Doing the impossible of scaling an elite FREELANCER platform

The Future of Work or Freelance

The Future of Work is an often discussed topic. Not a day passes without some article or a tweet or a post on social media declaring that the future of work is somewhat gloomy or even hanging in balance. Some brave souls declare that given the certainty of the future of work being uncertain, some sort of Basic Income needs to be established.

However, the human race has redeemed itself time and again and there is reason to believe that it will be the case again. Why am I so confident? Because, humans are freelancing like never before.

According to a World Economic Forum article, the number of Freelancers are supposed to outstrip the number of permanent employees by the year 2027. Not just that, human beings are reinventing and retooling themselves like never before. When everyone is decrying the potential obsolescence of human beings and painting gloomy pictures about the future of work, 55% of Freelancers quietly retooled themselves, making them far more valuable to their clients.

The Future of Work is Safe due to the rise of Freelancing

Leading corporations are now resorting to freelancers to solve many of their challenging issues and matters. From researchers to programmers to marketing executives, companies such as Pfizer and Samsung are leading the pack in hiring freelancers.

Not even COVID-19 has managed to halt the freelancing juggernaut. While there is a temporary dip in freelancing, direct interactions with freelancers reveals that freelancers are being flooded with work and the Work from Home (WFH) phenomenon is only giving greater to fillip to this. WFH has brought in greater number of people to remote work and has thus given a major boost to freelancing.

Raghu’s tyrst with Freelancing and Entrepreneurship

Raghu was a network engineer working for a telecommunications networking firm. Network engineering can be exciting and yet boring at the same time depending upon which part of the industry you worked in. It was in this boring industry that Raghu had an epiphany. To start a consumer oriented business and thus the business of MyWash – home improvement was born.

New Avenues Beckon

Raghu was smart and saw the writing on the wall. He sensed the tanking sentiment and smartly sold his stake, while Hyperlocal was still popular. He eventually found a lucrative career in freelancing making over US$200K in a single year and ended up traveling to more than 30 countries in that time while working as a freelancer.

Raghu discovered the joys of great earnings, excellent work life balance and global travel – a dream for many. That is when he hit upon an idea. The idea of freeing blue blooded professionals to experience the same rewarding path he had taken thru CrewScale.

But the path was anything but straight. How did he scale CrewScale to more than 60K freelancers around the world? It’s all in here.

Here are excerpts from the Episode:

So I think for me, it’s the unfinished journey like so I felt that I couldn’t really finish building a large company.

Raghu Bharat 10:19

But I think the future is like remote and more digital work is what what our thesis is

Raghu Bharat 12:31

Why My wash? What prompted you to do my wash? Because you came from a telecom background? Personally, I love b2c businesses, for a couple of reasons, because of the massive impact it can create and the scale it can accomplish. And if done well, it can transform markets.

Krishna Jonnakadla 23:52

So personally, on Upwork alone, I made probably about 200 K, just in the first year.

Raghu Bharat 47:33

The 1st 2-3 people are the really the hardest

Raghu Bharat 1:04:59

If we put it all together, it comes down to one word, which is impact.

Raghu Bharat 1:26:56

Here’s what the word cloud looks like for this episode

Show Notes:

Follow CrewScale on Twitter: @CrewScale

Follow Maharajas of Scale on Twitter: @maharajasofscale