Execuvite introduces a virtual marketplace of professional multi-skilled freelancers

It boasts to offer Upwork, BaseCamp and LinkedIn services all combined.

When Dave Osh started an online business in Singapore 10 years ago, he could not afford to engage outsourcing firms, like media agencies or production firms as they were too expensive. As a last resort, he engaged online freelancers around the world using one of the freelancing marketplaces. It worked well for simple tasks, he said, but he ran into big trouble with complex services that required multi-skilled teams. So when he started to experience delays because of communication breakdowns, the results were not good.

Dave said that he wouldn’t have any of these problems if he’s connected with outsourcing firms which can assure the overall quality and are accountable for on-time delivery. However, they are very expensive. He then thought, “What if I could have the reliability of outsourcing firms with the affordability of freelancers?” This idea gave birth to Execuvite.

Execuvite is a platform that enables executives to outsource complex services to teams of multi-skilled freelancers. These teams work like virtual partnerships providing the quality of outsourcing firms at the fraction of the cost. According to Dave, the Partners or freelancing project managers are the secret ingredient. They qualify them based on expertise, experience and management skills and offer them career paths, rewards and recognition.

Dave claims that Execuvite is the first of its kind which boasts of a combination of marketplace, collaboration platform and professional network. Through the platform freelancing project managers (“Partners”) invite freelancers to join their project teams ("Partnerships”). He said that it is like Upwork, BaseCamp and LinkedIn all combined.

So when Dave had convinced James Barwick, co-founder and CTO of Execuvite, to join him, they decided to bootstrap the business until the first round of seed funding.

Dave told SBR that since their enterprise market is primarily in North America and Europe, they naturally applied to a few accelerators in the Silicon Valley. They were admitted to 3 accelerators in US, but then they realized that the new Silicon Valley is now in Singapore.

“Even a Singaporean startup can make a difference in the world. As Singaporean citizens we decided to trust our smart nation and incorporate and launch a global company in and from Singapore. JFDI accelerator invested in Execuvite pre-seed round and was helping us with the preparation for the seed funds round,” said Dave.

Currently, JFDI and the founders have invested $75,000 so far for Execuvite. They are now in the process of raising $1m with a few VCs. Dave remembered that in the beginning of their journey with Execuvite, the toughest challenge that they had to face was to persuade their families to sacrifice the lifestyle they got used to when they were corporate executives.

Over the next six months, while they are completing the development of the platform, they will target small and medium enterprises in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and Singapore. In the following 12 months, they aim to target larger corporations all around the world.

As Dave notes that there is an unprecedented paradigm shift from traditional onsite employment to online freelancing and World Bank Group predicts that gross revenues of online freelancing services will double every 2 years. He claims that Execuvite is the best positioned to take advantage of this growth because they enable the transformation of online freelancers from mismanaged individuals to managed teams.

_______________________

COMPANY PROFILE

Company Name: Execuvite
Founders: Dave Osh and James Barwick
Website: https://execuvite.com/
Total funding at hand: S$75,000
Source of funding: Founders and JFDI
Major investors: JFDI
Start of Operation: August 2015

For startups wanting to be featured, send your message to Lee Anne Babierra at [email protected]