Companies like Uber and Airbnb pioneered the operator economy as they began using crowdsourced infrastructure and labor to provide valuable services. In the process, they demonstrated that relatively decentralized business models can compete with, and even outperform, traditional businesses. Today, the United States has more operating platforms than anywhere else in the world, including apps for food delivery, haircuts, babysitting, car sharing, and more. The U.S. operator economy has produced a stable of unicorns and is expected to be worth trillions of dollars by 2031. In a sense, the operator economy is becoming The Economy.
