Supply
Supply is who does a Service's work, and how a Startup finds, checks and pays them.
Supply is everything a Service draws on to do its work: models, Agents, data, and people. Digital supply grows with every Order; human supply is finite, so a Startup recruits, verifies, schedules, and pays it.
Digital and human supply
Every Product keeps its promise from Sources: owned, wrapped, or recruited. Digital Sources have no practical ceiling. A Services-as-Software Startup that cleans product catalogs starts another Agent for each new Order, so demand is its only constraint.
Recruited Sources are people, and people are scarce. Take a Startup that runs remote online notarization.
Each signing needs a notary commissioned in the right state, on camera, inside the hour the buyer booked. Its volume is capped by notary hours, not by demand.
Human supply adds four jobs that digital supply never needs: recruiting, credentialing, dispatch, and payouts. The Supply Manager owns all four through Supply.
Recruiting
Recruit supply runs when booked hours fall short of forecast demand. It recruits where the demand arrives: a surge of signings for one state's buyers starts a search for notaries commissioned there.
Recruit invites a person to supply work through the Startup's supplier App. Supplier onboarding takes the application, checks identity, collects tax details, and signs the supplier Agreement. Onboard admits the person only once identity, Credentials, and payout details all verify.
A Supplier is never seated in a Role. Suppliers take Tasks, set their own hours, and answer to the contract terms of each Task. Workers who fill Roles join the team through Staffing instead.
Credentials
A Credential is checked with the authority that issued it, never taken from a résumé. Verify confirms the notary commission with the state that granted it and records when it expires.
Standing is read fresh on every use. Before a notary performs a signing, Credential check confirms the commission is still in good standing in that state. A lapsed Credential suspends the Supplier from new Tasks until it is renewed.
Credentialing tracks every expiry and asks for renewal evidence before the date passes. The licensing floor row lists which work needs which Credential, by jurisdiction.
Capacity and dispatch
Before the buyer pays, the Offer checks that it can staff the Order on time. When no notary for that state is free in the requested hour, it offers the next open slot. It never takes money for a promise it cannot keep.
Dispatch proposes each job to eligible, available Suppliers in order of fit: Credential, jurisdiction, language, and track record. A decline or a silence passes the job to the next Supplier before the deadline is at risk. The buyer sees pending with reason awaitingWorker until someone accepts.
Every Supplier's output passes the same Evaluators as an Agent's. Their verdicts build each Supplier's track record, and Dispatch reads that record first.
Earnings
A Supplier earns when the Order their work served is earned. Remit pays the balance to the Supplier's bank account through Earnings, which runs on Stripe.
Disputes hold only what is in question. When a buyer contests one signing, that fee waits for the decision while the rest of the Supplier's balance pays out on schedule.
Earnings also files what the law asks of a business that pays independent workers. The information returns floor row wakes once a Supplier's annual earnings cross the reporting threshold.
The supplier App
Suppliers work from their phones. The supplier App shows eligible Tasks, Credentials on file with their expiry dates, the contract terms of each Task, and earnings to date.
It keeps working without a connection. A Supplier who loses signal finishes the Task offline, and the App submits it on reconnect against the version of the Task it was given.
Next
- Human functions: how a person's step fits a Service.
- Licensed-human marketplace: a business built on credentialed supply.
- Supply Manager: the Role that keeps supply booked.