Crowdsourced Workforces Rising

Crowdsourcing is a growing trend in the tech startup industry, and one that has the potential to address pressing needs in various markets. In particular, crowdsourcing of workforces is seeing tremendous uptick. At 1M/1M we’ve encountered several startups that are applying the model on different problem domains related to hiring and staffing.

CrowdSourcing Repetitive Tasks: CrowdFlower Founder Lukas Biewald (Part 7)

Sramana: Would you talk some about the CEO transition? When did you bring in Woody Hobbs? Lukas Biewald: We brought him in a couple of months ago. The business had grown and we were selling to bigger and bigger customers and were eyeing finance, healthcare, and other industries that I had no experience with. I

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CrowdSourcing Repetitive Tasks: CrowdFlower Founder Lukas Biewald (Part 6)

Sramana: In 2009, what was your average contract size for an enterprise deal? Lukas Biewald: In 2009, we were targeting five-digit contracts. In 2010, we realized we could get away with six-digit contracts. Inside sales is one of our major penetration points when it comes to enterprises. We don’t do the inside sales, we just

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CrowdSourcing Repetitive Tasks: CrowdFlower Founder Lukas Biewald (Part 5)

Sramana: After you gained your first few small startup customers, how did you go about building the company? What were the big milestones? Lukas Biewald: There really was not a single moment where I suddenly realized that we would make it. There were a couple of things that added up for us. We had a

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CrowdSourcing Repetitive Tasks: CrowdFlower Founder Lukas Biewald (Part 4)

Sramana: You mentioned that eBay is one of your customers. What do you do for eBay? Lukas Biewald: We do a lot of different things for them. The most mature application for them is classifying products. They get a lot of products in from their users, and they want to make sure they are going

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CrowdSourcing Repetitive Tasks: CrowdFlower Founder Lukas Biewald (Part 3)

Sramana: What is your business model? Lukas Biewald: Our business model is pretty simple. We quote customers the price for completed tasks, and upon completing those tasks recieve payment regardless of the cost we incur competing those tasks. We assume the price risk. Let’s suppose a company has a large directory of other businesses and

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CrowdSourcing Repetitive Tasks: CrowdFlower Founder Lukas Biewald (Part 2)

Sramana: When you first recognized the concept of croudsourcing was working, what stood out at you the most? What about it make you recognize its overall potential? Lukas Biewald: When you get thousands of people looking at your site or your data, you will get a lot of interesting ideas. They will point out confusing

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Crowdsourcing Repetitive Tasks: CrowdFlower Founder Lukas Biewald (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  Lukas Biewald is the founder and executive chairman of CrowdFlower, the world’s largest enterprise crowdsourcing platform. Prior to co-founding CrowdFlower, Lukas was a senior scientist and manager within the ranking and management team at Powerset, Inc., a natural language search technology company later acquired by Microsoft.

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