FreeUp

Connor Gilvin started his first business from a college dorm room, selling dropshipped products on Amazon under the PortLight brand. Through that work he became an expert at hiring freelancers online. He and his business partner had used Upwork, oDesk, and Elance and disliked the process: posting jobs, interviewing candidates, hiring, and then discovering whether the person was a good fit. They spent many hours on that search, and they wanted a service where a business owner could simply describe the skill and price they needed and receive vetted talent.

They launched FreeUp in the fall of 2015. The model was a curated marketplace. FreeUp recruited freelancers, put them through its own interview process, and accepted only the top 1%. The company focused on e-commerce operations and digital marketing, where its founders had direct experience, rather than competing head-on with TopTal's higher-level developer and designer focus. Pricing was simple: freelancers set their rates, typically $5 to $50 per hour, and FreeUp added a markup. On a $100 transaction, FreeUp kept a $2 minimum and about 20% on higher-priced workers, and the freelancer received the rest. Clients paid through the network, and FreeUp handled the payouts.

The interview does not describe the first paying customer. What is clear is how growth scaled afterward. The company said it grew roughly 1,000% over the year, from about $5,000 in weekly processed volume to between $60,000 and $80,000 per week. Its main acquisition lever was a referral program that paid clients $0.50 for every hour billed by anyone they referred, which encouraged early users to bring in their networks. Once someone signed up, the team reached out personally to discuss their hiring needs. Connor acknowledged this was an upfront cost, since a client buying one hour of time might only generate about $2 in revenue, but he said customers usually start small and then expand as they get comfortable.

What worked was combining a referral incentive with hands-on onboarding. By the interview, FreeUp had over 1,500 registered users, about 2,000 to 2,500 buyers who had paid for freelancers historically, and 300 to 500 clients billing in a typical week. The company stayed bootstrapped, reinvested a portion of profits, and split the remainder among its founders. Connor also said he wished he had stayed focused on what he did best earlier in his career and had surrounded himself with people who could do other things better.

At the time of the interview, FreeUp had about 20 to 25 part-time remote staff and was processing about $300,000 per month in job volume, keeping roughly 20% of it. Connor said the company was on track for $3 to $4 million in total transaction volume that year, and he described plans to expand from e-commerce into other categories once it had the resources.