Posts Tagged ‘Freelancer.com’

Freelancer.com founder a business winner in 2013

Friday, January 3rd, 2014
Photo credit; Snap on Flickr

Photo credit; Snap on Flickr

Freelancer.com founder Matt Barrie has been named a business winner on Yahoo! Finance Australia’s list of business winners and losers for 2013.

Barrie enjoyed one of the year’s most successful IPOs when shares in the online freelancing network shot as high as $2.60 on their first day.

Coming off a 50 cent issue price, the Freelancer frenzy briefly made the company a billion-dollar concern.

Barrie holds 46% of the company and, even with Freelancer shares now trading around $1.30, his stake is still worth approximately $260 million.

To read more on this story, click here.

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Posted in Australia, business, E-mail & the internet, internet usage, investment, online business, Success story, technology, web-based | No Comments »

oDesk to open Australia office to take on Freelancer.com

Wednesday, January 1st, 2014
Photo credit; Alisa on Flickr

Photo credit; Alisa on Flickr

Online freelance agency oDesk.com, which recently merged with rival Elance.com, is considering opening an office in Australia to compete with Australia-based Freelancer.com.

Matt Cooper, oDesk’s vice-president of its international division, said Australia was now the company’s second-largest market globally with more than 50,000 registered clients. He also mentioned that oDesk, which is based in Silicon Valley, has twice the penetration rate in Australia as compared with its home market of the US.

To read more on this story, click here.

 

 

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Posted in Australia, business, E-mail & the internet, internet usage, online business | No Comments »

Freelancer.com makes strong debut on stock market

Monday, December 2nd, 2013
Photo credit; Andreas Poike on Flickr

Photo credit; Andreas Poike on Flickr

Australian online freelancing website Freelancer.com made a strong debut on the ASX Nov. 15, surging by as much as 400%.

Freelancer raised about A$17.55 million by selling 35.1 million new shares or only 8.1 percent of the company, capitalising on a revival in the Australian IPO market and strong interest in non-resources stocks.

The stock was offered at A$0.50 per share and traded at A$1.60 by 0243 GMT, valuing the four-year-old Sydney-based company at A$697.6 million.

“On the face, the price is telling us that this float is underpriced,” said CMC Markets strategist Michael McCarthy.

“But because they only sold a small amount of the 436 million shares, that’s not a problem for them. What they’ve essentially done is establish a market value of this company.”

CEO Matt Barrie holds 46% of the tightly held business, a stake worth about A$321 million after Friday’s jump in the share price. Investment fund Startive Capital owns another 39%.

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Posted in Australia, Australian Securities Exchange, business, E-mail & the internet, investment, online business, Success story | 1 Comment »

Australia’s Freelancer.com subject of takeover bid

Friday, September 27th, 2013
Photo credit; David Beyer on Flickr.

Photo credit; David Beyer on Flickr.

The Sydney-based online job outsourcing website Freelancer.com has received a $US400 million takeover offer from a Japanese company.

Adelaide-born entrepreneur Matt Barrie, who owns 50% of the company, is currently mulling over the takeover offer.

The business has gone through massive growth since Barrie bought it as Getafreelancer.com in September 2007, when it had already signed up about 500,000 freelancers and fulfilled contracts worth about $US23 million.

Barrie said he had fielded several offers for minority investment by ­private equity and venture capital funds over the past four years.

“You name it and there’s a fund out there that has pitched to us,” he said.

He has also fielded offers “in varying levels of completeness” to sell the entire company, but has so far declined.

The company, with offices in Manila, London, Buenos Aires and Jakarta, says it has 8.8 million registered users and has facilitated $US1.2 billion worth of projects.

To read more about this story, click here.

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Posted in Australia, business, internet usage, online business | 1 Comment »

Freelancer pushes competition out of the way to become best

Wednesday, July 3rd, 2013

With $50 million in revenue, Freelancer.com, started in 2009 by Matt Barrie and stationed in Sydney, has overtaken its competition to be the go-to place for businesses to find top notch freelance contractors and for those contractors to find work.

Recently, the website made headlines for expanding its innovative crowdsourcing contest feature beyond design categories to include projects in any category.

To read more on this story, click here or here.

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Posted in Australia, business, Crowd funding, innovation, online business, Success story | 3 Comments »