Freelancer – executive interview

In this interview, Trisha Epp from Freelancer discusses the company’s recent selection by NASA as a supplier for its latest crowdsourcing multi-vendor panel. Trisha explains how the Freelancer platform can be used for crowdsourcing and discusses NASA’s use of crowdsourcing to seek solutions for complex technical challenges. She explains the history of Freelancer’s relationship with NASA and outlines the details of the latest contract, NASA Open Innovation Services 3 (NOIS3). With the remit to support not only NASA but also other US government agencies, Trisha provides examples of past and ongoing challenges and explains how Freelancer is selected for and runs projects. She discusses the types of participants and their motivations and concludes by highlighting how Freelancer’s role in managing these challenges is opening doors to contracts from other government entities and enterprises.

Freelancer is an Australian company operating one of the world’s largest online marketplaces for freelancers. Its marketplace division has two business units (the core platform, which provides services targeted at small and medium-sized companies and includes an enterprise service for large multinationals, and Loadshift, which is Australia’s largest marketplace for heavy haulage freight) and the company also owns Escrow.com, which is a large transactions processor.