportunity to get a service from anyone else in the broader Skilltapp community. That service could be web development, legal advice, coaching or any of the other services offered on our platform.

As I explained this to Mark, he nodded thoughtfully. Then the room fell quiet.

He chuckled, “So. . . it’s free?”

Realizing that Mark needed to know where Skilltapp stood in the paradigm of FREE (volunteer work, favors from friends, random acts of kindness) versus NOT FREE (buying a lesson or service you find on Yelp, Thumbtack, or Coursera), I gave him the answer that he was looking for:

“Yes, it’s free,” I responded.

Understanding Motivation

When I founded Skilltapp, I wanted it to be an egalitarian bartering platform for people who had difficulty accessing capital. An economic alternative to credit cards and high-interest loans for those who struggled to get that first client, that first investor, that first steady paycheck.

The idea behind Skilltapp came from my youngest sister who worked as an English teacher in Spain in 2012, when general unemployment was 26% and youth unemployment was 56%. Because money was scarce, Spaniards turned to different forms of bartering to carry them through the crisis. Sometimes it was traditional bartering: you provide a good or service to someone and they give you something of similar value in return. Other times it was multi-lateral bartering: you earn credit for providing a good or service to a member of a bartering network. You use those credits to buy services from any other member of that network.

With so many options for exchanging value without using money, I designed Skilltapp’s first platform to be flexible. To let you decide. Swap services (traditional bartering), accept credits for your services (multi-lateral bartering), or waive credits altogether and give your services pro bono. I figured out how to build tax compliance into the system, and pushed out a minimum viable product (MVP) in a few months.

The purpose of an MVP is to test a basic version of your product with your earliest adopters, observe their interactions, and learn from their behavior. Before launching the MVP, I knew that the idea of multi-lateral bartering would be foreign to most people. I also knew that giving people credit for the amount of time they invested in the community, rather than their commercial billing rate, would be a non-starter for others. So I launched Skilltapp with open eyes. And I was surprised anyway.

Our most engaged users saw Skilltapp as a proving ground.

Our users are not coming to Skilltapp out of economic necessity, they are coming to expand their opportunities by giving, rather than receiving, services. Some want to barter, but most do not. Reciprocity is important (no one wants to feel used), but getting a service on our system is like getting a bonus, not collecting on a debt.

Skilltapp users are twice as likely to offer services as they are to request them.

But why?

Answers to that question came last Sunday at Skilltapp’s first user-driven, design-thinking session in Brooklyn. Nine members of the Skilltapp community gathered in a AirBnB’ed living room and over Google Hangouts. Some were well-paid professionals. Others had been unemployed for long spells or moved from gig to gig.

This group of mostly 20-something women talked about expectations for their own lives, and dissatisfaction with the lack of opportunities to connect with other people in an authentic and non-exploitative way. We discussed cultural differences between the US and Europe, where platforms like Skilltapp are relatively common. They voiced their frustration with the fact that the “sharing” economy has only increased the pressure to monetize absolutely anything that has value. They need and want to make money, but they said that charging money for services sometimes “corrupts” the feeling of providing the service. Especially for creative services. It is a luxury to be able to decide not to sell a service when someone is willing to pay for it. But that’s not the whole story.

Finding Authentic Connection

These women also spoke to the notion that there is a space between being a hobbyist, and a self-sustaining freelancer, where there is a lot of personal uncertainty. How valuable is your work anyway? Who will your clients be? How good are you at this? Do you really want to charge for it, or do you just want the social validation? In that zone of uncertainty, the client you need is not the client who wants the job done yesterday by a faceless freelancer because she’s paying her hard earned cash. That situation involves too much risk on both sides.

The client you need is someone who feels as grateful to receive your service as you feel to give it.

Someone who understands that the feedback she gives, and the reputation you are just starting to build, is more important to your development than money.

The members of the discussion group weren’t looking for flexibility in bartering options, they were looking for flexibility in personal development outside of traditional jobs and school.

Revisiting Free

When I founded Skilltapp, I had two main concerns about what the company would become. First, I worried that it would become a frivolous app that allowed people to do things they only marginally cared about with people they already knew. Second, I worried that it would become another volunteering platform that relies on a small minority of kind-hearted people with lots of free time to do the lion’s share of socially beneficial work.

Neither of those things has happened. Skilltapp is not a throwaway app, but neither are we attracting people who already spend most of their time volunteering. By creating opportunities for our members to share their skills on a regular basis with people outside of their inner circles, we are helping our users find joy, and also personal benefit, in giving.

So, yes, it’s free. The same way that the benefits we reap from the communities we invest in are free.

Miishe Addy is CEO of Skilltapp Inc., a California public benefit corporation. Skilltapp’s new platform launches January 2016.