The gig economy has disrupted industries from ride-Hailing to quick-service restaurants. The pay and benefits side of the equation is one of the downsides of contract work. The force of will and unit economics have catapulted it into the mainstream.
The global gig economy generated an estimated $204 billion in gross volume in 2019. The volume is expected to grow by 17%.
The gig economy is a net positive for both workers and employers, according to a number of entrepreneurs. A.Team was founded by Raphael Ouzan and Kobi Matsri in early 2020.
The traditional gig economy wasn't an answer for highly skilled tech workers since it was so commoditizing and capped with simple tasks. Team is the core unit of work of the knowledge economy and has never been productized in the world of online work.
Product teams are built with A. Team.
Ouzan claims that A. Team, which emerged from stealth with $60 million in funding, differs from traditional gig platforms in that it brings world-class product builders together as cloud-based teams and connect them with companies that had meaningful beginnings.
The tech industry was hit by layoffs at the start of the Pandemic. Ouzan says that thousands of engineers, designers, and product managers signed up to build products.
As product specialists were able to work from home, the company grew.
A.Team used its own network and full-time staff to build and expand its platform. Ouzan said the TeamGraph was created by contractors and full-timers to piece together product teams for companies. The TeamGraph is a semantic graph that attempts to establish the relationships between industry experience, skills, roles, and expertise, pulling data from a range of sources and using machine learning to improve the graph with inputs from A. Team. Customers can rate the A. Team members they are working with and members to rate each other honestly.
The team users are interested in behavioral data, not just self- reported data. Ouzan said it was like a smart inbox for teams and missions. We make sure the recommendations are blind to demographic or location data.
A.Team provides recommendations to gig searchers and teams, as well as leaning on connections, skill sets, and projects to identify top matches, like any other jobs platform.
A.Team is popularizing the idea of elastic resourcing by way of cloud-based teams, which will make companies and builders more resilient to potential market downswings. Ouzan argues that it is a smarter way to scale for growth.
A.team has created this image.
There is conflicting evidence on this. While it is true that many professionals quit their full-time jobs for contract work during the Pandemic, surveys show that the benefits and perks that come along with the work are still very desirable. In certain industries, such as health care, a greater reliance on contract workers has not been proven to insulate companies against economic downturns.
Ouzan asserts that the tech industry is unique in its orientation around product lifecycles, which calls for niche expertise. In addition to bringing products from idea to production, companies can use A.Team to inject missing skills into product teams, or deliver supplementary teams to work on additional lines of business.
There are 25 new company clients joining the platform every month. According to Ouzan, revenue grew 7.4x in 2021, and gross merchandise value recently crossed $42 million, thanks to a customer base that includes The Economist. As A.Team prepares to onboard 100 new companies per month, it remains to be seen whether the flexibility and pay will continue to attract workers to the platform. It is a delicate balancing act with gig marketplaces. Early on in the Pandemic, a flood of newly-jobless employees cut deeply into gig worker incomes.
Ouzan said that companies can elastically scale up and down their product resources based on the mission at hand and stage of product development. They make an average of $130 per hour on missions that last 12 to 19 months. The starting point for making $100,000 a year on Fiverr is A. Team.
A.Team received a $55 million Series A round co-led by Tiger Global Management and Insight Partners, as well as a $5 million seed round. The seed round was led by NFX, with participation from a former Upwork CEO and co-founder of Fiverr.
Ouzan says that the capital will be used to expand the core A. Team platform and create an environment for independent product builders, companies, partners, and investors. The company currently employs 75 people between staffers and contract and expects to grow that number to 170 by 2021.
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