Work Market Gains Momentum As On-demand IT Contractor Platform
Jeff Leventhal is building an online marketplace for the second time in his career. The latest effort, called Work Market, is a Labor Resource Platform (LRP) that allows businesses to manage contractors. For VARs and MSPs, Work Market can identify on-demand contractors who can assist with IT projects, managed services and integration services. True believers include iYogi, which is leveraging Work Market to expand beyond remote tech support to offer on-ground Tech Support Engineers.
Indeed, iYogi plans to recruit 1,000 local Tech Support Engineers across the continental United States to build the Business Nonstop network, connecting iYogi’s customers with local certified technology experts. In some ways, it sounds like iYogi is preparing to counter Best Buy Geek Squad.
Where Work Market Fits In
To power Business NonStop, iYogi has partnered with Work Market, according to a prepared statement from both companies.
Work Market goes beyond sites like eLance because eLance “is not enterprise-ready,” said Leventhal. “You can’t run your business on it. Our site is about enterprise delivery and our clientele uses the site everyday. eLance is more of a one-to-one relationship. We’re a one-to-many opportunity. When you need an army, we’re here on demand.”
Some pundits also compare and contrast Work Market to Leventhal’s previous venture — OnForce (The VAR Guy will offer a separate update on OnForce later this week). In the meantime, Leventhal and Eric Castro, VP of client services, offered more insights about Work Market in this FastChat Video:
Growth Mode
Work Market’s army of on-demand contractors seems to be growing. By the end of 2012, Work Market expects the platform’s annual run rate to hit $100 million.
Similar to a social media site, Work Market members “link” to other people within the system, organizing supply (IT professionals seeking business engagements) and demand (businesses or IT service providers that need help) to create a marketplace.
Work Market launched in August 2010 and the platform went live in August 2011. So far, Work Market has raised $11 million in capital. The first round was $6 million in June 2010, and another $5 million arrived in September 2011 to further accelerate the business.
As of February 2012, the system had 20,000 users. “The Labor Resource Platform is still a new category,” said Leventhal. “It encompasses the entire data supply chain. If you use the system well, you’ll curate best-in-class people ahead of sending them work.” Indeed, the Work Market system manages everything from verifying talent to the terms of engagement, payments and ratings.
Work Market is built on Java and open source frameworks “so it scales,” added Leventhal. As of February, Work Market had 32 employees but was looking for “100 sales executives” to drive more growth.
The VAR Guy will be watching to see how Work Market executes against that goal.
A note on Elance. When disputes arise between a client and contractor, Elance requires the use of Net-arb.com for binding arbitration.
After a year long nightmare with their incompetent Drupal developer and then a lengthy arbitration against SynapseIndia, Elance’s biggest money-maker, I was awarded a partial refund along with the completed portion of the code for my website. Throughout the lengthy arbitration, I proved that Kapil Gupta (COO of SynapseIndia) repeatedly lied to the arbitrators. Elance paid the financial award for them, but SynapseIndia has not provided the code they were ordered to provide me. Instead, they sabotaged my website and provided only sabotaged code. Both Elance and Net-arb refuse to do anything to force SynapseIndia to comply, and they still troll for suckers on Elance.
If any journalists are interested in this extremely well-documented case of abuse, and possibly corporate collusion, please contact me at [email protected]. BTW, most of the reviews of SynapseIndia on Elance are positive. So is mine. This is because when the due date for the project arrives (and the project is still far from complete), they pressure the client to provide a review on Elance. Wanting to encourage good work for money already invested, clients like myself post positive reviews. Then, when the work goes bad, Elance absolutely prohibits any modification of the review.
I work for Elance and am familiar with the details of the case to which Bob Miller is alluding. While only a small fraction of the 800,000 jobs posted on Elance is ever disputed, we’re unhappy whenever a customer is dissatisfied with the outcome.
Our dispute process is designed to be fair to both the Client and the Contractor and only a few cases ever require arbitration. Prior to arbitration both parties understand and agree that arbitration is binding to ensure an objective third party review and resolution. For more information on our dispute process, please visit: http://help.elance.com/entries/34320-dispute-assistance-for-fixed-price-jobs
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Why don’t you address the issue of how low paid and badly treated your employees are! I have distant family who works for you and it is disgusting. Long hours with no overtime. No breaks. High Pressure to sell to you’re customers or be fired. On and On these people are treated like work horses and then tossed aside due to the high availability of skilled people to do their jobs in India. I intend to make this as public as possible. It is horrible.
Hi Lois,
I think you must be referring to a different company than Elance as we do not have any employees based in India.
You can contact me directly at [email protected] if I can help clear this up for you.
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