Philip Rosedale’s Coffee & Power

Coffee & Power is the name of a new online crowdsourcing website. It seeks to match up workers with work using the power of freelance initiative and mobile devices, like laptops and cell phones. It is enhanced by having not only an online address but a café located in downtown San Francisco that serves as a focal point for the site. Other enhancements include a “virtual currency and payment system, live communications and public chat and a game-like rating and review system.” (blog) Users can log in remotely to sign up for jobs or check into the café to power up with free coffee, check the boards for new jobs and network together. Online support elements include C&P (iPhone app ), Twitter , Facebook , YouTube channel , live webcam , onsite chat, and data charts showing statistics for the site . Some of the jobs, called “missions,” are technical coding jobs while others can range from simple errands to creative graphics work.

Coffee and Power is the brainchild of Second Life founder and chairman Philip Rosedale, who started this venture out of a desire to build a new online business using the labor of many as opposed to the that of a few. Rosedale’s past experience in software development and with Second Life provided him with unique insight into the kind of start up he wanted to create. He built C&P using a “micro-contracting system” that he developed called Worklist . He has said that Worklist “allows lots of part-time developers and other people to take the place of a more typical full-time startup team.” He claims that C&P was built in less than a year for less that $200,000. Essentially, Worklist is a project management tool which breaks programming jobs into small increments. The jobs are posted online and programmers a...

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