
Fiverr IPO’s at $700M valuation - smallgovt
https://www.barrons.com/articles/fiverr-stock-ipo-strong-debut-gig-economy-company-freelance-marketplace-51560439843
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chatmasta
Fiverr is effectively a spam factory. I would be curious to see the breakdown
of its most popular offerings. How many of them are legitimately creative
tasks, and how many are "I will post your link to fifty web 2.0 sites?" More
importantly, how much revenue can Fiverr attribute to these "gigs" that are
borderline legal? Their F-1 filing does not mention it as a risk factor. [0]

This website has its roots in the gray-hat side of the SEO and affiliate
marketing industries. It's shocking to see it valued at $700M. Surely we are
in a bubble?

[0]
[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1762301/000104746919...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1762301/000104746919003413/a2238869zf-1a.htm#da46501_risk_factors)

~~~
oooshha
I spent $500 usd on Fiverr in the last month getting design done, getting
studio musicians and rappers recording parts for music. Previously had full
animated videos made there. It's pretty great.

~~~
1337biz
How do you ensure quality? I usually find 4-5 people for the same tasks and 1
or 2 are in the end to my expectations.

~~~
TomVDB
Aren't the prices usually low enough that you can have the work done multiple
times and choose the best one?

~~~
bryanrasmussen
Do you pay all the prices, then I don't know that it would be cheap. Do you
not pay the ones you don't choose, then I'm not sure it's ethical.

~~~
TomVDB
At some point, I needed a logo for my hobby website. Nothing fancy, just
better than what I could cook up with my non-existent creative skills.

I asked 5 different people on Fiver to create one for $5 each and chose the
best one.

This is obviously an example on the low end, but you could expand this to the
$500 dollar range per designer for a full website template and still end up
with a decent looking thing for $2500.

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dannylandau
Also use Fiverr, and you can find quality designers with portfolios from
Dribbble and even some developers that are competent. You have to dig deep but
the quality is there. The negative attitude in this thread is misplaced. Not
sure where it is coming from.

For example, I use an iOS developer that charges me $50/hr on Fiverr, and I'm
willing to put him against any Google or Facebook developer for quality and
exceeding expectations. Although, I will admit that he is a rare find on
Fiverr.

~~~
bcyn
> developer that charges me $50/hr

> any Google or Facebook developer for quality and exceeding expectations

Something about basic economics tells me that's an exaggeration. But I do
agree with your point that there are hidden talents to be found on sites like
Fiverr.

~~~
goobynight
What part of basic economics tells you this?

I could think of a few ways that this makes total sense.

$50 is $400 in an 8 hour day. There are places where $1000-1500 covers you for
the month, even with non-local, white guy pricing.

My hourly comes out to "only" $20/hr more, but my apartment alone is likely a
few hundred more than this guy's entire monthly expense profile.

He's going to get consistent work at this price point, so he won't have to
hustle for contacts. That's more time billed or spent on the beach.

Stepping away from the economics and getting into comparison to Google/FB
engineers, there are tons of people that could outproduce many Google
engineers in a startup setting. They just aren't good at Leetcode problems or
never took a shot at FB/Google. A lot of stuff just works as an engineer at
Google that you don't get for free elsewhere. They're good at leveraging the
output of some truly amazing engineers across their org. They're also
generally overstaffed.

~~~
megy
> There are places where $1000-1500 covers you for the month, even with non-
> local, white guy pricing.

This is hilarious. There are places were $300 covers you for the month. I was
paying $7 a day rent at a hotel at one stage.

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Hasz
LOL

“We are believers in the long-term potential of these marketplaces,” MKM
Partners’ Rohit Kulkarni wrote Wednesday before trading began"

says the guy offloading risk onto a public market -- that's a statement so
hilariously full of shit it deserves to be laughed at.

Even worse, he' going to follow up with “unclear pathway to profitability.”

good god, here we go again.

------
Timucin
Wow. I know Fiverr for years but I never thought of it more than as a cheap
version of freelancer dot com and now it goes to IPO with $700M valuation?
That’s crazy!

~~~
rossdavidh
Especially crazy given that, as far as I can tell, they have never turned a
profit and never will.

~~~
icedchai
I'm surprised Fiverr has 360+ employees. I always figured it was 50 folks max,
"craigslist" type of company.

~~~
cosmodisk
What the hell those 360+ do there?...

~~~
rossdavidh
Well, some of them are required to manage the others. Those managers need
secretaries. Some of them are required to prepare reports for the managers.
Some of them provide HR support for such a large workforce. Also, you need IT
support for all those secretaries, report-generators, managers, and HR people.
Payroll department needs to be larger given how many people work there. I
could go on, but I think you get the idea.

~~~
penagwin
I work at a warehouse with ~300 employees, selling over 70,000 different skus,
etc. We have 3 Programmers, and 3 IT/network people, 1 hr, etc. We're hiring
more programmers though.

What the heck are 360+ employees doing? You're right you do need lots of
management, but there's no way they need that many people. Like, thats a LOT
of people.

~~~
sct202
They have 7 offices so there's probably a lot of people who have jobs to
communicate between offices.

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rkho
Had a bad experience with a designer on Fiverr. They were "highly rated" and
all.

The task was a logo for a side project and we settled on a clean design that
was just text and code brackets with a specific font and color scheme (I ended
up doing this on my own in the end)

The design was acceptable, but the delivery/communication/execution was
atrocious.

The request I made from the start was SVG over transparent backgrounds with
the font in two different colors, and three different positions for the logo,
so six total SVGs

What I got were:

PNGs JPGs Illustrator files

I went back and forth four times before giving up and just marking the job as
complete.

Once I finally got SVGs, they were not over transparent backgrounds and/or
they were weirdly cut in ways where you could see border lines halfway below
the image, and the SVGs were mixed in with the other file formats.

Every time I asked for what I wanted in explicit detail, I would get the
complete opposite with, say, one SVG fixed in an acceptable way but another
(which was already acceptable from the last delivery) completely broken again

Overall, completely frustrating

~~~
megy
Hmmm, I wonder if, no, it can't be. But I do wonder, sometimes, if you get
what you pay for.

~~~
rkho
I don't believe this kind of snark is welcome on HN

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mderazon
One of my favorite songs was produced with Fiverr:
[https://youtu.be/v1V5Oc3hMbc](https://youtu.be/v1V5Oc3hMbc)

~~~
yyyyip
[https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UO3iBE0nsuayzNceZPeK2mynHj...](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UO3iBE0nsuayzNceZPeK2mynHjwuktvu)

Here's a tune I made with Fiverr.

Bassist from venezuela, rhodes keyboard from greece, rapper from washington
dc, rhythm guitar from finland, jazz guitar from USA, mastered by a guy in
croatia.

~~~
tonystubblebine
Both of these are so cool!

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jonthepirate
I've never liked Fiverr since I heard about how they really screwed over
voiceoverpete. For reference:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anbBwpoI9TI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anbBwpoI9TI)

~~~
freedomben
It is legitimately terrifying the power over our lives these tech companies
are amassing. The ability for them to arbitrarily cut us off from our
livelihood is terrible. I'm afraid that we are headed toward a world of
corporate tyranny if this trend can't be reversed.

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smallgovt
It's crazy to me that a marketplace like this can be trading at 10x revenue w/
-50% net margins when a company like Blue Apron is trading at 0.2x revenue
when they're turning the corner to profitability.

~~~
rossdavidh
It is, in fact, crazy, but that doesn't mean Blue Apron is the one whose
result is out of whack with the fundamentals. Quite the opposite, in fact.

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artur_makly
hiring talent in under 24hrs, to stand in front of the Taj Majal[0] to say
your (past)startup's tag-line [1]..for just $5... is priceless.

[0][https://www.fiverr.com/arjunrocks/record-a-video-at-taj-
maha...](https://www.fiverr.com/arjunrocks/record-a-video-at-taj-mahal--2)

[1][https://www.dropbox.com/s/98udl9ypeuqvcph/M4H07189.mp4?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/98udl9ypeuqvcph/M4H07189.mp4?dl=0)

\- edit - seems like he 2x his rates as of 5yrs ago.

~~~
el_dev_hell
That's outstanding!

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cutenewt
I've been a long-time Fiverr user. I've had my share of hits and misses, and
it looks like many of you are in the same boat.

Would any of you be interested in Slack group where we can trade Fiverr
referrals? If so, I'd be happy to set it up.

~~~
el_dev_hell
Yes please.

Like a lot of comments here, the only winning strategy I've found with Fiverr
is to hire 3 or 4 sellers for the same task and pick the best.

But I have to admit, I once ordered a completely custom logo for $8 and it was
perfect (the 2 week wait was worth it).

~~~
toomuchtodo
Seconded!

~~~
cutenewt
Slack group is created! Instructions on how to get the Slack group invite here
[https://www.lewis-lin.com/blog/2019/6/14/better-
freelancers-...](https://www.lewis-lin.com/blog/2019/6/14/better-freelancers-
slack-group)

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umeshunni
Fiverr's competitor Upwork IPOd last year and is currently valued at 1.68B

~~~
bredren
I'm amazed Fiverr is "worth" close to half upwork. Upwork seems to be in an
incredibly strong position and that service has improved a ton in the past 2
years.

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cosmodisk
There are some quality people on Fiverr,but as others already mentioned, you
need to spend time finding them. The valuation,on the other hand, is complete
overblown nonsense baloon.

~~~
asdf21
Then you must believe that about nearly every valuation..

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godzillabrennus
I have used fiver for finding developers to do small business Wordpress work,
for telecom consultants, for windows server consultants, for an audio engineer
to discuss soundproofing, for a tutor in a new programming language, and for a
bit of graphic design.

There is no better market on the web for finding low cost talent if you ask
me. I love this website.

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dalacv
Fiverr is awesome. Where else can you pay someone to dress up like Jesus and
record a personalized Happy Birthday video?

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unixhero
I use FIVERR for micro secretarial services and research work. Works great!!!

~~~
bredren
Can you elaborate on exactly the types of things and roughly the pricing you
pay for to do this?

~~~
unixhero
Sure. 5-10 USD per hour and I create "tenders" for every 2 hour job hence the
micro part.

The jobs must be meticulously thought through so they can be communicated
succinctly to a person in the other side of the planet.

I also have to go over all the work, because sometimes there are errors.

Sometimes I have several contractors working in the same Google Drive
Spreadsheet on separate sections at the same time. That is pretty cool to do,
and watch happen in real time.

~~~
bredren
Thanks, out of curiosity, how is this work not better suited for Mechanical
Turk?

~~~
unixhero
Maybe you are right. I never tried it.

~~~
bredren
Cool. Not meaning to criticize, but am genuinely curious if fiverr has
something special here.

