Idea
Braintrust: a no-fee Upwork that pays its network in coin
Andrew Wilkinson describes Braintrust, a freelance marketplace that looks like a polished Upwork but charges no fees. It pays project managers and aligns the network with a token, the way Uber would have if it had granted coin to early drivers, creating lock-in and aligning labor with capital.
“what they do very quietly is they have a coin and so they have a Braintrust coin and they have people who their job is to basically be a project manager on there. Those people get paid in the coin. All the transactions occur in the coin. It's almost like if Uber had issued a coin to all their early drivers,, and then as they participate in the network, they get rich. And so they don't go to Lyft because they're already rich in Uber coin, right? And so it creates this lock-in and it aligns incentives.”
Steal thisIssue tokens to your earliest network participants so their wealth grows with the network and they never defect to a competitor.
Idea
Bolt a $100/month job board onto any audience site
Andrew's classic move: add a job board to a content site as a low-effort revenue stream. On Girlboss it pulled $5K–$10K/month, spun up with jobboardfire.com for ~$100/month plus an Upwork contractor.
“I think that job board, I think it did $5,000 last month. We did $10,000 the month before, and we just use jobboardfire.com, which is like $100 a month to spin it up. And it's one of those things where you're like, wow, that plus some Upwork contractor to help us, you know, administer it. And we made an extra $5,000. Like, why not?”
Steal thisAdd a cheap job board to your audience site as a near-passive add-on revenue stream.
Framework
Productized services: turn a 'service' into a buy-button product
Sam names the pattern: take something normally sold as a custom service, package it so the customer clicks a button and receives a finished output, while you quietly farm the work to Fiverr/Upwork. You're paid to connect dots for people who won't go find the right freelancer themselves.
“Somebody called this, I think, productized services. Basically, it's something that's traditionally done as a service, but you productize it so it seems like, oh, I click this button and I receive this product back, I receive this end output. And underneath the hood, you, you're farming it out to Fiverr and Upwork, and you're just connecting the dots for people that don't know that that's where they should go look.”
Steal thisWrap a manual service in a fixed-scope, fixed-price product with a single buy button and handle fulfillment behind the scenes.
Idea
Sell remote-work perks: cover maids, internet, and Upwork stipends
Steph Smith pitches building a benefits platform for remote companies that funds the things an office used to cover — maids, utilities, internet — plus stipends for services like Upwork so employees offload work they hate.
“I've heard of people buying their employees wine or beer subscriptions, anything from companies actually starting to pay— Maids. Yeah, maids pay for their internet, their utilities. It's like, what are all the things that you would normally pay for? In an office, you're paying for utilities, you're paying for a maid, you're paying for these things to make your employees' lives easier, better.”
Steal thisList every cost an office used to absorb (cleaning, utilities, snacks) and turn each into a remote stipend product.
Idea
An agency staffed by failed YC founders
Shaan pitches turning failed YC startups into a high-end dev-shop talent pool: two-person 'demolition crews' you can hire for a period, positioned as the premium tier above Upwork/Fiverr/Gigster, with founders using it as an interim gig between startups.
“If they can get more failed YC startups to do this as an interim thing of like, hey, yeah, I do this while I'm in between figuring out what my next startup is. I think that's a very smart idea.”
Steal thisBuild a premium agency that farms the YC talent pipeline; hire founders between startups as elite contract teams.
Framework
Don't divide a pie that may never get baked
Joining oDesk (now Upwork) before it could pay him, Chicola worried about negotiating equity. A VC mentor told him to just work and demonstrate value first, because the information was asymmetric. When they finally had the equity talk three months later, both walked in with the same number in their heads.
“A lot of people want to spend a lot of time— to use a different phrase, you know, dividing a pie that may never get baked. And sometimes you want to start baking the pie and figure out a little later how to divide it up.”
Steal thisDemonstrate value first, then negotiate equity once the founder can't imagine doing it without you.
Framework
Beat a horizontal marketplace by guaranteeing quality on one job
Chicola built Rev by dissecting Upwork's weaknesses: because Upwork does everything, it can't guarantee quality. Rev does only one thing — convert audio to text — so it can guarantee the outcome. You hire a person and roll the dice on Upwork; on Rev you pay for a service they stand behind.
“And I was able to more or less dissect what did I think were the Achilles heels in Upwork's business model and build a different business model that we don't compete with Upwork in any meaningful way. But there's two things that are different about, about Rev than Upwork. For the customer, we guarantee quality because we only do one thing. We convert audio to text. And because Upwork does everything under the sun, they can't possibly guarantee quality, right, on infinite range of services.”
Steal thisNiche down to one objective service so you can guarantee quality where horizontal marketplaces can't.
Fact
Kill the job-application grind: vetted workers just get a queue
On Upwork or Fiverr the median freelancer applies to many jobs, gets rejected, and never gets paid for that selling time. Rev vets a tiered workforce; top-tier workers can take any job anytime, never bid, and never race to the bottom — they wake up to a queue of work.
“Never have a race to the bottom of saying, "That guy will do it for a dollar. I'll do it for 98 cents."”
Steal thisPre-vet a tiered workforce so top performers get a ready queue instead of bidding for every job.
Story
At 12, Jack underbid Indian freelancers to learn on the job
At 12, Jack ditched his allowance to avoid chores and bid on Upwork/Guru projects below even Indian freelancers' rates — taking jobs he didn't know how to do and learning them on the client's dime.
“Basically, I just went on those sites and so as a worker, I bid on projects and I bid on them even lower than like the guys in India and stuff because I'm like 12 years old, so any money is a lot for me. Basically, I bid on projects that I didn't even know how to do them and then basically I just learned how to do them. Basically, people were paying me to learn.”
Steal thisBid on freelance work slightly above your skill level and learn the skill while getting paid to deliver it.
Story
Bid below Indian freelancers, then learn the job after winning it
At 12, Jack gave up his allowance rather than do chores, then bid on Upwork/guru.com projects below even Indian freelancers on tasks he didn't know how to do, learning each skill after winning the bid.
“I bid on projects, and I bid on them even lower than like the guys in India and stuff, right? Because I'm like 12 years old, so any money is a lot for me. And so basically I bid on projects that I didn't even know how to do them, And then basically I just learned how to do them. So basically people were paying me to learn.”
Steal thisWin freelance bids on work above your skill level, then learn the skill on the client's dime.