Y Combinator is a startup accelerator that provides funding and mentorship to early-stage companies. It offers a program where startups receive guidance from experienced entrepreneurs and investors. The organization helps founders in their business models and develop their products. Y Combinator serves industries such as technology, healthcare, and finance.

Y Combinator

AltaIR Capital manages funds that invest in the world's most promising companies with disruptive ideas and great return potential. They invest in early and growth stage startup companies in various sectors. Its portfolio companies represent key players of the startup industry, top incubator graduates, and promising teams.

AltaIR Capital

Airtree is a venture capital firm backing Aussie and Kiwi founders, building the iconic technology companies of tomorrow. We’re powered by our network, dedicating extraordinary resources to help founders shortcut company-building firsts and accelerate their journey from idea to global household name. As one of the largest and most active early-stage investors in Australia and New Zealand, Airtree’s 100+ portfolio features the region’s breakout tech companies, including Canva, Go1, Employment Hero, Pet Circle, Immutable and Linktree.

Airtree Ventures

Zeno Ventures invests in early stage technology enabled companies addressing consumer and enterprise markets. Zeno Ventures likes to back exceptional entrepreneurs before their businesses have scaled and often even before their business models are formed.   Zeno Ventures seeks to partner with talented and passionate founders solving difficult problems that were illuminated by their personal experience.

Zeno Partners

Firstrock Capital is a VC firm that combines its investments with in-house services to help entrepreneurs reach their goals faster.

Firstrock Capital

Alumni Ventures Group provides high-quality, diversified venture portfolios to individual investors who previously haven't had access to VC. It helps accredited alums from top entrepreneurial schools invest together in the ventures of fellow alums. The firm backs companies with an alumni connection and an institutional lead investor with expertise in the space. AVG also offers focused funds that allow any accredited investor access to a venture portfolio, diversified by type, sector, stage, and geography. Beth Obermiller, Michael Madden, and Mike Collins co-founded the firm in Manchester, New Hampshire in 2013.

Alumni Ventures

Green D Ventures is a community of accredited Dartmouth alums who pool money into a VC fund to invest in Dartmouth-connected companies. Simply put, they believe they can invest better together than they can alone. They create a diverse portfolio for their investors, co-investing with leading VC funds across industry, stage, and geography. Their goal is to raise a new fund each year that benefits entrepreneurs, the school's ecosystem, and their investors.

Green D Ventures

Basis Set Ventures is an early-stage investment firm focused on artificial intelligence and its practical application. It focuses on seed and Series A investments, writing checks typically between $1 million and $3 million. The firm invests in enterprise companies, concentrating on scalable infrastructure, collaboration tools, automated workflows, and autonomous machines. Lan Xuezhao headquartered Basis Set Ventures in San Francisco, California in 2017.

Basis Set Ventures

We invest in great companies in the pre-seed and seed stages.

Yes VC

Jelix Ventures invests in world class Australian and New Zealand tech startups with sector insiders. Jelix invest in visionary young technology companies to accelerate growth and focus on globally scalable businesses positioned to disrupt traditional markets with innovative technology, led by tenacious entrepreneurs. Jelix is led by startup sector insiders, both experienced investors and entrepreneurs.

Jelix Ventures

Snappr

Snappr is the one-stop-shop for visual content creation, including the largest on-demand photography and photo editing marketplace. Snappr Shoots is a self-service application to book photographers. Snappr Workflows is a SaaS product for enterprises to automate their visual content pipeliness. Snappr also provides free tools such as the Snappr Photo Analyzer, an AI portrait photo-analysis tool. Snappr was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Snappr is a freelance marketplace for photographers, which claims to be the world’s largest on-demand content creation network. The platform is a graduate of the 2017 Y Combinator winter cohort. The platform allows businesses and consumers to instantly book on-demand photographers for various events. Further, the company claims it accepts only 5% of the freelancer applicants into its platform.&nbsp;

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

Online Freelancing Platforms

Snappr acquires Pretty Instant

Snappr is a freelance marketplace for photographers, which claims to be the world’s largest on-demand content creation network. The platform is a graduate of the 2017 Y Combinator winter cohort. The platform allows businesses and consumers to instantly book on-demand photographers for various events. Further, the company claims it accepts only 5% of the freelancer applicants into its platform.&nbsp;The company offers Snappr Workflows, a software suite designed for businesses seeking to automate large-scale visual content production. It also provides Snappr AI, a GenAI image creation service specifically tailored for the food and beverage and e-commerce industries.Snapper made two notable acquisitions in the past. In April 2018, it acquired Australian online directory for photographers, Photography.com.au. The directory had a customer base of 5,000 at the time of the acquisition. In August 2020, Snapper acquired Eversnap, a provider of professional wedding photography services launched in 2014, who, at the time of the acquisition, had around 1 million users.&nbsp; The two acquisitions bolster Snappr’s goal of being the go-to brand for photography services.Snappr generates revenue via a 5% service fee charged on users who book photographers on its platform.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsAs of October 2024, Snappr stated that over half of the Fortune 500 companies use one of their products.

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

Snappr

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