Outsourcing 2.0: oDesk CEO Gary Swart (Part 4)

Sramana: Tell me more about the demographic and psyche of this community that you have created. Who are your contractors? Are they small companies or freelancers? Gary Swart: We are favorable to individuals. I think of them as remote workers. These are people who do not look for a different gig every day.

Outsourcing 2.0: oDesk CEO Gary Swart (Part 3)

Sramana: How did you go from leaving Intellibank to being the CEO at oDesk? Gary Swart: In the process of raising money at Intellibank I ran into Greg at Sigma, who told me that they liked me but not Intellibank. Sigma then asked me to come run one of their companies. That is why I

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Outsourcing 2.0: oDesk CEO Gary Swart (Part 2)

Sramana: I just hired somebody on oDesk, and the way I structured the project it paid a fixed amount for a project to transcribe 30 interviews. It is staff augmentation, because I need that flexible resource to be able to augment my staff. Gary Swart: You can use it that way; however, the genesis of

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Outsourcing 2.0: oDesk CEO Gary Swart (Part 1)

Sramana: Hi, Gary. Would you begin by talking about the genesis of your story? Gary Swart: Odysseas Tsatalos and Stratis Karamanlakis, two Greeks, wanted to work together. Odysseas had co-founded Intacct, which was an accounting company, and he had always wanted to hire his friend, Stratis, who lived in Greece.

Deal Radar 2010: 99designs, Australia

99designs is a marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design. The company runs contests through which clients submit design briefs to the site along with how much they want to pay. Designers registered with 99designs submit their entries, and the client chooses which design they want and pays the winning designer. This approach has proved popular among

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Microsoft’s Shopping List

Let Yahoo deal with its mess, Microsoft should go cold turkey on them for a year now, and let Jerry Yang get fired for failing to create shareholder value. A far more interesting question looms on the Microsoft side. What is Microsoft’s Internet strategy going forward?

Deal Radar 2008: oDesk

Based in Menlo Park, CA, oDesk was founded by Odysseas Tsatalos and Stratis Karamanlakis in 2003. It is a platform that lets companies hire and manage remote workers from a global talent pool and pay them on an hourly or fixed rate basis.

Deal Radar 2008: Elance

Elance is a marketplace which matches freelance design, technical, writing and other professionals with companies that need their services in a timely manner. The company was founded in 1999 by Beerud Sheth and is headquartered in Mountain View, California.