Press Release Summary: Peopleperhour.com CEO Xenios Thrasyvoulou says he can make small and medium sized businesses work smarter by using his leading online skills marketplace to get freelancers bidding to do work.
Press Release Body: Peopleperhour.com CEO Xenios Thrasyvoulou says he can make small and medium sized businesses work smarter by using his leading online skills marketplace to get freelancers bidding to do work. Because it\'s a bidding system, business buyers get work done at keen prices. And because the service providers are focused on specific tasks, businesses are only paying for the work done, not the time that regular staff might spend hanging round the water cooler. Job done!
For the freelance businesses that do the work, the secure online payment system backed by an escrow guarantee means they get paid in days for the work. The system pays out for work done so fast that small businesses and freelancers can use PeoplePerHour.com as a quick cash generator to plug imminent cash flow gaps.
PeoplePerHour.com Background Information PeoplePerHour are already the UK leaders for the online skills market. To date over 1,200 projects posted by UK businesses on PeoplePerHour.com have been successfully completed by a selection of 3,700+ registered providers from the UK (49%), and (in decreasing order) from US, India, Argentina and Spain, enabling UK small businesses to tap into a global labour market. Founded in 2007 by two Cambridge graduates: Xenios Thrasyvoulou and Simos Kitiris, PeoplePerHour.com are targeting an estimated £5 billion opportunity. That’s based on the Federation of Small Business (FSB) figures for 2006 showing the total annual spend on part-time, agency workers and casual labour in the UK across all businesses was £70 billion a year. 4.4 million small businesses in the UK are currently growing by 10% annually and account for 35% of the UK workforce, but only 44% of the small business workforce is in full-time employment. Buyers choose from an average of five bids per project posted and in many cases can access CV, photo, description, sample work and referee contact details. PeoplePerHour.com ensures providers get paid on completion through a combination of their unique escrow facility plus PayPal. The company has already attracted £350,000 of seed investment from prominent angel investors and is in discussions with a number of VCs. PeoplePerHour practises what it preaches. Their team consists of developers in India, designers in the US, a virtual assistant, PR agent and bookkeeper – all from the site. Busiest work categories are (in descending order): Web Development & Programming, Design, Admin Support, Writing (including Translations and Transcriptions), Marketing & PR, and Research. The typical buyer runs a small business (usually less than 20 people). No sectoral bias: companies seem to vary from boutique financial firms, Internet companies, property and PR agencies. See PeoplePerHour in action on http://www.peopleperhour.com
2012
