#33: Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman on Freelancing, Building a Marketplace, and Growing a Startup

About the Episode:

In today’s episode, we’re talking to Micha Kaufman, the Founder, and CEO at Fiverr—the world’s largest and fastest growing freelance marketplace, built around the concept of hiring people to complete short-term gigs for you.

Most of you are familiar with Fiverr. They originally got started back in 2010 before freelancing really exploded onto the scene as such an attractive career path for millennials, in particular.

Fiverr’s famous for originally starting out by encouraging freelancers to offer their most basic service at just $5 dollars, and to use more premium add-ons as a way to increase their project values.

Because of how simple the concept was, and the speed at which you can hire help—as Micha says, “Making hiring freelancers as easy as buying on Amazon,” the business pretty much instantly exploded in popularity.

Before starting Fiverr, Micha was already a serial entrepreneur, having started three previous technology companies and Fiverr was born as an experiment—an attempt to solve the problem of quickly hiring talented freelance help within his own businesses.

In Today’s Episode, we talk about:

[02:28] What book Micha is reading at the moment.
[04:16] What led to the founding of Fiverr.
[11:49] Whether Fiverr was a side project.
[15:02] How Fiverr got it’s first 100 freelancers on board.
[17:44] How Fiverr Pro works.
[15:02] How much you can expect to earn if you’re a Fiverr Pro Seller.
[25:16] Micha’s best piece of advice for freelancers who are just getting started today.

 

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Resources Mentioned:

Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

 

Connect with My Guest:

Fiverr.com

Micha on Twitter and LinkedIn

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In this episode, we talk to Micha Kaufman, the Founder and CEO at Fiverr, the world's largest and fastest growing freelance marketplace. Micha talks about how Fiverr got started, the exact tactics they used to bring in their first 100 users, how they went on to build a marketplace of millions of freelancers, what it's like building a high-growth startup, and more...

 


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6 responses to “#33: Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman on Freelancing, Building a Marketplace, and Growing a Startup”

  1. Allen Kimble Jr. Avatar

    Hi Ryan!

    I am happy to report that I’ve turned to Fiverr many, many times to build Club No-Kill 2027. All of the talents and services that I require are at my fingertips.

    To date, I’ve found help on Fiverr well over 150 times. Fiverr has enabled me as a one-man operation to lay the groundwork for a world class enterprise that is preparing to re-invent the way fundraising is done in the universal animal rescue community.

    Even though I’m currently in the launch phase, I will continue relying upon the services and talents of Fiverr during my ten-year journey to move the world towards achieving 100% no-kill of healthy pets in animal shelters.

    Allen Kimble, Jr. and “Vinny the Pug”

    1. Ryan Robinson Avatar

      Awesome to hear, Allen! Thanks for listening in 😊

  2. Dion Lynk Avatar

    Great Episode Ryan!

    You and our fearless leader had such an organic conversation that left no stone unturned! Hearing the passion for Fiverr from our leadership always reignites my fire to continually strive to be; better at business, more efficient in the marketplace and a forward thinking freelancer.

    I like when you asked Micha what advice he’d give a freelancer and he spoke on how scaling down services as opposed to scaling up is how the magic happens as a Fiverr seller. In the early days we could only offer services for only $5, and if you wanted to earn more per gig you’d have to be pretty creative in your description and instruction prompts. This (more than likely unintentionally) caused you to offer way more of your time for less revenue, because the framework had yet to be implemented for logical efficiency.

    We’ve come a very long way as what you can offer now (and how you can offer it) absolutely nails the services as products model that the Fiverr team brilliantly set out to pioneer. The future of work is now and Fiverr is standing firmly at the forefront!

    1. Ryan Robinson Avatar

      Woo! You rock, thanks for tuning in Dion.

      I completely agree with your sentiment—Micha’s done a kickass job of scaling the marketplace over the years, and now that it’s in a position to help freelancers offer more premium services (above the original $5 price point), it’s turned into a more meaningful platform.

  3. DNN Avatar
    DNN

    Fiverr is one of the most successful online freelance websites on the internet. I don’t know the history of website Plenty of Freelancers allegedly Bernie full-time living writing content for them. In turn, freelance workers get to earn a full-time income working from the comfort of a home or laptop.

  4. Sohel Rana Avatar
    Sohel Rana

    Very interesting story and super inspiring!

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