Upwork Founder: The 5 People That Made Upwork What it Is Today?
Are you curious about who is the Upwork Founder and how this company has become one of the largest freelance marketplaces in the world? then you are in the right place. I will explain the origin, history, and progress of the Upwork company in this article.
Upwork is one of the world’s largest and most reliable freelance marketplaces. Every day, thousands of freelancers are joining the Upwork market, and the competition is increasing daily. Upwork is one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential Companies of the Year in 2023.
When Upwork was founded?
Upwork Company was founded by merging two companies named Elance and oDesk. Elance was founded in 1998, and oDesk was founded in 2003.
In 2013-2014, Elance and oDesk companies merged into one company, whose name became Upwork later in 2015.
Who founded Upwork?
As Upwork company was founded as a merging of two companies, there are more founders of Upwork whose names are shown below:
How was Elance founded?
In 1998, Elance was founded by the three entrepreneurs Beerud Sheth, Sanjay Noronha, and Srini Anumolu. These entrepreneurs were living in a two-bedroom apartment in Jersey City.
Beerud Sheth shared the company’s origin on the 100x Entrepreneur podcast before starting Elance. This podcast episode was entitled “Beerud Sheth on Building Elance & Gupshup”.
According to Beerud Sheth, “It was in the mid-90s when something dramatic was happening in the tech world. The Internet was just being born. So, there was great transformation going on with many industries to become digitalized”.
Sheth says, “I liked my business experience on Wall Street, but I didn’t want to end up decades later when something as dramatic as the Internet was happening, asking myself: What were you doing? I was on the sidelines and wanted to be in the game.” So, ultimately Sheth came up with the idea of Elance.
Sheth says, “There are many talented people in the world, and I could see all the technical and the social transformation that was driving due to the Internet. The main purpose was to connect people in places who could previously not communicate with each other. And it was my Wall Street experience that made me realize that I could create a marketplace of any kind.
So, Sheth and his co-founders have these three ideas: a global talent pool, the Internet to connect them, and a marketplace to facilitate the transactions and give the first online freelance marketplace to the world.
Now Sheth is the CEO and Co-founder of Gupshup, the smart messaging platform for developers. Similarly, Noronha is a part of the Engineering Leadership team at Meta (Facebook) and Anumolu went to create TutorVista and the BigBites.
How was oDesk founded?
oDesk was founded in 2003 by the co-founders Odysseas Tsatalos and Stratis Karamanlakis.
ODesk is a short version of “No Desk” and enables everyone to work from anywhere according to the company’s intent.
Tsatalos and Karamanlakis came up with the idea of establishing oDesk while employed at other companies. They built the company on their credit cards before receiving funding from Gary Swart. Gary Swart later went on to become the CEO of oDesk.
How do Elance and oDesk merge?
Elance was focusing on fixed-price projects, and oDesk was focusing on hourly. In 2013, Elance and oDesk management realized that instead of competing, they should merge and become stronger. So, the merged company operated under the name Elance-oDesk for a short period, and then they renamed their company Upwork in 2015.
How Upwork works?
Upwork is one of the most reliable freelance marketplaces. Upwork allows clients to interview freelancers and hire and work with freelancers and freelance agencies. On Upwork, the client posts a job with the description of the job and a price range that they are willing to pay for a freelancer to complete the job. The client can also invite specific freelancers to apply for their jobs. They can also post the job for any freelancer interested in applying. When the client has chosen who they want to complete the job, they hire that freelancer by sending a contract with the set hours, rate per hour or project, and a deadline for the work to be completed.
Upwork platform also has a real-time chat feature that clients or freelancers can use to message prospects. Upwork’s time tracker application records freelancers’ activities related to the project and takes screenshots to be submitted to their clients.
Current Management of Upwork
Hayden Brown is the President and the Chief Executive Officer of Upwork. Other management includes the following
Do You want to learn more details about Upwork? Then you must go through the below link to better understand Upwork.
How you can make money on Upwork?