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TRANSCRIPT
Statistics ReportJanuary 2008
February 24, 2009
geekSessions
Gary Swart, CEO www.odesk.com [email protected]
oDesk is the marketplace for online workteams with the best business model for both buyers and providers
For buyers: Guaranteed workEvery hour billed is an hour worked
For providers: Guaranteed paymentEvery hour worked is an hour paid
Background
24 Employees, 43 remote oDesk consultants
HQ in Menlo Park, CA
Funded by Benchmark, Sigma, Globespan, & DAG raised $29MM to date ($16MM in the bank)
Started in 2004
Where are we today?Over 200,000 tested and rated knowledge workers representing hundreds of technical disciplines & skills Both individual freelancers and development companies from 150+ countriesBuyers post both Fixed Price Jobs and Time-Based assignmentsBuyers pay by the successful job or for verified hours worked Avg. time to hire is <4 days; Avg. # candidates per job is >18
Over $60MM in gross services deliveredOver $60MM in gross services delivered
What Is oDesk?
Doing more with less
Smaller teams getting more done in less time with less money
Development to infrastructure demanding more efficiency across the board
Using modern frameworks, automation, sane capacity planning, and solid analytics to do more with less. Way more
Objectives
Tools
Cost of nearly all of the software development tools we use at oDesk
“Free or better”
77
Annual cost of Google Apps
Process
HierarchyFrictionBureaucracyInflexibilityIT-driven technology / Lack of user controlTop downCentralizedTeams are in one building / one time zoneSilos and boundariesNeed to knowInformation systems are structured and dictatedTaxonomiesOverly complexClosed/ proprietary standardsScheduledLong time-to-market cycles
What is different today?
Flat OrganizationEase of Organization FlowAgilityFlexibilityUser-driven technologyBottom upDistributedTeams are globalFuzzy boundaries, open bordersTransparencyInformation systems are emergentFolksonomiesSimpleOpenOn DemandShort time-to-market cycles
Enterprise 1.0 Start-up 2.0
Cost to acquire an oDesk buyer in 2006
Harvest demand before creating demand
Search – SEO and SEMSMM (blogging, Twitter, Facebook)
Make your product easy to buy
Leverage your customers/users to get the word out
Share whenever you can - e.g., oConomy, blog, speak at events ;-)
Cost to acquire an oDesk buyer today… …and the volume is up 7X
People
Hourly cost of Bay Area-based CSR
Hourly cost of Philippines-based CSR
2020
Annual all-in cost of oDesk’s 43 FTE remote team
See http://www.odesk.com/w/case_study_odesk
Hire the right people the right way
Right skills?
Employees vs. contractors?
Full-time vs. part-time?
Local vs. remote?
“oDesk is a great way to make it feel like an employee who is across an ocean is working inside your local office” - oDesk Buyer
Guaranteed work; Guaranteed payment
Average Hourly Rates by Job Category
Sys Admins
Developers
DesignersConsultants (blue)Proj. Mgrs (green)
QA Testers
Tech Writers
Data Entry Pros
Average Hourly Rates (US)
Sys Admins
Developers
DesignersConsultants
Proj. MgrsQA Testers
Tech Writers
Data Entry Pros
Opportunity cost of doing the wrong things
Test and learn vs. boil the ocean
Ruthlessly cut what’s not working
Leverage the “extended enterprise”
Questions - [email protected]
Acknowledgement
Slides inspired by Guy Kawasaki
See https://url.odesk.com/~klszu