Upwork

Upwork

Type	Private
Industry	Freelance marketplace, Online outsourcing
Founded	Mountain View, California 2015
Headquarters	Mountain View, California
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Stephane Kasriel (CEO), Thomas Layton (Chairman)
Website	www.upwork.com

Upwork, formerly Elance-oDesk, is a global freelancing platform where businesses and independent professionals connect and collaborate remotely. In 2015, Elance-oDesk was rebranded as Upwork. It is based out of Mountain View and San Francisco, California.

Upwork has nine million registered freelancers and four million registered clients. Three million jobs are posted annually, worth a total of $1 billion USD, making it the world's largest freelancer marketplace.

History

Upwork was formed 18 months after Elance and oDesk announced their merger on December 18, 2013 to create Elance-oDesk, an online workplace with a combined total 8 million registered users. oDesk was founded in 2003 by Odysseas Tsatalos and Stratis Karamanlakis. Elance was founded in 1999 by Beerud Sheth and Srini Anumolu. With the launch of Upwork, the oDesk platform was upgraded and rebranded and the company announced that the Elance platform will be phased out within a couple of years, resulting in a single freelance marketplace.

After the re-branding of Upwork in early 2015 criticism surfaced among freelancers because of various bugs and slow loading speed of the Upwork platform.

In early September 2015, the Upwork service experienced an outage which led to an apology being issued by CEO Stephane Kasriel. This led to the introduction of an Upwork Status page to offer freelancers and clients greater transparency.

Description

Upwork allows clients to interview, hire and work with freelancers and agencies through the company's platform. The platform now includes a real-time chat platform aimed at reducing the time it takes to find and hire freelancers.

Upwork collects 10 percent of the payment to the independent professional—no fee is charged to those offering jobs. Payments can be made using credit cards, PayPal, or bank transfer. Payments are made through Upwork's escrow system, which transfers the funds to freelancers after a 6-day period.

As of May 2014, Upwork reported $1B in annual billings, 10 million freelancers and 4 million clients worldwide. 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. The company provides voluntary skills tests in various disciplines from English aptitude to specific programming skills, and profiles include a feedback mechanism.

To ensure the freelancers are billing fairly for jobs billed hourly, the platform offers a time sheet application that tracks time and takes screenshots while the freelancer is billing.

On 3 May 2016, Upwork announced that the service fee for freelancers will change from flat rate of 10% to a "sliding service fee" of 5% to 20%.

Upwork has a mobile app for both Android and iOS, as well as a time-tracking app for Windows, OSX, and Linux.

Reception

• Bersin by Deloitte "WhatWorks" Award (2013)
• oDesk ranked #543 in the 2012 Inc. 5000, #441 in the 2011 Inc. 500, #286 on the 2010 Inc. 500, and #110 in the 2009 Inc. 500
• AlwaysOn Global 250 Top Private Companies (2012 and 2011)
• AlwaysOn OnDemand 100 (2012 and 2011)
• Silicon Valley Business Journal Fastest Growing Private Company List (2011, 2010 and 2009)
• San Francisco Business Times Fastest Growing Companies List (2011 and 2010)
• SAMCEDA Innovation & Entrepreneurship Awards - 2011 Fastest Growing Innovator Award of Excellence
• 2011 TiE50 Internet/Social Networking Winner of TiE50 Awards Program.
• TechCrunch50 DemoPit Winner (2010)
• Silicon Valley Business Journal Emerging Technology Award (2009)
• International Association of Outsourcing Professionals 2009 Global Outsourcing 100 Rising Star
• Deloitte Technology Fast 500
• Finalist for the "Red Herring 100 Global" Awards 2007 and 2009
• 2007 Rising Star in Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 Program
• Finalist in PC Magazine’s 2006 Small Business Awards

External links

• Official website

• 2011 TiE50 Internet/Social Networking Winner
• http://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-UnitedStates/Local%20Assets/Documents/TMT_us_tmt/us_tmt_2010%20Technology%20Fast%20500%20Winners%20Brochure_191010.pdf
• 2007 Technology Fast 500