World’s most successful business ideas are born out of personal passion, belief, and, sometimes, pain. When the spark ignites, it sets a fire in motion. A fire to create something that the world has never seen, but, will be benefited from it, the most. A true entrepreneur is not the one who works for money, but, the one who seeds the idea into the world, whose fruit will benefit the society and of course, the money will follow. Today, when unemployment is at its peak, and talented individuals are wandering in search of good jobs, a man from Greece gave a platform to such individuals to earn their living.
Early Life
Born in Athens, Greece, Odysseas Tsatalos completed a diploma in Electrical Engineering, followed by a degree in Computer Science from the National Technical University, Athens. He later joined the University of Wisconsin, at Madison, to pursue a Master’s degree and a PhD in Computer Science. With such a broad expanse of knowledge, Odysseas became a research member at IBM Almaden Research Center. Odysseas’ parents wanted him to become a doctor, but his mind was inclined towards the computers, since his childhood. His father was a lawyer by profession and had always considered Information Technology as an end of the career before even it began. However, Odysseas’ interest in computers, encouraged him to take computers as his main subject in college and led him to become one of the most successful entrepreneurs.
Birth Of oDesk
Odysseas’ first entrepreneurial venture was born out of nostalgia and pain, from being away from his school friend, ‘Stratis Karamanlakis’. While working at Intacct Corp., in the United States, Tsatalos tried to convince Karamanlakis to come and join him at Intacct Corp., which did not work out. So, he found another way. Both the friends, collaborated on a project through teleconferencing, and soon co-founded a venture they called as ‘oDesk – Online Desk’.
The concept of oDesk was simple yet so powerful that it carried the potential to provide employment to thousands of individuals all over the globe. oDesk let the businesses hire freelancers, anywhere over the globe to work on their projects online. The business seemed like a huge risk at the time, but, the novel concept made it popular among the people. Odesk freelancers are working for companies and organizations, they would have never even heard of otherwise.
Odysseas gave birth to his company with initial self-investment of $50,000, through charging his credit card. Both, Odysseas and Karamanlakis, out-sourced low-cost software developers to save money. Initially, the company faced numerous problems as various large corporations were constantly turning them down and pointed out many loopholes in their platform. One of them was not paying the workers on an hourly basis. But, one day, a computer firm approached oDesk, with the requirement of freelance software developers, who were willing to work for a cheap pay. Odysseas grabbed this opportunity and advertised about the requirement online. Soon, hundreds of freelancers, all over the world, contacted him for the gig, and oDesk took a flight.
The Success Flight
The company soon raised $29 million, and took one step ahead, in becoming the world’s largest online workplace. Odysseas took the role of Chief Technical Officer, the job he is best at, and made Gary Swart the CEO of the company. The company was officially launched in 2005. oDesk got merged with Elance, on 18th December 2013, and was renamed as Elance-oDesk. Two years later, the company got a new name, Upwork Global Inc., also shortly known as Upwork.
Upwork currently has more than 12 million registered freelancers, and 5 million registered clients. More than 3 million jobs are posted each year, which worth $1 billion. According to the expert analysts, this figure is expected to reach $5 Billion, in the next five years. The company is based in Mountain View, California, United States. The co-founder of the company, Karamanlakis, still resides in Athens and handles more than 250 full-time oDesk contractors from Athens.
Harshal Pawar is an avid reader, a TV show addict, and a writer. He has a personal blog brainwork.wordpress.com where he jots down his articles and poetry about love and life.
He is currently pursuing film-making and wishes to bring the words written on a paper to the screen. More of all he is a scorpio.