Gov/en/Portal:R&D/Innovations:Cold-Start-and-Long-Tail-Onboarding

This page describes a working hypothesis. It is expected to evolve according to the proposals of WikiDeal users.

💡 In simple words: A new marketplace is like an empty playground: nobody comes because nobody is there. WikiDeal invites whole groups of people who already play together, so the playground is full from day one.

🎯 In 20 seconds (scientific summary): We are heading towards a cooperative platform economy in which user acquisition is no longer driven by speculative growth capital, but by the structured onboarding of existing communities. This hypothesis proposes a strategy to overcome the cold start effect by acquiring paying subscribers through the buy-back of client books from long-tail small and medium enterprises, within a non-speculative, real-cost, commons-oriented framework.

The challenge: the cold start effect

Every marketplace faces the same chicken-and-egg problem, known as the cold start effect: a platform without users attracts no users. Suppliers do not join because there are no clients; clients do not join because there are no suppliers. Without a deliberate strategy, a new platform remains empty regardless of the quality of its technology or governance.

For WikiDeal, this makes one objective the number one priority at this stage: finding users who pay subscriptions (paying subscribers). A base of paying subscribers is what turns the platform from a prototype into a living economy, and what makes every other mechanism (arbitration, real-cost pricing, participatory governance) meaningful.

This section also answers a recurring objection from initial investors: "there is no use case." WikiDeal does have a use case, described below: the onboarding of long-tail communities through the buy-back of their client books.

The strategy: onboarding long-tail communities

Funding model: WikiDeal raises funds with a predefined, fixed return on investment. This model is novel enough to be tested on WikiDeal itself first, and then proposed to third parties.
Link with Exit to Community: users, clients, suppliers and employees progressively buy back the investors' shares, at a fixed price, as a by-product of their own transactions on the platform. Growth and community ownership advance together.
Target: the Long Tail (Chris Anderson). WikiDeal does not court the "winner-takes-all" leaders of each market segment, but the secondary players: the many smaller providers who together represent a large share of the market, and who are often fragilized by AI and by market concentration.
Pitch to long-tail SMEs: "Join WikiDeal, keep providing your service, become a User Group recognized by WikiDeal and the Ynternet.org Foundation, and save your company."

How it works: buying back the client book

WikiDeal buys back the effort of SME leaders — that is, their client book (their base of users and relationships), not merely the goodwill of the business.
A sum is defined (the value of the user base) and is paid out progressively, as transactions occur on their User Group: a small, capped percentage per transaction.
The leaders keep running their company, now operating within the WikiDeal context. By becoming a User Group, they adopt WikiDeal practices: participatory decision-making, consent/consensus-seeking, arbitration, and real costs. They remain in charge durably as long as they are chosen by their peers.
The client base migrates to WikiDeal through an opt-in, data-respectful migration. Each migrated user gets:
- a WikiDeal subscription,
- a lower, real-cost commission on each transaction,
- a small subscription contribution (around 1 CHF/month) integrated into their transactions.

Worked example: babysitting

The Swiss market leader in babysitting has about 10,000 contacts (families and babysitters) and charges a matchmaking commission.
Valuation: roughly 10–20 CHF per user, i.e. about 200,000 CHF for the provider, paid out via a capped percentage on each babysitting transaction.
Its 10,000 users join hundreds of thousands of others, producing economies of scale: shared advertising, visibility, administration, arbitration, payment system and platform. One single service for everything.

Why this is not a private roll-up (the mission)

It is important to be lucid: specialized private investment funds already do this. They acquire small businesses, improve them with industrial methods (CRM, advertising, process optimization) and resell them — sometimes tripling revenue within a year. These methods are highly efficient.

The difference — and the mission of WikiDeal, which must be clearly stated or the model collides head-on with the private market — is this:

WikiDeal applies comparable industrial methods, but in a participatory form;
with a non-speculative purpose;
at real cost;
in order to modify and improve a digital commons.

The goal is not to extract value and resell, but to give communities ownership and governance of the platform they use — fully consistent with Exit to Community. Durability comes from being chosen by one's peers, not from speculative resale.

Advantages of migrating to WikiDeal

Lower, real-cost commissions on each transaction.
Economies of scale: shared advertising, visibility, administration, arbitration, payment system and digital platform.
A single platform for everything, instead of maintaining your own.
The founders keep running their business and get paid for their client book, progressively through transactions.
The community gains ownership and participatory governance (Exit to Community).
Resilience against being a non-priority player in a winner-takes-all market.