Accanto Partners primarily invests in tech startups to provide support to founders as they grow their companies.

Accanto Partners

Founded in 1988, Highland Capital Partners is a global venture capital firm focused on putting the entrepreneur first.  With offices in Silicon Valley, Boston and Shanghai, Highland has raised over $3 billion in committed capital and invested in more than 225 companies, resulting in category-defining businesses across consumer and enterprise technology.  Investments include 2U, Ask Jeeves, Bromium, Gigamon, Leap Motion, LevelUp, Lycos, MapQuest, Nebula, QD Vision, Qihoo 360, Quattro Wireless, RentJuice, Rent the Runway, Starent Networks, Sybase, Violin Memory, VistaPrint and WePay.  Highland also serves as a mentor for future entrepreneurs through Summer@Highland, a program that provides students and university-affiliated startups with the environment and resources to take their initiative to the next level.

Highland Capital Partners

Greylock Partners invests in entrepreneurs that focus on consumer and enterprise software companies. The firm invests in companies that define new markets, including Airbnb, AppDynamics, Apptio, Arista Networks (NYSE: ANET), Cloudera, Docker, Dropbox, Facebook (Nasdaq: FB), LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD), Medium, Nextdoor, Palo Alto Networks (NYSE: PANW), Pandora (NYSE: P), Pure Storage, and Workday (NYSE: WDAY). It was founded in 1965 and headquartered in Menlo Park, California.

Greylock

TriplePoint Ventures is a venture capital firm that finances seed and early stage investments of life sciences and technology sectors.

TriplePoint Ventures

GE Ventures combines capital, technical, and commercial services. They invest in the healthcare and life sciences, energy and mobility, manufacturing and supply chain, enterprise productivity applications, digital infrastructure, and frontier technologies sectors.

GE Ventures

Suffolk Equity Partners was founded in 2011 as an investment vehicle focused on finding businesses and entrepreneurs of promise. We seek companies and people we believe in, and help them achieve their goals of growth and improvement. With experience in finance, distribution, retail, operational management, and family business, the Suffolk Equity team believes in portfolio diversity and finding thoughtful ways to add value to our portfolio companies.

Suffolk Equity Partners

General Catalyst is a venture capital firm that provides early-stage and growth equity investments. The company provides ongoing momentum that accelerates ideas, careers, and companies toward standout success.

General Catalyst

Morningside Venture Investments is an investment group that provides industry investments and social responsibility. It was founded in 1986 and is based in Shanghai, China.

Morningside Venture Investments

Goldfinch Partners invests in enterprise technology companies

Goldfinch Partners

SJF Ventures is a venture capital partnership with offices in Durham, New York and San Francisco. Through its investment funds, the firm provides equity financings from $1MM to $10MM, solo or in syndicates, to companies seeking growth capital.  As a venture fund, SJF Ventures focuses on the resource efficiency, sustainability and technology-enhanced services sectors. Representative investment areas include efficiency and infrastructure, asset recovery including reuse and recycling, sustainable agriculture and food safety, health and wellness technology, education technology and digital media and marketing services.  When assessing investment opportunities, SJF Ventures is highly selective in identifying teams, markets and business models that can achieve rapid sales, strong profitability, and premium exits. In addition, SJF looks to partner with entrepreneurs who are committed to positively impacting the world through the businesses that they are creating.

SJF Ventures

Anheuser-Busch InBev is a drink and brewing company. It specializes in providing consumer goods products. The company manufacture and distribute alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. Through its proprietary business-to-business platform, BEES,  Anheuser-Busch InBev have digitized retailers, by connecting every step of the route to consumers.

Anheuser-Busch InBev

Salesforce Ventures helps enterprising founders build companies that reinvent the way the world works.  they’ve invested in and partnered with more than 400 of the world's tenacious enterprise software companies  Salesforce Ventures leverages decades of expertise in the cloud and long-term relationships with key decision-makers at thousands of businesses around the world to give portfolio companies an unfair advantage, help them build credibility, and accelerate growth.

Salesforce Ventures

ZX Ventures is brewing up the future. ZX Ventures are a global disruptive growth group, incubator and venture capital team backed by one of the largest multinational companies in the world, Anheuser-Busch InBev. ZX Ventures is focused on innovation in/around the beverage category.

ZX Ventures

Remarkable founders have a vision that will shift the future.

Tectonic Ventures

Catalant

Catalant is a software company that provides global enterprises with software solutions to access business expertise on demand.  The company helps more than 30% of the Fortune 100 get from strategy to execution faster, with software that helps businesses accelerate mission-critical work and more than 65,000 experts and 1,000 firms who help them deliver it. Catalant platform is designed to enable the process of strategy execution, starting with entering in a business’ most important strategic objectives, aligning work and breaking it down into distinct elements, accessing and deploying needed internal and external resources, collaborating to execute it, measuring the work’s value, and providing insights to keep improving how it all gets done. It has built a global network of more than 27,000 boutique firms, custom teams, and independent experts, as well as best-in-class software tools for engaging and managing this market. Catalant is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, and serves customers around the world.

Catalant Technologies is a freelancer marketplace providing expertise in consulting services. This includes areas such as corporate strategy, market research, sales, digital transformation, and others. The platform connects organizations with independent talent from top consulting firms such as McKinsey, PwC, Deloitte, and Accenture.&nbsp;

The on-demand economy has finally reached white collar work.

Online Freelancing Platforms

Catalent issues letter to customers regarding acquisition by Novo Holdings

Catalant Technologies is a freelancer marketplace providing expertise in consulting services. This includes areas such as corporate strategy, market research, sales, digital transformation, and others. The platform connects organizations with independent talent from top consulting firms such as McKinsey, PwC, Deloitte, and Accenture.&nbsp;It offers data and business analytics, technology and digital services, marketing, corporate strategy, market research, finance, and accounting. In 2020, the company announced the launch of its SaaS platform, “Catalant Platform,” which assists organizations in managing freelancer projects.The company generates revenue by charging a 20-30% of the total project fees from a client.Key customers and partnershipsAs of October 2024, Catalant served over 700 enterprises and provided access to more than 100,000 highly-skilled independent consultants, with an average of 19+ years of experience, including 10,000+ with Fortune 500 backgrounds. As of October 2023, the firm completed over 16,000 projects in ten years, working with over 30% of the Fortune 500 and major PE clients and their portfolio companies. Notable clients include Pfizer, Ansell, and ABInBev.In&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21396">August 2023</a>, Catalan partnered with Acropolis Advisors to offer strategic consulting services to C-suites of public and private companies.&nbsp;

Textbroker is a platform for creative writing freelancers to connect with businesses. Textbroker freelancers work on projects such as social media posts, news stories, and blog posts. The platform provides content in over 35 languages, while connecting businesses with freelancers in the target country. Platform pricing starts at USD 2.3 cents per word.Key customers and partnershipsAs of October 2024, the platform served over 80,000 clients, including eBay, Otto and RVshare. The company also had 100,000+ registered freelancers on the platform as of October 2024.

Textbroker

Procurement Freelancers provides freelancers for procurement functions such as sourcing/category management, quality control and assurance, and advisory. Its algorithm calculates the relevance between experts' skills and client briefs by scoring criteria like skills, experience, and language. It prioritizes search criteria based on user preferences to deliver the most accurate match.The platform is free to use for freelancers, while clients purchase subscriptions to hire and manage freelancers at no added cost.In March 2019, the company acquired Dragon Sourcing, a procurement and sourcing service provider.Key competitors: None under coverage. (The platform connects enterprises with procurement-based freelancers)

Procurement Freelancers

Kolabtree is a UK-based freelancer marketplace connecting businesses and scientists. The platform provides businesses with skills such as data analysis, product development, scientific consulting, desk research, and other science related services within 24 hours of receiving business requests.Kolabtree also provides concierge services for writing, with fees ranging from USD 2,000 to USD 4,000, depending on the timeline. Similarly, its concierge services for statistical analysis are priced between USD 250 and USD 625, also based on the timeline.The company generates revenue via a 20% service fee charged to the freelancers based on the total project invoice.Key customers and partnershipsAs of October 2024, Kolabtree served over 3,200 businesses including notable enterprises such as NASA, Volkswagen and Moderna. Further, the platform had over 20,000 scientists and experts as of October 2024.Key competitors:&nbsp;None under coverage. (Kolabtree offers a freelancing platform connecting enterprises with scientists).

kolabtree

Codersera is a freelance marketplace for enterprises to find software engineers. The company claims to provide the top 1% of developers through its five tier vetting process. The platform’s freelancers cover a spectrum of developer and data science technologies such as iOS, Android, Python, and Java. Additionally, freelancers provide SaaS platform development, testing and QA services and migration away from legacy systems.Key customers and partnershipsAs of October 2024, the platform had over 20,000 vetted freelancers and 100+ clients on its platform.

Codersera Inc

Upwork is an online labor marketplace that assists in engaging freelancers and businesses in discovering direct labor arrangements for both short and long-term projects. Upwork’s roots date back to 1998 and 2003 when online talent marketplaces Elance and oDesk were founded. In December 2013, Elance and oDesk announced its merger with a combined freelancer base of over 8 million (5 million from oDesk and 3 million from Elance). Subsequent to the merger, Elance-oDesk continued to report losses and required a bailout package of USD 30 million from Benchmark Capital in November 2014. The company was rebranded as Upwork in May 2015.&nbsp;Unlike Fiverr, Upwork encourages freelancers to develop a profile focused on specific expertise, helping them build a niche reputation. Fiverr, on the other hand, allows freelancers to offer a wide range of services through individual gigs, enabling them to market multiple skill sets simultaneously. In&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16664">February 2023</a> Upwork expanded its offerings to include full-time hiring for businesses with features such as finding, vetting, hiring, onboarding, and paying professionals for full-time work arrangements.&nbsp; Additionally, in&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24502">December 2023</a>, Upwork launched Chat Pro, a GPT-4-powered app in beta, to enhance work efficiency. In&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/35568">October 2024</a>, Upwork introduced&nbsp; Uma, an AI assistant, the Business Plus plan for Expert-Vetted talent, Featured Jobs, and Boosted Profiles. At the time, the company also announced a 21% workforce&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/35569">reduction</a> aiming to save USD 60 million annually.Upwork also offers several solutions to streamline hiring: Talent Scout, connecting clients with pre-vetted freelancers; the Work Marketplace and Project Catalog for easy hiring; and the Virtual Talent Bench, which helps businesses build and maintain a network of freelancers for ongoing collaboration.The company generates revenue via a 10% project fee charged from clients, and freelancer subscriptions priced at USD 20 per month.In&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/03/upwork-ceo-on-ipo-day-we-do-not-incentivize-for-less-pay-for-freelancers.html">October 2018</a>, Upwork listed on the NASDAQ to raise approximately USD 187 million. In FY2023, Upwork generated USD 689 million in revenue (up 11% YoY). The company guided FY2024 revenue between USD 760 million to USD 780 million, representing 11.7% YoY growth at the midpoint. Diluted earnings per share (EPS) stood at USD 0.13 in FY2023, compared to a loss per share of USD 0.69 in FY2022.Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;The company recorded 868,000 active clients as of August 2024, with notable clients including Microsoft, Airbnb and NASDAQ, among others.In&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33129">August 2024,</a> Upwork partnered with Beeline to&nbsp;integrate its talent pool into Beeline’s vendor management system (VMS), offering access to over 10,000 professionals across 125+ categories. Previously, in&nbsp;<a href="https://investors.upwork.com/news-releases/news-release-details/upwork-partners-catch-expand-freelancers-access-benefits">January 2022</a>, the company partnered with Catch to offer freelancers access to personal payroll and healthcare benefits.&nbsp;

Upwork

Platforms that provide expertise in specialized areas such as law and scientific research.

Platforms that provide expertise in writing, translation, and editing.

Platforms that provide marketing expertise across email, SEO, and social media marketing functions.

Platforms that offer expertise related to web, mobile and software development with freelance developers fluent across major programming languages.

Platforms that focus on offering expertise in design and creative functions such as photography, video editing, and animation.

Platforms that offer expertise across multiple verticals such as design and creative, web, mobile and software development, finance, and marketing.

Solutions use AI/Ml for to match freelancers with clients and to vet freelancers

Some solutions introduced by players in this hub are using a B2B SaaS model

Catalant

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