Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / HourlyNerd's Biederman on the Future of the Gig Economy (Audio)

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HourlyNerd's Biederman on the Future of the Gig Economy (Audio) · Bloomberg Intelligence

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  Speaker 1: Now on Bloomberg Radio, we take stock of small business.
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  Speaker 1: Small businesses want to be able to grow, but that
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  Speaker 1: runs up against the challenge they're getting from Washington. If
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  Speaker 1: we're going to become relevant in the national stage, we
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  Speaker 1: had to do something transformational. So things brought. Small businesses
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  Speaker 1: want more streamlining and less red take small businesses preferring
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  Speaker 1: years and they can even except the no, but maybe
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  Speaker 1: kill them. There's so many people that have ideas and
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  Speaker 1: it has to be more than that. It has to
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  Speaker 1: be making it real. Bloomberg taking stock small Business in
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  Speaker 1: Focus on Bloomberg Radio Small Business in Focus, I'm pim
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  Speaker 1: fox Are these are not small businesses Fiser, Staples, g E,
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  Speaker 1: and Microsoft, But what do they all have in common?
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  Speaker 1: They've turned to a company called hourly Nerd for help
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  Speaker 1: in a lot of their business practices. Joining me to
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  Speaker 1: tell us more is Rob Biederman. He is the co
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  Speaker 1: founder and the chief executive officer of hourly Nerd. They're
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  Speaker 1: based in Boston, home to Bloomberg twelve hundred and he
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  Speaker 1: can be followed on Twitter at our ly Nerd and Rob,
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  Speaker 1: thanks very much for being with us. Thanks so much
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  Speaker 1: for having me all right here, We all right, So
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  Speaker 1: I've already told people your deepest dark at secrets that
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  Speaker 1: you like Aussie Shepherds and capital efficient scaling, but you
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  Speaker 1: don't like bureaucracy and carbon hydrates. Let's talk about bureaucracy
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  Speaker 1: for a second and how hourly Nerd fits into larger
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  Speaker 1: bureaucracies like a General Electric and Microsoft. What do you
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  Speaker 1: do for these large companies? So we're companies have gotten
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  Speaker 1: to in SI is a point where they don't have
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  Speaker 1: the talent they need to execute on their strategy and
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  Speaker 1: they are out of options. So they've been trying with
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  Speaker 1: full time employees for more than a hundred years now
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  Speaker 1: and with the with the supplied talent market is saying
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  Speaker 1: back to them these days is that they want to
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  Speaker 1: work in a completely different way where the software that
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  Speaker 1: powers that that new way of working. So give us
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  Speaker 1: an example of a project or a business that has
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  Speaker 1: used hourly Nerd and what did they accomplish? Sure, so
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  Speaker 1: you know we work with about ten percent of the
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  Speaker 1: fortune one thousand um. We obviously can't speak about specific
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  Speaker 1: projects for specific clients, but it's assume that we work
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  Speaker 1: with some of the leading carbonated beverage manufacturers who have
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  Speaker 1: gotten really good at selling sugar water carbonated sugar water,
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  Speaker 1: you know, for in some cases a hundred years. What
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  Speaker 1: they found out today is that consumers want different things.
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  Speaker 1: They want authentic and they want organic products, and we
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  Speaker 1: have the best experts on how to manage that transition
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  Speaker 1: into a generic project would be help us understand how
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  Speaker 1: we can market to millennials better, how we can inject
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  Speaker 1: organic products into our into our Skew catalog, and how
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  Speaker 1: can we be bit relevant to an entirely new, different
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  Speaker 1: type of consumer that historically has um has lost interest
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  Speaker 1: in our core product. So basically, what are you providing.
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  Speaker 1: You're providing these experts, these consultants who have experience, and
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  Speaker 1: you're providing them an opportunity to connect with UH business
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  Speaker 1: plans and potential customers at a fraction of what would
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  Speaker 1: be a considered a traditional price. That's exactly right. We
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  Speaker 1: provide the talent and technology to get things done. So
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  Speaker 1: historically you probably would have called a global consulting firm
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  Speaker 1: to answer a question like the one that I described Today,
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  Speaker 1: you can go over to a very easy to use,
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  Speaker 1: convenient website and find some of the world's experts and
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  Speaker 1: these things potentially within minutes. Or hours. So if if
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  Speaker 1: I had a company, and I had five thousand dollars
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  Speaker 1: worth of seed capital, maybe I'm working on a Harvard
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  Speaker 1: Business School class project. Uh, and you wanted to grow
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  Speaker 1: that five thousand into a twelve and a half million
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  Speaker 1: what would I do? How would I How would your
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  Speaker 1: site help me? So we would be able to connect
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  Speaker 1: you to somebody who had helped businesses exactly like yours scale.
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  Speaker 1: So it sounded like you were talking about us. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: well I am told, I mean, I I am, I mean,
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  Speaker 1: I know you started this as a Harvard Business School
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  Speaker 1: class project in with just five thousand dollars a seed capital.
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  Speaker 1: So yeah, so what you would find on our platform
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  Speaker 1: for that that generic company, they would find somebody who
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  Speaker 1: maybe worked in venture capital or had previously raised money themselves,
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  Speaker 1: would be able to tell you exactly what you needed
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  Speaker 1: to do to succeed, and nothing more, No full time
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  Speaker 1: on site, none of the bundling. The answer to your
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  Speaker 1: question delivered electronically very quickly. And what about managing the
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  Speaker 1: actual business? You provide that kind of service as well. Yeah, absolutely,
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  Speaker 1: it's a full stack. We have more than twenty seven
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  Speaker 1: thousand people on our platform, So any project need that
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  Speaker 1: you might have at your company, we can fulfill it.
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  Speaker 1: It's the magic of a large and global network where
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  Speaker 1: anything that any business might come across, somebody on our
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  Speaker 1: platform has done it. More than likely several thousand of
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  Speaker 1: them have. And what about things like fundraising or trying
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  Speaker 1: to raise new capital for a business. What kind of
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  Speaker 1: expertise do you bring there? That's a very common project
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  Speaker 1: for some of our mid range companies. So most of
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  Speaker 1: our businesses with the fortune one thousand, but we do
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  Speaker 1: see companies in the fifty million dollar range who are
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  Speaker 1: having serious corporate finance questions but fall below the scale
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  Speaker 1: required to work with a leading investment bank. So what
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  Speaker 1: they get on our platform is somebody who may have
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  Speaker 1: just left Goldman Sachs or Barclays who can be a
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  Speaker 1: really important value add contributor to their team, completely flexibly
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  Speaker 1: and on demand. And what about the side the bidding
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  Speaker 1: for projects the experts bid to take on the on
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  Speaker 1: this work, We believe strongly in markets. We think that
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  Speaker 1: if you're transparent and you have a bunch of folks
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  Speaker 1: competing to serve on a given project, you'll drive a
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  Speaker 1: great outcome for the client because they get to see
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  Speaker 1: a variety of options at what we usually see as
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  Speaker 1: a variety of prices. Interestingly, we don't see the low
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  Speaker 1: price win every time. Sometimes people prefer the person who
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  Speaker 1: might be slightly more expensive but has, you know, potentially
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  Speaker 1: even more expertise and just quickly you raised twenty two
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  Speaker 1: million dollars in a series see funding round led by
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  Speaker 1: General Catalyst Partners and Highland Capital Partners. Congratulations, thanks very much,
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  Speaker 1: thanks for having me on. Rob Biederman is the co
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  Speaker 1: founder and the chief executive officer of our elite nerd.
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  Speaker 1: They're based in Boston, home to Bloomberg. I'm Pim Fox
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  Speaker 1: and this is Bloomberg.