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Hosting the world’s largest on demand freelance talent marketplace for companies to source talent

Key facts

  • Founded in 2005, Upwork¹ is headquartered in Mountain View, CA with estimated revenues of $100 million and 80 employees. Upwork has received $74 million in funding over 5 rounds from 10 investors.
  • Upwork is the world’s largest freelance talent marketplace in terms of revenue generated and number of workers.
  • Upwork’s mission is “to create economic and social value on a global scale by providing a trusted online workplace to connect, collaborate, and succeed”.

Uniqueness

  • Freelancers can be hired for jobs on app and software development, engineering and data science, creative services such as graphic design and writing, business and administrative tasks.
  • There are over 2,700+ skills available on the site, on demand 24/7.
  • Research by Upwork suggests that finding and on-boarding talent in the brick-and-mortar world takes an average of 43 days, compared with three days in the virtual world.

Value

  • There are three million jobs posted annually on the platform and four million registered clients, with companies such as Unilever, Panasonic, Pinterest, Amazon, Cisco and Microsoft using the service.
  • Upwork collects 10% of the payment to the independent professional, no fee is charged to those offering jobs.
  • Upwork is in a push to build annual freelancer revenues on the platform from $1 billion as of 2015 to $10 billion in six years.

Approach

  • Upwork was formed as a result of the merger between Elance and O-desk in 2013.
  • It allows clients to interview, hire and work with freelancers and agencies through the company’s platform.
  • The platform includes a real-time chat platform aimed at reducing the time it takes to find and hire freelancers.
  • Upwork provides voluntary skill tests in various disciplines from English aptitude to specific programming skills, the profiles include a feedback mechanism.

Upwork is one of more than 100 case studies identified as part of the World Economic Forum’s Digital Transformation of Industries initiative.  An overview of the DTI program can be found here.

1. Sources: Upwork, Forbes, WEF/Accenture Analysis

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