PeoplePerHour.com founder and CEO Xenios Thrasyvoulou wanted to launch before someone else beat him to it
As a specialist recession-busting business, PeoplePerHour.com is causing a stir. But founder Xenios Thrasyvoulou believes his latest start-up has the legs to succeed way beyond the economic downturn. PeoplePerHour puts small companies in touch with freelance workers, taking a cut of the contract price. "I always felt that there is a gap for a service whereby you can outsource small pieces of work efficiently and cost effectively. As a large company you're going to go to large vendors. But as a small business with projects here and there, press release writing, design work, copy editing, all these things do add up. It's typically what a small business is all about."
Thrasyvoulou says the majority of freelancers listed have either recently been made redundant, or are a new breed of portfolio worker, supplementing their regular income with freelance contracts. The type of work offered crosses many disciplines, from accountants to web designers. Thrasyvoulou says contractors who aim their services at larger firms come with a high "entry cost". In the translation business, for example, "it starts at £1,000 plus for a very small piece of work. It's the same for accountants and lawyers," he says. But by allowing small firms to connect directly with freelancers that are juggling that work in between other projects, and allowing them to charge by the hour, or half-day, "they come at a good price."
The site doesn't charge for a first listing, so companies must come back before the site starts to make money. The beauty of the model is its transparency, says Thrasyvoulou. "There is a strong incentive for freelancers to carry on conducting work through the site, because their reliability and history is visible to the client. If you've got a visible track record of 50 jobs, chances are that the person that's hiring will not only trust that you'll do the job well, but will pay a premium for it." 50 per cent of PeoplePerHour's users come back to post more work, he says.
Thrasyvoulou launched the site at the end of 2007 after customers of his personal assistant concierge business suggested expanding the service to include other contractors, such as web design, copy writing and accountancy. He says he was immediately convinced of the site's potential and saw little need for additional market research. "It's more important to get started than to get started correctly," he says. "A lot of entrepreneurs wait until they have the perfect website, all the suppliers lined up, every box ticked before they start trading. It's the biggest mistake you could make because often the market is gone by the time you have done that. Or you've spent all this money on getting it set up and then you find out the idea was wrong."
The recession, he says, has sent plenty of business his way, but the trend for unstructured portfolio work should mean there is a demand for the service even when economic conditions improve, says Thrasyvoulou. "There are lots of socioeconomic drivers behind this," he says. "Companies want to be flexible. On the flipside, people want to be flexible and achieve a better work life balance. I spent very little time researching this. I didn't need to analyse markets until I am blue in the face, I just wanted to get my hands dirty and get on with it before anyone else did."
An advisory board of Michael van Swaaij, chairman of Skype, Doug Monro, the former MD of Gumtree—now COO of property site Zoopla—and Fabrice Grinda, co-CEO of classified ad firm OLX, has provided Thrasyvoulou with experience and support as well as money. He says the technology start-up community is refreshingly open and honest. "There is humility and humbleness in the tech space, it's fantastic. The attitude to business is less arrogant. You find all these extremely successful entrepreneurs but they are so down to earth and level-headed when you meet them."
Current turnover is around £750,000, but Thrasyvoulou realises there are more important barometers with which to gauge success. "The most important thing is growth. We're a volume model, it's not the type of model that with one big contract we're going to make half a million revenue." Building critical mass will be key. "The top line growth is the most important thing for us. Repeat business and referral: those are our key metrics."
Posted 15 June 2009 : Director.co.uk
