Rev Ceo Jason Chicola Odesk

Rev.com, a freelancer marketplace founded by early oDesk employees, is today announcing $4.5 1000000 in Serial A funding led by Venky Ganesan of Globespan Capital Partners. Likewise participating in the round were Craig Sherman (onetime COO of Ancestry.com) and Austin Ligon (founder of CarMax). All three are now members of Rev.com'south board of directors, following the round which closed back in Baronial 2012.

The visitor had really been quietly operating nether different branding for the past couple of years, simply today it's at present publicly launching as "Rev.com." It'southward a name that co-founder and CEO Jason Chicola explains is meant to reflect the company'south focus on using engineering science to increment the turnaround speed on customers' projects.

Chicola says that the idea for Rev.com was inspired by his fourth dimension at oDesk, a well-known freelancer marketplace. He started the site with co-founder Josh Breinlinger, likewise of oDesk, but who is no longer involved at Rev.com day-to-mean solar day. (He's currently a venture partner at Sigma Westward, but still sits on Rev.com's board.)

"We saw work-from-dwelling as a huge trend – and we remember it's barely in its commencement inning – just we too saw means to do it better," says Chicola of the original inspiration. "What we observed is that the thing that makes piece of work-from-home tough for businesses is that it'due south actually hard to manage workers who are far abroad."

Businesses have a tough time interacting with people who are overseas and in different fourth dimension zones, he explains. There is also the hassle involved with having to select the all-time workers from a large puddle of possible freelancers, leaving business customers unsure of what the final results will be.

To solve the former challenge, Rev.com steps in to act as middleman, managing the freelancer workers itself. And as for the latter, it focuses on screening workers in advance, and proofreading their projects upon completion. The company doesn't let in everyone like many freelancer sites do, merely instead but accepts effectually 10 percentage of those who apply. Applicants have to pass a formal screening process involving tests indicative of the types of jobs Rev.com offers. A second pool of pre-qualified freelancers works then makes certain that the quality of these workers' efforts remain loftier past proofing and grading projects upon completion.

Today, the company is focused on two areas: audio transcriptions and translations. Only information technology's planning to abound its services lineup to include other popular work-from-abode job types in the near future. Pricing for these services is displayed on Rev.com'southward homepage. (It'southward $1 per min. transcription; 12 cents per word business translation; $33 per page certified translation). Rev.com takes its cut of each projection, paying workers a little over one-half of what it charges businesses for the work performed.

Chicola explains that what makes Rev.com different from other freelancer marketplaces isn't simply the way its business is structured – it's the focus on developing an online technology platform that helps freelancers speed up and streamline their processes. For example, the transcription production that Rev.com offers freelance workers will have special features designed for their needs, similar ways to rewind the audio past a set number of seconds, tools to speedily denote each speaker's name while transcribing, ways to create shortcuts for words that announced often or are complex terms that could be easily misspelled, and more than.

Plus, he adds, "past having this transcription surroundings in our browser, the worker doesn't have to download the file separately and upload it somewhere else…they can just play and go." Chicola says its platform is about "half washed," but continuing to build out the production is one of the key things the new funding volition be put towards.

In gild to attract talent, Rev.com focuses on giving workers more than jobs and helping them complete those jobs more quickly, though Chicola admits that Rev.com doesn't pay the most on a per-task footing.

"On nearly sites that are out there, workers spend half their fourth dimension or more looking for piece of work – that'southward time they're not getting paid," he says. "We designed our whole system to keep them busy. If we can go on them college utilized, they can make more than money per week than somewhere else." He also notes that at Rev.com, the goal is also to offer freelancers a "nice" place to work, where they can make friends, have a good social surround, where they think it'due south fair, and where they tin become recognized for their work.

Today, Rev.com translators make on average around $1,000 per month part-time, while some of the busier workers make upwardly to $4,000 per calendar month. Transcriptionists tend to make around a quarter of that.

Equally noted to a higher place, Rev.com had quietly launched its services in 2010, showtime with translations, followed past transcriptions in late 2011. These were nether dissimilar branding (FoxTranscribe and FoxTranslate). During this open beta of sorts, the visitor grew its user base of operations to include a combined full of around one,000 regular business customers, including Pfizer, VisaNow (global immigration), U.S. Bank, NYU, Land O' Lakes and Princeton University, as well every bit several government agencies, such as the National Park Service and U.South. Small Business Administration. On the transcription side in particular, 20 percent of its user base is the media, which uses information technology for transcribing interviews.

The company will proceed its product development and hire additional engineers. Interested users can sign up here for Rev.com services.

Rev Ceo Jason Chicola Odesk,

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/26/founded-by-early-odesk-employees-freelancer-marketplace-rev-com-raises-4-5-million-series-a/

Posted by: harrisonexpleseeptes.blogspot.com

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