Fiverr, an online marketplace for freelance services, reported its Q2 results on Thursday (Aug. 8), posting a 41 percent year-over-year revenue increase in its first quarter as a public company, to $25.9 million.
The company filed for its initial public offering (IPO) back in May. The filing showed that the Tel Aviv-based company’s net losses grew from $19.3 million in 2017 to $36.1 million in 2018. Revenue grew by almost 45 percent, from $52.1 million to $75.5 million.
Launched in 2010, Fiverr reported that it has facilitated more than 50 million transactions between 5.5 million buyers and 830,000 freelancers, who work in industries including logo design, video creation and editing, website development and blog writing. The company previously raised $111 million in venture funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, Accel, Square Peg Capital, Qumra Capital and others.
The company also made some key acquisitions, including buying ClearVoice, a high-end content marketing platform and talent network, earlier this year.
Q2 Trends
For the second quarter of 2019, Fiverr said spend per buyer increased 16 percent year over year to $157. The company had 2.2 million buyers at the end of Q2, up 14 percent year over year. For the full year, Fiverr expected its revenue to increase by 34 percent to 37 percent.
“Over the coming quarters and years, we plan to execute on our strategy to drive sustainable growth, while making steady progress on our path to profitability,” said Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman. “Our results demonstrate the power of our business model and we are heading into the second half of the year with strong momentum, backed by positive market trends for freelancers globally.”
Fiverr said it continues to grow globally, including via the recent launch of a German-language site, “contributing to Germany growing significantly faster than our overall marketplace,” the company said. In July, it introduced Fiverr Studios, which the company described as “a transformative product that enables freelancers to collaborate and provide complex offerings with cross-category deliverables.”
In a previous PYMNTS interview, Kaufman said the company’s creation stemmed from his experiences as an entrepreneur, as well as his search for the best freelance talent for his business needs. While doing so, he said he was “exposed to how high-friction those transactions can be – finding and getting in touch with a person, figuring out if you want to work with that person, and anything to do with transactions, [non-disclosure agreements (NDAs)], file exchange and all that.”
In the IPO filing, Fiverr notes that its marketplace can be easily scaled up as it adds more freelancers. The company also pointed out the need to continue growing the community, as well as the chance that the freelance market may not grow as quickly as expected.
Gig Growth
Fiverr operates in a constantly evolving world of digital payments and commerce, one regularly documented by PYMNTS research.
Gig workers and freelancers with a host of talents can utilize today’s highly connected environment to offer their services to employers around world, without being limited by their geographies. Digital platforms fuel these connections by matching workers – graphic designers, translators, photographers and others – with prospective employers, while also helping them boost their professional profiles on a global stage. Employers can benefit from job marketplaces as well, as they are increasingly helping companies address their talent gap problems. Freelance job platforms are being used by more workers and employers, and are expected to contribute $2.7 trillion to the global GDP by 2025.
Maintaining and building that trust is something Fiverr addresses by enabling payouts to freelancers (known as “sellers” on the platform) in their preferred currencies – something that is particularly important as the platform offers its services in 160 countries. Andy Schabelman, Fiverr’s vice president of international expansion, stated that boosting trust between both parties and the platform is an essential part of the company’s strategy. “We want to facilitate trust and do whatever it takes to meet the [needs] of our users,” he said.
Stay tuned for more numbers from Fiverr in the coming months as it strives to prove itself as a public company and take more share of the global gig market.
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