In the world of tech, timing is one of the most significant indicators for whether a given solution will be successful. It is critical for the solution to hit the market at a time when Supertrends and tailwinds are accelerating while the need for such a solution is growing.
It's all about timing
An outstanding development of a company in a market with poor demand will probably lead to its closure or untimely sale. But whenever a technological solution meets a real-world need, it serves as a crucial catalyst for company and product development.
For example, Fiverr, an Israeli company that developed an excellent product for a growing market, was there at the right time and in the right place to take in the demand that the Covid-19 crisis ignited with a global yearning for self-employment opportunities, due to increase in unemployment worldwide.
The accelerated Supertrend in online marketplaces has been one of the reasons for the 5-fold jump in Fiverr’s stock since the beginning of 2020. Fiverr’s rise was perfectly timed, providing an excellent solution, resulting in its market intensifying almost overnight.
While business results still do not reflect the change in trend, capital markets are the ones that reflect the change and transition to a decentralized home-based labor market that has spawned a great many ‘solopreneurs’. This trend started about a decade ago. Pioneering this market was Upwork, but Israeli company Fiverr, which entered the market later, overtook it, mainly due to two main factors - a much better technological product and much better timing.
Both of these companies focus primarily on services that can be provided from anywhere at any time, without the need for physical interaction between providers and clients. Freelancers such as website builders, content writers, translators, programmers, online marketers and more are the basis for those platforms.
Recently, however, this trend has been intensifying and expanding into more areas. For example, Fiverr has also added opportunities for photographers, video editors and business consultants, industries some of which are local and require physical (and non-global) access.
Marketplaces of all kinds for the self-employed have realized that in order to encourage the use of their platforms, they need to address two significant issues that the self-employed have, compared to employees, and they both have to do with creating business certainty. The first is the whole issue of client accessibility and sales.
Self-employed people fear the possibility of lack of work, which subsequently leads to a loss in income. The second challenge they solved is the payment collection issue. Many self-employed people want to avoid the issue of collection and for some, the situation creates discomfort with clients, therefore opening a need to reduce these awkward situations.
Once these two challenges have been resolved, the dilemma of many as to whether to continue working as employees, or to allow themselves a more comfortable and flexible life of working from home as self-employed individuals, has diminished significantly. In other words, these platforms increase the incentives for professionals to offer themselves as freelancers. Not only that, but these technological platforms also allow the undecided to start getting small gigs and later decide whether to join the gig marketplace full-time or head back to their 9-to-5 job, or combine a bit of both.
There are now dozens of additional platforms for specialized professions, such as interior design (Havenly), artists and craft makers (Etsy) therapy & advice (Betterhelp & Talkspace) and even Top tier senior experts (GLG, Catalant and Alphasights).
This growing demand for remote freelancers in a time of health and economic uncertainty leads to an inflection point in which the collaborative economy flourishes while unemployment is rising.
The bottom line is that companies are hiring and will continue to hire more and more services online from remote-based talents while employing less in-house full-time locals directly.
Written by Liron Rose, Founder & CEO of Rose Innovations, serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist and consultant in marketing and technology
