Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/124894
HRO Today Forum Europe Everything you see on 3Desk today, plus a lot of pieces behind the scenes has been built by Raz single-handedly. No mean feat, I assure you. However, perhaps more important than his ability, is that Raz has acres of integrity and emotional intelligence. With that piece in place, we began testing our ideas, releasing small, rough and ready, prototypes. Over the last year, these have morphed, been polished, and evolved into the platform you can see today. We've still many features we want to complete, but it's been a fantastic start, with more than 270,000 users signing up and, of course, the win at the iTalent Competition confirming our hunch, that we're building something pretty special. 3Desk addresses a model for face-to-face freelancers. Did you see a need for that in the marketplace? I've used other platforms like Elance for some time, but felt that it was a 'race-to-the-bottom' in terms of price, with the 'remote' aspect encouraging people to shop around because of price, rather than value. I also knew from my days running a recruitment business that the contract—and the permanent—recruiting industries were in desperate need of innovation. I spoke to a number of friends who confirmed my belief that there was a huge amount of inefficiency in the market. One freelancer reported that companies she was working for would spend thousands of their budget flying her around in order to secure her work for them. Was she so special? Yes—and no: She felt project managers tended to rest on their laurels and rely on their personal networks. Plus it was awful time consuming to look for others. Another temporary worker reported difficulty tracking business development—feast one month, famine the next. We think that an efficient market for freelancers who work face-to-face could enable people to work the way they want to, with the people the want to, when they want to. We also spoke to loads of employers who said that they wanted the flexibility to be able to hire people too, so there was a real demand for both sides to be connected, but no one and nowhere doing it well. Both sides are spending considerable time and effort finding one another, making the market much less useful than it could be. Do you have a goal for the number of freelancers on 3Desk and employers using it? A great marketplace is a liquid marketplace—where employers can easily find what they need and all freelancers are able to find work. Like eBay is for goods, where you know if you've something to sell you'll almost always find a buyer if you set the right price, iTalent Competition emcee Bill Boorman with winner Raz Dinu of 3Desk we want to do the same for freelancers. Obviously, that takes a lot of users. We're not driven by user numbers, but more by the total value we can provide. We're a for-profit business on a social mission: to use technology to make a difference. How are you encouraging that? We've just completely re-designed the user profile to create a place where freelancers can demonstrate their skills, projects, and past work. Our aim is for freelancers to create a profile (much like they would on LinkedIn) before, or better still instead of, building their own website. Profiles are enabled to include work history, education, endorsements, and be shared through social networking sites. We've also got a vibrant LinkedIn group— freelancers that work face-to-face—that has helped us share and explore ideas and get feedback. What does the future look like for 3Desk? Our goal is to use Raz's mega-brains and talent, and my, well, stubbornness, to maximise the social good we can enable. We've made a great start, attracted some incredible people, investors and advisors. Now we need to try to do everything we can to maximise the value we provide to our users and see if we can make being a freelancer and finding new work a pleasure rather than a pain. How was your experience at the iTalent competition? We met a whole bunch of fantastic people. We also managed to 'validate' our idea and have a lot of very smart people tell us we're on to something. We knew that already, but to have it confirmed is wonderful. I think the contingent market has been neglected, and we're doing cool things that the judges saw were innovative across the board. In fact, much of what we're doing applies to the permanent market, but we need to stay focussed. This is a big endeavor. WINTER 2013 | www.hroglobal.com [35]