Sramana: I think in many cases companies would hire contractors through Elance but would not use Elance to pay them. Gary Swart: Absolutely, and I think Elance has recognized that. They realize they were only getting the tip of the iceberg. I think you will see they begin moving more toward the middle and move
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.
Sramana: Are the increased e-commerce metrics experienced by LI-COR a direct result of their use of CloudCraze? Bill Loumpouridis: Yes. They have used CloudCraze in a manner that has allowed them to focus on their business, not on running an e-commerce architecture and the associated challenges.