Let’s Make Freelancer First A Powerful Movement: Here’s How

The early days of freelancing, let’s call it pre-2010, were marked by a relatively small number of experts choosing to operate as independent experts as their fulltime job, and a larger population of moonlighters, working on top of a fulltime job. Most allied themselves with agencies or consultancies, finding opportunity within their network, or by building ongoing relationships with client organizations that knew and trusted them.

These freelancers worked as tech expert and developers, independent management consultants, marketing and advertising experts of various kinds, and a wide array of other professions. Around that time internet analyst Mary Meeker estimated the US freelance population at approximately 15 million.

Fast forward to 2024 and over 60 million experts in the US in various functions and technologies are freelancing either fulltime or moonlighting or working as fractionals or interims. As freelancing grows as an alternative career path, marketplaces are challenged to provide a large percentage of talent with regular work. For example, having over 100,000 verified and deeply experienced independent experts in a community – like Catalant Technologies– is an amazing resource for clients and provides these verified experts with a chance to be discovered, considered, and hired by Catalant clients.

Catalant is among the early pioneers of what recent Forbes articles have called a freelancer first philosophy. It’s not the job of a marketplace to provide full employment. But for Catalant and other large and successful technology-led talent marketplaces, it is deeply in their interest to provide their freelancers with the tools, client-facing opportunities, and supporting services that help them grow their business and achieve greater professional satisfaction and commercial prosperity.

There are a growing number of marketplaces that find the freelancer first philosophy a useful planning concept and have deployed it or a similar view in helpful ways. For example:

• Toptal is well-known for being an engineer-first platform. It only accepts top tech candidates and has a team that helps new freelancers learn the ropes
• Contra, a leading talent marketplace, partners with companies like Framer and Buildship to bring innovative tools to their freelancers and creatives
• Platform partnerships grow talent opportunity as well. Ollo in Brazil, Uncompany in the US and Indielist in Ireland, joined together on a global relationship with a major technology company, benefiting freelancers on all their platforms
• Tools like Gigged.ai’s AI interface helps clients to scope, budget, and contract simply, and that helps freelancers start work sooner

These are a few examples of freelancer first in action. Taken together, they offer a practical framework of strategic choice and action for marketplaces interested in adopting a freelancer first philosophy. First sharing the basic framework, the article then turns to practical implementation:

Taking each element in turn:

1. Helping Clients Be Better Clients

Helping clients be better clients supports freelancers in many ways: more work, more interesting or satisfying work, longer term projects, work that builds credentials, expertise, more regular income, and access to new client networks.

Helping clients be better clients starts with a solid understanding of client’s risk concerns. A recent Forbes article identified the set of concerns or risks that matter to SMB and big corporate clients when they are considering working with a platform. Reducing client risk is foundational to marketplace and freelancer success. When clients feel heard and understood, freelancers benefit from the extended glow of trust.

The data from this pilot study is important for freelance platforms, and may surprise. For example, beyond obviously important concerns like IP and compliance risk, the data identified a need to attend to client’s “New To Me” risk e.g, “Will the platform educate and protect me (as the decision maker). Working with freelancers feels risky. Will you help mitigate the risks to me and my team.”

A second important way to help clients be better clients is to improve client’s understanding of how to effectively work with freelancers, especially at scale. A recent article describes UST’s journey to a blended workforce. The 2021 global survey on freelancing found that fewer than half the 1900 freelancers thought client project managers were typically skilled and effective at working with freelancers. Client education enables more knowledgeable client sponsors and managers and can only help freelancers.

Here are five ways helping clients be better clients also helps freelancers:

• Understand and address client’s key risk concerns (FlexingIt helps clients assess their readiness for freelancers)
• Teach clients to be better clients (Mybasepay offers as a key initiative)
• Practice stronger client relationship management (an area where Virtasant leads)
• Share insights e.g., client appreciation for the value of freelancers (as Solar-Staff is doing for HR)
• Provide tools (like Contra’s workforce management tool) that help clients plan

2. Helping freelancers be better freelancers

Helping freelancers be better freelancers focuses on how marketplaces can enable their talent professionally, financially, and commercially.

The starting point is the marketplace vision of talent and community. Top talent? In what fields? How assessed? How well-represented in profiles? How does the marketplace help freelancers stand out individually ? How engaged is the community and how are community members aided in working or “hunting in packs”. What channels does the marketplace offer for talents to monetize their expertise, for example, podcasts, newsletters, coaching, teaching, and participation in expert networks? In what client segments does the platform show up best?

Helping freelancers access professional services is also important, including financial services that benefit from the size economics of the platform. Credit, insurance, mortgage, and income smoothing as examples. This is a frustration of many freelancers, and why companies like CrediLinq, providing embedded credit to both freelancers and e-commerce SMEs, are growing fast.

A third factor is how well the marketplace helps freelancers as client relationship managers. Data from the Global Survey on Freelancing points out that early success is essential in building confidence and competence. Early career freelancers need different help than those who’ve already established their practice as independents and have experienced success and built a reputation.

Five important actions help freelancers be better freelancers:

• Help freelancers set up their business for success (Wethos and Expert Powerhouse do this well)
• Offer new freelancers early success that builds confidence and competence (Supportwave does this)
• Educate by reinforcing skill and up-to-date know-how (AdevaIT.com offers monthly educational events)
• Provide access to attractive business and financial services (Collective does this)
• More opportunity channels for freelancers e.g., expert network, interim, fractional, influencer, podcasts, education, tools, coaching (as Codemonk does, and its sister company, Innovify)

3. Delivering a better platform experience

When the freelancer first study group – a group of 15 platform CEOs – opined on the elements of client’s and freelancer’s platform experience, their first recommendation was simplicity: make it easy and frictionless for clients and freelancers to interact.

The use of AI in simplification and “making it easy” has been a key ingredient in improving the platform experience explains Alvaro Oliveira, EVP of Andela talent and engineering. And 9am’s CEO Marc Clemens and Uplink’s Manuel Maurer notes that more recent tools are making it easy for clients to search the talent base.

Curation is a second key area for attention. As platforms grow in size and variety, transparency, accuracy, precision, and lack of bias in talent selection become important elements in how the marketplace earns client and freelancer trust.

Improved professionalism is a third key component. An industry-wide client feedback process, the Trusted Talent Partner, was created by the author for another startup but is no longer active. An industry-wide annual survey would help clients and marketplaces have a stronger understanding of key trends as the Global Survey on Freelancing provided in 2021 (There are many good surveys by individual platforms like Malt, but not a unified approach). Humancloud recently pioneered a global freelance trend tracker which will be enormously helpful over time. Transparency in platform membership is another challenge: too many marketplaces have incomplete information on many of their members, who are unlikely to be active members of their talent community.

Five actions help to deliver a better platform experience:

• Reduce friction points (Torc is a leader in improving the platform experience)
• More, better, and easily accessible data available to both freelancers and clients (check out Catalant’s trend report)
• Seek opportunities to “professionalize” e.g., “Trusted Talent Partner Award”
• More transparent, accurate, and bias-free curation
• Engage clients and talent in continuous improvement planning (a.team’s CEO Raphael Ouzman sees this as a key priority)

Where to from here

Growth has quickly come to the freelance revolution. Now established on an impressive growth path, advancing in numbers, client interest, and revenues, its incumbent on freelance marketplaces to seek the rising tide that lifts all boats in the freelancing space, that is increasing their attention to the success, satisfaction, and prosperity of their freelancers.

Freelancer first is a philosophy with the ambition to be a powerful global movement.

Viva la revolution!