Outsourcing 2.0: oDesk CEO Gary Swart (Part 6)

Sramana: Enterprise deals could be a good option for you. I could see oDesk doing $10 million-a-year deals. Gary Swart: There are some differences in that type of business. It requires a lot of touch. They would want one throat to choke.

Outsourcing 2.0: oDesk CEO Gary Swart (Part 5)

Sramana: Tell me more about the work management portion of your platform. Gary Swart: The management portion is also interesting. We have a lot of customers in the U.S. who are hiring onshore workers. Hiring onshore workers is tricky because companies would like to assume everybody is a contractor, but the IRS would like to

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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.

Catching Up on Readings: Bootstrap Yourself!

Amidst the ocean of content that is coming at you, readers, I am sure you find yourselves overwhelmed. Here’s a recap of some articles from this site which you may have missed, but may be worth your time:

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.