Building The Best Java Team In NYC

For the past two years, I have had the benefit of watching a team of serial founders build one of most exciting new companies in our portfolio. It is a company that not many people know about but they haven't been working in stealth mode. Just heads down mode.

This company is called Workmarket and they are building a marketplace for labor. They have been fully launched since the summer and they already have over 12,000 professionals working across a dozen industries in their marketplace. This kind of business scales and scales and scales. The amount of jobs, work, and payment that flows through this platform every month is already bigger than almost every one of our portfolio companies' payroll. And that is in just four or five months of being fully live.

But this post is really not about Workmarket, it is about the dev team they are building in NYC. They have a small but super strong engineering team. And they recently made a decision to "double down on java" and they are hell bent to build the best java team in NYC. If you like working in java and want to be part of such a team and build a platform that creates work and pay for people, then you should drop into their office smack in the middle of the Flatiron district and talk to them.

Best way to do that is drop me an email and I'll connect you with them.

#NYC#Web/Tech

Comments (Archived):

  1. tyronerubin

    oh wow I was just looking at this today http://www.lynda.com/JavaSc…gives me more reason to push onthanks and congrats on another great business.Codecademy is extremely fun btw.

    1. fredwilson

      that is javascript, the second cousin of java

      1. baba12

        I believe that for a majority of the applications that are human facing, javascript and possibly an enhanced version of it like “dart http://www.dartlang.org/ ” along with HTML 5 maybe where things shall coalesce. Java, C, C#, python etc maybe relegated to doing infrastructure type of stuff. Given that a lot of the VC community is not investing in the heavy lifting infrastructure type projects be in bio-chemistry, material sciences ( with info technologies” or say in the next energy eco system etc, they would be looking at these tools as opposed to the Java/C landscape.I find that in NYC a lot of the work done in Java or C++ seems to be devoted to Financial Engineering.I wish these guys the best in sourcing their team since they are going to need to attract from the same pool that a JP Morgan or Renaissance Capital taps from.

        1. FAKE GRIMLOCK

          YOU RIGHT.

          1. Rohan

            Grimster. on a completely different note,If/when you have another post ready that you’re looking to guest post on a non VC blog, I’d like you to think of me. IF. 😀

          2. FAKE GRIMLOCK

            NO PROMISES. LOTS IN LINE.

          3. Rohan

            Yeah. I’m sure.IF. 🙂

        2. Mike

          Work Market doesn’t compete with investment banks for talent. People that work there are not the people that would want to work at a startup.

      2. FAKE GRIMLOCK

        ONLY RELATION IS NAME.NAME PICKED FOR MARKETING REASON.

    2. Cam MacRae

      I’ve never seen lynda before. If you’re new to the whole hacking caper you might want to check out: http://www.lynda.com/JavaSc… and if you want your mind blown a little I’m sure this will do the trick: http://www.lynda.com/jQuery… – probably worth knowing a little html before you take that one.

      1. tyronerubin

        @cammacrae:disqus thank you, thank you, thank you!going to def give the first one a go asap. thanks!

  2. Rohan

    Congratulations Fred (they don’t stop coming :)). And all ze best to Workmarket and to finding Java enthusiasts.As I just blogged about ‘Dialogue and Debate’ today on my own blog (http://www.alearningaday.co…, I thought I’d try and spark some good natured debate here as well as I’m not sure what else to add on Fred’s post. :)I was struck with admiration at Bill Gates’ response to some of the obvious jibes from the (late) Steve Jobs in his biography – more on http://sg.news.yahoo.com/bi… Now, I have a lot of respect for what Steve Jobs did. Too easy to admire him though. Maverick, genius, charismatic etc. All this while Bill has been the man ‘pure’ technologists love to hate. Of course, Microsoft’s frequent blue screens don’t help his cause either.That said, I look at him as the man who did succeed to put a computer on every desk. And a person I’m greatly inspired by. A lot of what he achieved was thanks to his own persistence, business sense – and yes, he did not have the sense of design and the kind of ‘genius’ one characterizes Steve Jobs to have, but, in many ways, I feel Bill has become the kind of person we all can aspire to be. Even if he is a tremendous Outlier – as the book has shown, Steve Jobs, most definitely, was one of a kind..And I, for one, don’t feel copying best practices (like Microsoft did) is as bad as it’s made out. Just look at how much genius it has enabled..  In shortA defence of Bill Gates, this is. A defence where one is not needed, I feel.An attempt at some dialogue and debate, my true purpose is.Looking forward to your comments, I am.

    1. fredwilson

      i have always been a fan of Gates. less so Microsoft and its products and business practices. i suppose they all are one and the same. it seems that marriage has brought us a new and improved Gates. i was also very impressed about how he took that critique.

      1. Rohan

        I thought so too, Fred. I really was struck with admiration for a few seconds at the way he responded. It could have been so easy for him to snipe back. But, he chose to take the higher ground. As for your thought about his products and business practices (esp: the overdose of legal procedures), there’s no doubt it’s not all been perfect. I guess I respect most the will of a person to be the best he/she can be. And in many ways, I think he’s done that. And for that he deserves all respect..There’s a nice quote that says – ‘Anybody can handle adversity. To test a man, give him power.’He’s used the power he got with a lot of responsibility over the years. He showed that again with his response. Lots for me to learn..

      2. LE

        “marriage has brought us a new and improved Gates”(Bill married in 1993 and he retired in 2008 (at 52) so he was married for 15 years.)I’m not sure that’s the case. There aren’t many examples that I can think of of hard driving aggressive business people who all the sudden decide they want to retire in their 50’s and solely do philanthropy. Even in the cases of those who make it to the top income wise as Gates have.  Of course being Bill is not like being your typical business person.Something else is going on. Maybe a hidden health issue or some other change of life event other than marriage. Or maybe it’s just a Seinfeld type move.

    2. leigh

      point of order I’m not using my new airbook right now bc my install led to a -300f1 error. I think I have as many tech issues with u macs as I do my old pcs. I just forgive them bc the brand is so damn beautiful.ps. buying a new machine the day u travel is a really dumb idea 🙁

      1. Rohan

        Haha. I don’t use Apple computers myself. Good to know.. Love PC’s especially since they are so collaborative-work-friendly.Love my iPhone though. And haven’t had too many issues except for the lack of flexibility being pretty darn annoying. PS: Ouch. I can imagine an unsettled machine while traveling not being too much fun. Safe travels, Leigh.

        1. leigh

          tnx 🙁

      2. awaldstein

        Not my experience.The moment I stopped having a tech IT person in my company is the moment I switched to Macs.Never looked back.Sure…machines break. But with Macs I have free support in store (as in Genius bars) and better yet, a direct line for support from Cal whenever I have a problem which is infrequent.What is that address you go to for free help or that direct line of a person with a name that you call when your PC just won’t do what it should?

        1. leigh

          I don’t disagree (and haven’t used a pc in ten yrs) but I think we r still more tolerant of brands we love.ps. I let u know what I think of their service by eod since in a different city and want a replacement machine 🙂

          1. awaldstein

            I was just being facetious ;)Need to be careful of my sense of humor with my friends north of the 49th parallel.But…you hit it right of course that brands bring loyalty and a healthy sense of toleration, even forgiveness.

          2. leigh

            well, can’t blame Canada for that one – i walked around for an entire year when i was a teenager with a sweatshirt that said “Aussie’s like it down under” and didn’t realize……. (just thought the Koala bears were cute on it)

    3. Tom Labus

      I feel MSFT is entering a new phase and will experience a renaissance in the coming years with Metro and the new Mango phones.Gates legacy is already set it’s just not acknowledged as widely as Jobs but they are equals.

      1. awaldstein

        I don’t know…Put aside accomplishments and impact on life as we know it.I admire tenacity. I admire opportunism. And certainly the resolve of vision.But when you sit down with yourself or with other entrepreneurs and think of the traits in your product, your brand, your company culture, whom do you emulate and learn from?For me respect of accomplishments and emulation are different things.

        1. Tom Labus

          Understood.There’s a lot to admire with both of them.

          1. awaldstein

            No question about admiration. They were a major distribution partner for me in the 90s so know from the inside, the details of working with them well.

          2. Kasi Viswanathan Agilandam

            history. and Period.I was laughing about a movie … which shows some group of Indian taught Chinese the martial art.

      2. Rohan

        Hmm. I feel similar, Tom. Mike Arrington wrote a good post on this one actually. An excerpt..Steve Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976. He was pushed out in in May 1985 when the company was valued at about $2.2B. He returned in 1996 when Apple was worth $3B. Today it is worth $169B. Jobs famously micromanages every product detail and like Akio makes decisions based on intuitions.Bill Gates was the co-founder and CEO of Microsoft, building it to an astounding $470B market cap. Under him, Microsoft had multiple acts, among them: DOS, Windows, Office, and enterprise server software. Since Steve Ballmer became CEO, the company’s value has declined to $223B. I’m sure Steve Ballmer is a smart and passionate guy, but he’s no superman.http://uncrunched.com/2011/…@awaldstein:disqus I think emulation is an interesting way to look at it, Arnold. Just taking the situation discussed above i.e. the whole Jobs sniping at Gates situation into context and Gates rising above the criticism.. I’m wondering if you would still choose Jobs as the person you’d rather emulate? I understand you might feel that the sniping/natural arrogance is at the root of his genius and that’s what made Jobs the man he is..but somehow, I seem to admire Gates more as a human being – from the little that I know of both of them from afar.

  3. Kasi Viswanathan Agilandam

    Congratulations to the team.JAVA-JNLP is really a wonder … i doubt anything similar is available in MSDN.Another great thing about JAVA in medical field is … damn… there are so many SUNS on earth (I call them sun because they burn their hours and to give things free ) out there who have put out so much code for free … you almost get 60-70% of any damn thing  you want on the net.

  4. Robert Thuston

    I set up a profile and plan to use workmarket in the next week or so for an assignment.  I want to find a specific task and spend something like $100 on it to see the results from it.  One of the things I’ve learned since coming to AVC, is the power of tinkering to open new doors and avenues.

    1. fredwilson

      let me know what you thinkright now it is strongest for IT services work but as i said in the post, they have professionals in twelve industries

      1. Robert Thuston

        Definitely.

  5. Robert Thuston

    Is workmarket using their own service to build any portion of their product?

    1. fredwilson

      yes, they most certainly eat their dog food

      1. Robert Thuston

        that’s what I like to hear

    2. michaelmayes

      Absolutely. I’ve used our site to pay designers and marketing consultants to work on logo design and email writing, and we’ve tapped contract developers to help us work on integrations to our customer’s platforms. We also use Work Market to ramp up our employees with our learning management tools. And we’ve brought in contractors to help us recruit contractors into the network. As the product lead at WorkMarket, there’s no better way to understand how our customers will use our product than to use it ourselves.

      1. Robert Thuston

        Great thorough answer.  I look forward to using the product.  And I love the idea of a product with so much potential.  Way too often people are glued to organizations when they should be freed up to define themselves by their profession.Keep kicking Arse!

  6. RichardF

    Another facet of the value added VC – Talent Trek Thursdays.I hope the rise of workmarket is not a sign that we are about to return to the 30’s and labor queues. 

    1. Cam MacRae

      I think your tongue was firmly in cheek, but then you are uncomfortably close to the eurozone…I hope workmarket is a harbinger of true workforce mobility – I quite like the idea of working from a hammock on ko samui instead of a couch in brooklyn.

      1. RichardF

        uncomfortable is right Cam!and I like the idea of working from Starbucks in Whistler prior to going out for the pow

        1. William Mougayar

          Are u in Whistler now? My old stomping grounds.

          1. RichardF

            no William, I’m aiming for February.  I have big love for Whistler.

          2. William Mougayar

            Me too. Don’t get me started. 

        2. Cam MacRae

          that i could do! – besides, the tropics are too humid that time of year…

  7. William Mougayar

    I’m curious to learn more – why java vs. other alternatives, and what are they doing that’s interesting or unique with it.

    1. Cam MacRae

      Just looked at their job listings – looks like a pretty standard stack. Really does seem like they’ve doubled down on Java though and not just the JVM.

    2. pfreet

      I really don’t get why any startup today would choose Java. Why not assemble the best COBOL team in NYC? 🙂  (or ADA)

      1. Cody Robbins

        I’m usually adamantly in favor of Rails for startups for a number of reasons, but chief among them is agility. So many startups suffer from either an inability to find product/market fit or an inexperienced/non-product founder who doesn’t have a clear and confident vision of what the product needs to be, right? That’s where agility is important.However, if you’re building the right product from the start and only need to make minor course corrections, then there’s not as pressing a need to be agile. Java has a huge codebase of libraries and frameworks to build on top of, and it’s highly performant. If agility isn’t so important factors like those become more telling.And, one of the contraindications for Rails is that it’s really hard right now to assemble a talented team of Rails engineers here. Startups like Groupme had ins to recruit engineers from bastions like Pivotal Labs, but otherwise it’s really tough. Java is like .NET in that it’s rather heavily used here in financial services and corporate environments, which means there’s a huge pool of talent to draw from. I’m not sure if Work Market has technical reasons for going with it, but it’s actually a rather brilliant pragmatic choice for that reason alone.

        1. chrisbenskey

          We are fortunate to have a founder with a strong product vision, so we were confident we wouldn’t have to pivot the entire product direction at any point in time. That being said, we feel like we have a great set of frontend technologies that let us be agile on the product side (bootstrap, backbone, jquery) AND engineer java on the backend for scale. Best of both worlds.

          1. Cody Robbins

            Right on!!

          2. FAKE GRIMLOCK

            LIKE.

        2. Cam MacRae

          I think if I was looking to do something in that market I’d have a long hard look at Play http://www.playframework.org/ – without descending into hyperbole it might be the biggest leap forward since Spring, plus it’s blisteringly fast.

    3. chrisbenskey

      William – I’m the VP of Tech for workmarket.I think you ask a great question. Picking a software stack is challenging because there are so many great languages out there. There is no correct answer, but there is probably a best-fit language for any founding product/dev teams skills-set.We chose Java because we’re developing a SasS based B2B platform, with enterprise-class customers. Java is a technology stack that is aligns itself nicely with the enterprise. Salesforce.com is a great example of a company that had success doing this.Since we already have a core team that knows the language and there are valid business reasons for it, we are executing with Java.

      1. William Mougayar

        That’s a great explanation and reasoning. Thanks a lot.While I have you on the line, what are your plans for Canada?

      2. William Mougayar

        Can you expand on this part “Java is a technology stack that is aligns itself nicely with the enterprise”. What specific advantages does it have? Is it deployment related behind the firewall types of issues? Have you encountered issues with IE browser versions too? As you well know, most enterprises use IE and often they are old versions like 7, or 8 if you’re lucky. These are slower and non-modern browsers and not all apps run well on them. Does your Java run better on older versions of IE too?

        1. chrisbenskey

          Java and .NET are common stacks in the enterprise. We like to look and think like our customers, so we picked a stack they are likely to use and/or are comfortable with.We could have built in .NET potentially, but we like the open source tools that are available for Java. But .NET is powerful too. Stack Exchange, a USV portfolio company, has scaled impressively with .NET technology.We use Java as a back-end development technology, so handing browser compatibility is an issue for our frontend development. Java doesn’t help us out there, per se.

          1. PhilipSugar

            Exactly.  Just like football more important in having your team playing to its strengths than forcing your team to work to your system.

    4. Miljenko Hatlak

      Each problem could be solved on almost any programming platform if that platform is applicable to the named problem and is scalable so that final product could be used through many years.What is important are building blocks that developing team lays on the underlying platform, i.e. intelligent algorithms built on proven principles…. So really, ” what are they doing that’s interesting or unique with it”, and what makes them candidates for “best java team in NYC”?

  8. William Mougayar

    I couldn’t enter a Canadian postal code, so I enterered 10014. Is it available only in the US?I thought labor pools were global now.

    1. Rohan

      hahaha.I think we have been turntabled.

    2. Luke Chamberlin

      There are plenty of global labor pool sites (elance, etc) which I think are hurt by the huge number of questionable developers from places like India who have chased away the quality developers (even the quality Indian developers).Maybe this is a concerted effort to build a different kind of labor pool.Obviously, Canada should be included. Poor Canada. Maybe it’s a payment/tax issue.

      1. Ashwin, Founder - ContractIQ

        Places like oDesk, eLance make evaluation of labor pools trivial. I have spent at least 50% of my work life in India and have always been in the business of outsourcing (as a Buyer or Seller).The evaluations can be gamed. Also, consistency, continuity and trust are important in complex transactions like outsourcing. These marketplaces hardly give that.Another aspect of labor markets that I could not identify with, is testimonials. They lack context and are typically 5-point Likert scales that don’t do justice to what ought to be measured.PS: I am the Founder of ContractIQ, which is involved in vendor discovery for outsourcing.  It’s the bias against the execution of labor markets (at least for software outsourcing) that made us start up!

    3. michaelmayes

      William, our focus right now is on US but we will launch in Canada soon. And from there, international. There are a number of labor law, tax, and payment issues to solve for because our platform handles all aspects of the contractor relationship and workflow. In the US, we manage the payment and 1099 process for example. In the UK or India, its a very different flow to solve for.Our internal Java development team is based in NYC and our hiring is focused on top talent in New York.That said, we are also building a network of global engineering talent available to extend the Work Market platform via our API. We envision a marketplace of Work Market apps that help customers integrate Work Market with their other enterprise tools (Salesforce, Netsuite, etc.) or extend the core Work Market functionality.If you’re interested in being part of that network, you can join us here: http://bit.ly/qCqu1v

  9. LIAD

    I thought Java was taken out to the barn and shot in a mercy killing.Still shudder when I recall back in the day watching my developers twiddle their thumbs for 15 minutes waiting for Java to compile each time they made a change.

    1. RichardF

      in London the prime market for Java is Investment Banking, they basically own the market for Java developers. Investment banking – now there’s a candidate for mercy killing.

      1. JLM

        Why mercy?  They are candidates for a well deserved painful execution.

    2. chrisbenskey

      Thankfully, Java moved past those days. There are great Java development tools out there that make engineers very productive.There also has been some interesting additions to to the language set supported by the JVM – Scala, JRuby, Groovy. If dynamic languages are your thing, you can still use the JVM!

    3. Raj Advani

      That was a very long time ago. Java may not be popular among the hipsters but it’s a solid language with solid development tools. Unfortunately some people never update their opinions.

    4. David Semeria

      I avoided Java for a long time, given its bad press by the web crowd.But then I needed to build a complex back-end system and didn’t fancy the loosely-typed languages, so I gave Java a chance…Boy was it worth it! I’m a total convert. It’s now Php and Ruby for the simple stuff and Java for the heavy lifting.Let me put it this way: if I am ever unlucky enough to be connected to a life-support machine, I hope it’s written in Java…

      1. LIAD

        for sure. i was only having a laugh.Java is rock solid bullet proof. When you need the heavy guns – Java is the place to go.

      2. Will Luttrell

        I concur.  We process a billion transactions per day through 25 application servers in three colocation facilities.Java remains the best choice for us.Also, best of luck to Workmarket while they try to build the SECOND best java team in NY.  🙂

        1. fredwilson

          i love it. trash talking among dev teams in NYC. so good.

    5. zvozin

      You were probably waiting for the application server to come up – the compiler has always been fairly fast :).Geekstering aside, though – much has changed. Today the Java Virtual Machine generally has no rivals as a well-rounded web platform – the sheer mileage and performance on it, the size and breadth of the ecosystem.Twitter is a really good (if extreme) case study of “all roads on the interwebs lead to JVM if you go far enough” (try http://www.infoq.com/articl… if interested).

    6. andyidsinga

      we used to say ‘write once, debug everywhere’ 😉 🙂 :)it was painful in the late 90s but that was mostly tools an vm and omg the gc. ..awt anyone? :)that all is much better now and ive always like the language …especially java interfaces.

  10. ShanaC

    Would said person be allowed to telecommute?If so I would pass on my mom’s resume…

    1. chrisbenskey

      We’re building a  core team in NYC only at this time. But we’re happy to look at resumes from folks that aren’t currently living in NYC, but would willing to relocate. 

      1. fredwilson

        shana’s mom is in long island i think

        1. ShanaC

          she is, but she also hates commuting.  she’d do it for the right job/right match.And I feel for her, I hate commuting too!

  11. leigh

    I like the phrase heads down mode. when marketing pple start buggin me about why I don’t actively seek more speaking things or write a biz book – i say bc I do the work and I like it that way. it’s heads down mode every day.nice way for them (considering they r all about work) to live into the brand.ps using iPhone is hard for this hope it didnt post twice!

    1. William Mougayar

      are u an iphone newbie? you’ll learn soon.what’s this with your new toys- showing-off ?

      1. leigh

        uch edit !!

      2. leigh

        see I thought I was complaining not braggin’ besides it’s an old iPhone I just miss my blackberry keyboard … typing on this is the one thing I can’t seem to get used to.

        1. RichardF

          replace it with an android phone and use Swype to type it’s awesome

        2. chhhris

          when i’ve commented i “post as” using my twitter handle but when i try commenting from my iPhone i find that twitter is excluded from the drop down “post as” menu, it seems to be prompting me to create a disqus profile

      3. Rohan

        leigh’s an apple fan-girl/mom 🙂

    2. fredwilson

      the gotham gal believes that women entrepreneurs are much more “heads down” than their male counterparts and that is part of the reason that women entrepreneurs are not as well known and not was well celebrated

      1. Anne Libby

        She’s right — and it’s not just entrepreneurs, but corporate women, too.Sylvia Ann Hewlett and her Center for Work-Life Policy have put numbers around this in a research report, “The Sponsor Effect:  Breaking Through the Last Glass Ceiling.” For example, we underestimate the value of personal relationships in our advancement, and overestimate the value of “hard work, long hours, and credentials.” HBR blog post by Sylvia that gives an overview: http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/he…  (I saw Sylvia speak and wound up with an extra research report that’s sitting on a shelf here.  If you and GG would be interested, I’d love to pop it in the mail.)

      2. leigh

        yes i’m afraid she’s right.  i always do the profile thing when asked but just don’t actively seek it.  i keep figuring once i sell the newco i’ll put more focus on it (or i’ll disappear and go finish my two unfinished fiction novels 🙂

  12. Carl J. Mistlebauer

    How exactly does Workmarket differ its self from Guru?

    1. michaelmayes

      Hi all. I lead product efforts for WorkMarket. Our focus is as a B2B enterprise platform for customers with large volumes of distributed contract needs. Where Guru is great for one-off freelance contract jobs, WorkMarket is a series of modular tools that help businesses find, engage, manage, pay and rate their networks of expert resources.That said, anyone can use WorkMarket to quickly pay someone to do work. We’re best at handling one hour to thirty day assignments for onsite work, but the platform is flexible enough to handle just about anything.

      1. Carl J. Mistlebauer

        When I saw the list of industries I realized that a few of them were not things that could be done remotely.I have used Guru extensively for graphic design and art. The results there have been disappointing and so I contacted a local group of college kids and use them instead. I did have more favorable experiences with Guru outside of art/graphic design. But I do believe that onsite makes all the difference.Good luck to you and WorkMarket; now all I have to do is wait till you actually penetrate my local market!

      2. LE

        From the faq: “Over 12,000 available professionals across twelve industries”I’d like to see a scrolling box with summaries of the professionals (names redacted) to get an idea of the scope of the 12,000 professionals available without signing up to see/search for them. That box would probably be something that would get me to signup and take further action.

        1. michaelmayes

          LE, We are on the same page. With our product up and running and clients using the site every day, we are learning more and thinking more about “public”-ness — exposing contractor profiles, groups, jobs, etc on our public site and giving new users/ potential users a better sense of the breadth and depth of the marketplace.We also have plans to help people “see labor” via map interfaces and geographic breakdowns (with near-real time location-based data as well) to let businesses find the right people at the right time and let contractors find the right opportunities at the right price.Thus the need to hire more Java developers – we’re solving difficult problems and building complex interfaces over here!

          1. fredwilson

            The AVC community giving product feedback to WorkMarket!i love it

    2. Conrad Ross Schulman

      The investors behind Work Market are much stronger..The Work Market web framework is much stronger…The Work Market UI is way better..

      1. Carl J. Mistlebauer

        CRAD,I am sure all of that is very important but the reality is all that matters to me, as a potential customer, is can I find the expertise I am looking for, how is this expertise validated, and since I do not live in a large metropolitan area, how long will the benefits take to “trickle down.”

        1. Dave Pinsen

          Have you tried Elance? For some fields (e.g., different programming languages) they have tests to validate expertise, so you can see if someone scores in the top 10%, etc. You can also see the ratings and reviews of previous clients. You can find some talented, US-based workers there.  

          1. Carl J. Mistlebauer

            Thanks Dave! That helps immensely!

  13. Trish Burgess-Curran

    I am always pleasantly surprised by the number and range of companies within the USV portfolio! I have tried logging in but, as William points out, it seems to be geared to the US market (I’m currently based in London).I admire both Gates and Jobs and, to be honest, I would not mind emulating either one and/or having 1/100th of their talent! Genius, drive, perseverance: All equally important! They both have all three attributes even if demonstrated in different ways.

  14. MikePLewis

    I became familiar with them from learning about a company called Field Solutions in Minnesota.  Field Solutions does something similar as WorkMarket but they crowdsource workers and sell them to larger, enterprise customers.  They also can’t stop growing and growing.  It’s a gigantic market and I think both companies are going to crush it. 

    1. fredwilson

      there will be many winners in this market

  15. Dominic Preuss

    Most of the startups in NYC that are solving hard problems are running on the JVM, either via Java, or increasingly Scala.  Foursquare, Knewton, SecondMarket, Gilt are all running some combination of Java or Scala.  At SecondMarket, we built our initial infrastructure on Java but are slowly moving pieces of it to Scala to take advantage of some of the great libraries/frameworks in Scala while staying on the JVM.

  16. Kasi Viswanathan Agilandam

    I was ridiculed when i tried educating the local crowd yesterday.I was drunk and so they were …. 

  17. maxniederhofer

    I love this space. Online has changed transaction costs to an extent that firms will choose to outsource more services. At the same time, the disappearance of lifetime employment and high youth unemployment create demand for temporary employment solutions.Talk about a business that benefits from secular trends. It’s worth the difficulty of building a marketplace.

    1. Donna Brewington White

      It also reflects a changing workforce.  More and more people are opting for the flexibility and freedom that come with contract work.  Often the reason people shy away from “free lance” is the ongoing need for marketing one’s services — which some people do not enjoy and/or are just not good at. Services like workmarket remove the “marketing problem” and help give new power to workers. Makes recruiting for traditional employment harder as the workforce available for full-time employment diminishes.  But also compels companies to strive for excellence as employers.  Which is part of the dynamic that makes capitalism a great system — when it works well.

      1. Ashwin, Founder - ContractIQ

        On the other hand, the labor markets that I have used (as a Buyer), seem to think that ‘work-flow’ is a reasonable substitute to ‘relationship building’ that a Buyer & Seller need to establish.To allow for deep conversations before engagement within the workflow would be possible, but would slow down adoption and growth for these markets.I guess they are side stepping a crucial element of outsourcing partnership success and it would be a mess to re-engineer it into the system later.Just set an artificially deflated budget and crunch timeline for a complex project in one of the job markets and see how many 5 star rated agencies willfully sign up!

    2. Nick Tomaino

      Couldn’t agree more. Theres another player in the space called OnForce that my firm just invested in. I wrote a blogpost about it, check it out here http://nicktomaino.com/post

      1. Monstertrader999

        Nick, not sure you are aware but the founders of WorkMarket were the founders of On Force. The team that made On Force great is now working on the next evolution of the model.

        1. Nick Tomaino

          Thanks Monster!

          1. wtf?

            strange the onforce investor would show up on wm investor blog to promote his investment. 

        2. Bcmd6

          Not exactly the co founder and technology architect is still at OnForce all that is at Work Market is the idea guy. 

          1. Mike

            you should read the team page on the web site – I think over 10 OF people.  Plus former clients, advisors and investors.  Great team!

          2. MonsterTrader999

            As fas as I know, there was only 1 founder, Jeff L and then there are a bunch of other original team members that built on force that are now at work market.  i think both companies are great, obviously on force was a success but they are now heading into two different directions.  best of luck to them both.

      2. Mike

        Nick Did any of the early investors follow on in your investment?

      3. fredwilson

        the founder of WorkMarket founded OnForce. he left about four years ago.

        1. Sportsdude

          From what I understand I think i it was morel like 6 years ago that the co founder Jeff L left OnForce. 

          1. fredwilson

            could well be. i’m a little fuzzy on onforce history. 

          2. Nick Tomaino

            Yes, I am well aware. As you know Fred, you don’t make a significant investment in a company without knowing such information. Jeff, one of the co-founders of OnForce, exited the business in 2006. The other co-founder is still at the company.

          3. fredwilson

            I dont do much diligence. I am a gut investor. Diligence has caused to to say no to things i should have done. I think real early stage VC is a gut business. Late stage VC and buyouts is a diligence business. That said i did talk to the Onforce VCs during our investment process in WorkMarket. I just didnt rely too much on it

          4. OF Founder

            I, along with some investors exited onforce in Nov 2006.  I was the sole founder of the company, although a financial person (non employee) shared in the initial equity.  He also sold a big stake when I exited.  Two amazing people that are still at onforce both accepted job offers with WM but due to onerous documents we couldnt hire them.  Onforce has since pivoted its business to more of a services firm so we dont look at onforce as a “player” in our space, but rather a potential client.  I and my team are very proud of the work we did together at onforce and all the great investors we had an opportunity to work with.  Nick – I read the link to your post.  I will only comment on the history part.  We never focused on the “buyer” but rather had a neutral stance with both buyer and seller – we were building a marketplace.  We did not focus on SMBs.  We worked with large “buyers” initially as an effort to provide liquidity and knew SMBs would come over time so long as our marketplace was active.  Even many of our initial sellers were large businesses monetizing underutilized workers.  Pete is a great leader, apple was a great win and I hope to get to know Bill better over time.  I am psyched onforce is able to continue to raise money for these pivots.  Call me if you want to finish your due diligence – post investment. 

    3. fredwilson

      yes, we’d like to do more here. we have to be careful about this thoughhttp://www.avc.com/a_vc/201…

  18. Ronnie Rendel

    Every now and then you read about a startup doing EXACTLY what you “thought” for exactly your reasons – only you are too busy with your current company to launch.Thanks to you Fred, today is that day for me….  Yes, social/collaborative work outsourcing is absolutely where the economy is going (and I wrote about it plenty on my blog).  And yes, it only grows as more work can be outsourced to the growingly (global) virtual workforce.While I don’t want to share all I planned for this (I actually have a 30+ page business plan with basic function reqs on the shelf for 2 years now), but let me say this – the key to ramp up users and adoption is in BUILDING THE BEST COLLABORATION TOOLS.  Spent a lot of time thinking of these tools while managing globally disparate engineering groups all day…Good luck guys, I will be cheering for you. 

  19. Nik Bonaddio

    I can personally verify this team is a wonderful group and a great place to work. It got much better once their dead weight Creative Director left to do something with sports or some nonsense like that.

    1. fredwilson

      like predicting the outcome of the jets chargers game almost perfectly?

  20. Zuper

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  21. EagerToLearn

    I’m currently taking a C++ class…  should I be focusing on Java instead?  TIA.

    1. testtest

      as a first language i personally wouldn’t be too concerned which one to learn. once you’ve got the basics down: conditions, loops, objects, exceptions etc it’s pretty easy to then pick another up that is better for a specific job.i learned C first. it was great to learn the basics without having to worry about all the ecosystem around it.Java isn’t the “best” language, but it’s good at certain things. and the same goes for most other highly adopted languages. it’s more trading one advantage for another when it comes to picking languages IMO.

      1. EagerToLearn

        thank you all for the feedback!

    2. andyidsinga

      no dont refocus on java – build yourself some sort of app in c++. …then go rewrite or build next app in java …then next one with html5+javascript.

    3. Cam MacRae

      Horses for courses. With a good grounding in C++ you’ll be able to transition to any of C, C#, Obj-C, Java with minimal stress, and it will only help you when you look further afield.

  22. Prokofy

    So this is all for coders and geeks and stuff, right?Where’s the work for the rest of us?And I bet it lowers everybody’s pay.

    1. fredwilson

      no. lawyers are getting work on workmarket. bloggers are getting work on workmarket. and it raises pay not lowers pay.

      1. WM

        and healthcare workers and field marketing people and others as well.  People show up, form groups, curate databases of people and then leverage the new workforce they created…..

      2. Dave Pinsen

        Fred,Just came across an issue with Elance that seems like a opening a competitor could exploit. asked an iOS developer who had done a relatively small job for me for a quote on an even smaller job, and he quoted me about 3x what I expected. When I told him the cost was higher than I expected, he gave me an explanation which ended with this,there is an ‘invisible’ cost in taking low cost projects on Elance, with an impact on the Elance ranking, and being framed as a low cost provider, so I can not reasonably go much lower without losing money in the long run.So it seems like there’s a niche for a site to handle the smallest jobs (capped at a few hundred dollars each).

        1. fredwilson

          workmarket doesn’t compete with elance or odesk today. but they could in the future

    2. Dave Pinsen

      Never used this, but my impression from using Elance is that it doesn’t lower everybody’s pay. That might be more true of Etsy, because it puts local crafters in competition with crafters elsewhere; local digital workers (whether writers, coders, etc.) are already in competition with those elsewhere. 

      1. fredwilson

        average prices have been rising on Etsy for the past couple years. the rises in recent months are striking

  23. zvozin

    Workmarket could theoretically consider throwing Scala in their mix. It’s usually a logical next step for a Java project + a solid productivity boost + the best magnet for top-shelf Java talent yet invented.

  24. LE

    I forwarded the workmarket.com URL to one of my developers (who has done 6 figures worth of work). He is located here but also has a team of offshore programmers. (He does java but that wasn’t the point of sending him workmarket.com ..I didn’t send him this post).  I was curious what his opinion was and also because I thought it would be good for him. Here is what he said in answer to “Opinion of this, Is this something you would use to secure work?”. You might want to modify your site to counter his objections if what he is saying is not correct right on the home page. (Why we’re different, comparison chart etc.)—-begin—–“No, I would not use this website for securing work as I never had much luck in the past with similar sites such as http://www.guru.comThe professionals on these websites come from all over the world and under bid most projects and I heard from other’s experience that it’s a nightmare situation to get the work done when you don’t know whom you are dealing with. If you are bidding for work on these websites, you would almost be outbid by others from other parts of the world.Just to give you an example, a complete website design can be done for as cheap as $5 or $10 and we cannot compete with such rates. Obviously, one would get the kind of service you would typically get for $5.Thanks for sharing and please let me know if this is what you were expecting from my side?”

    1. WM

      LE – We agree with your developers response, many of these sites are a race to the bottom.  Often our clients already have teams of people they are managing on a contract basis but simply no software to manage them.  WM’s site is built around a framework of finding people, verifying them, engaging them, managing them, paying them and rating them.  We act as your single vendor and then you can manage all your contractors in one place.  Our clients will often Invite people they know (sometimes in the 1,000s), use our software to find new people, use groups to organize them and then send them work assignments and upon completion pay them.  The same way salesforce.com organized the sales process we have organized the entire labor process.  We have over 500 clients recruiting people into groups and then sending those people work. 

  25. Nate

    Java is here to stay.

  26. George Magdaleno

    Do they use Agile?

    1. Kristian Rickert

      George – Backend developer here.For the most part, yes.  We’ve found the agile process to help make us deliver software features faster while maintaining quality.  My favorite part about agile is that it confronts realities of software development that the waterfall approach often ignores – like changing requirements.However, I’ve learned to be cautious to follow any software development methodology 100%.  They’re made for guidelines not rules because the reality of development dictates that you’ll have to deviate from them on an as needed basis.

  27. Stephen Albright

    Adit thinks India could use Workmarket.

  28. Kasi Viswanathan Agilandam

    I love u anyway.

  29. chrisbenskey

    We like it. We don’t have deployed to anything in production (yet), but we have our eyes on it for helping us scale up our real-time features.

  30. Donna Brewington White

    Charlie — you’ve just helped me to realize something. The most fun I’ve ever had in recruiting has been for companies for which I’ve had to be an evangelist! This is a huge realization for me.Sure, evangelism is part of my job regardless of the clients, but startups and even turnarounds evoke this in a way few other companies can. One of my pleasures has been rescuing people from monoliths — POWs I call them — and placing them with startups and smaller companies — or gaining an offer acceptance from a candidate for which a larger company was also vying.  “But you have to follow through on the vision to keep them…”This point is crucial. Utterly crucial!Will look up your post.  And BTW, have YOU ever considered becoming a VC?

  31. testtest

    it’s super interesting to hear from members of the team. maybe there’s scope for guest posts looking at different aspects they have to deal with, from technical to people — mini case studies.good for the community and good to build awareness of their product and culture (attracting talent etc). 

  32. Donna Brewington White

    Charlie I think that if more people responsible for building teams saw recruiting this way, it would be a lot more effective and a lot more fun. Recruiting becomes arduous when it stops being part of what carries forth the vision, or rather stops being seen that way.

  33. fredwilson

    me too. jeff and jeff are the kind of entrepreneurs who just make it work without a lot of noise.