Will We All Be Freelancers in Five Years?

With labor disputes rocking several states, unemployment still high (though slowly falling) and technology rearranging (or destroying) whole industries, it's clear the economy in general and labor market in particular is in a state of flux. What will be the future of work? Mike Paolucci, for one, is betting on a more mobile, freelancer-heavy workforce.

Paolucci is the CEO of New York City based start-up Solvate, which is building a platform for connecting U.S.-based freelancers with employers. The company recently raised $4 million in VC funding and is betting big that the relationship between worker and employer is changing. Entry-Level Rebel spoke with Paolucci recently and asked him to peer into the future of employment and offer tips to help workers make the most of a changing employment landscape.

Solvate claims we're entering a new era of employment. Can you explain what you mean by that?
There are a couple of big megatrends going on. One is the proliferation of cloud computing. SaaS technology has enabled really any size company to operate like megacorporations did 20 years ago with enterprise-class computing investments of $50- 100 million to foster collaboration from afar. Now you have that same capability trickling down to five-person organizations that are using Salesforce and Google Apps and that sort of licensed capability, so they don't have to make that major investment. Now they can think about collaborating in a different way.

That also comes with another megatrend, which is that there are so many expatriates of the corporate world who have chosen, on the back of all this technology, to become independent professionals, freelancers consultants, to work on their own They can now choose to put their lifestyle almost in front of their decision about where to work, and they can locate anywhere they want, work on their own hours, plug in to organizations remotely and really be as effective as if they were on the inside. So we've found this incredible pool of people who used to work at McKinsey and Ogilvy, Yale Fulbright scholars, all this crazy talent that's already out there, and of course what Solvate is trying to do is organize them.

All this talent coupled with all this SaaS cloud capability means that small organizations don't have to try and hire people full time. They can rethink the way they manage their business. They don't have to make the big investment in overhead in the infrastructure. They can get away from some of the cost of idle time, of making commitments to people, and be really lean and mean. I would argue that it's the business model of the future.

So you're expecting the number of companies using freelancers or contract talent to grow over the next five or ten years?
It's actually not going to be an option for organizations big and small not to, because your competition is going to be operating with greater flexibility and less cost. They're going to have converted this fixed cost into a variable cost. When technology comes around, you don't have the choice whether you want to adopt it or not. It's just a matter of time and how early you want to be on the curve.

Companies don't need to make an investment in space and infrastructure for workers because it comes baked in the cake with everybody walking around the world these days. You're going to want a flexible model that allows you to plug people in as you need them. And if you're stuck in an organization where all of your knowledge workers are built into your infrastructure, I think you're going to have a different cost structure and that's going to end up killing you.
Sounds like a good deal for the companies, but is it also a good deal for workers?
Absolutely. This is a matter of choice for them. They decided they wanted to strike out on their own, because for example, they'd rather live in Boulder, Colorado. And perhaps with things like universal healthcare coming, they can get healthcare.

Who do you have in Solvate's network? Is it only professionals with years of experience under their belts or do you have career starters as well?
It's actually a mix. We have a lot of people in our system who are fresh out of really good colleges, not sure what they want to do with their lives yet, but they have all these incredible technology skills because they were raised with this stuff. So our client base is a little but older but our talent base, while we do have a lot experienced independent professionals, we mix in with that people fresh out of college who are just really savvy with things like Facebook and Twitter and can run social media campaigns for companies or smaller businesses who aren't as familiar with those tools.

If someone was interested in getting started in this freelance economy, what tips would you give them to help them move in that direction?
The key is hanging out your shingle, getting yourself indexed. The idea is to build a robust profile with a platform like Solvate, LinkedIn or Facebook and let people know, hey, these are the skills I have. What Solvate does is index you down to the specific services you can perform. So if you can work Excel spreadsheets or do Excel macros or you have a background in writing. It's all about getting the things you know how to do displayed, so that as people come through and either search Google or find our website and search through it, they can find the right people they're looking for.

For most people just out of school, if they can get a job paying them $35 an hour, that's gold. And there's just so much demand for work like this. Solvate is looking for people fresh out of college, so come on over and help up build a new world.

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