Thanks taking the call, I know it’s really early out there in L.A….
I’m from New York. I’m only visiting in LA and my body is still in Eastern time. Happy to answer some questions for you!

OK (Wise Man Say senses a non verbal agreement not to mess around). Put Solvate in a nutshell for us. That’s in one sentence, please
(pause) …Ah…Solvate is a platform that makes it easy for elite, independent professionals and companies to find each other and work together, in the cloud.

A virtual labour market?
Exactly. A virtual labour market where high quality ‘Talent’ can advertise their services and be found by companies looking for flexible resource.

Tough question for you: Why only the US?
Some job functions don’t fit with the outsource model. Marketing, creative services, even some administrative functions where trust and cultural connection are important factors. Y’know….say you had an Admin Assistant, who knows what kinda restaurants you like to eat in, what kinda neighbourhoods you want to be in – these kinda things are very hard to translate offshore. What works in these marketplaces is IT – the international language of technology – but there are so many other kinds of work that don’t. So we thought ‘Let’s focus on quality and on building trust, let’s start with people that are known quantities with reputations on the market’ and go from there.

Now, we would like to export that model to places in the UK. In fact, we are working on a collaboration programme with the UK government where we are stimulating US companies to open up European HQ in the UK. But in the end, it will be according to the same model – UK companies for UK freelancers.

Was Solvate a conscious counter point to the likes of oDesk and Elance?
Yeah! (no hesitation)

I mean, it’s about vetting people. Not allowing just anybody to sign up. Making sure that they are top independent professionals, people with reputations on the line. These are not anonymous people who you have no idea who you are dealing with.

We are asking businesses to try something new, y’know? We are used to working with contractors across town or the employee across the table. Now we’re saying, ‘Hey, there’s a much bigger market out there, but…..y’know, there is a big trust factor. And we need to get you comfortable with that, and we figure the best way to do that is to bring in people who already know how to deal with clients, who already have a great track record, and already speak the same language, in every way.

I’m not sayin’ a global market place for labour won’t ever work, but that is further down the line. The world is not entirely flat. Its still more round that flat, and Solvate is here to bridge the gap until it does flatten out.

(there follows a surreal diversion on round earth, flat earth and ‘step’ earth. For the record, all the surreality came from me)

Mike, we need to get back to the interview. I’m interested to know how Solvate do the vetting – how do you assess ‘quality’?
Well, the approach from other labour marketplaces is usually a rating system. Sorta, ‘We’re not going to vet people on the way in’, allow the clients to rate the service and the best people will rise to the top. Sounds good in theory, but there’s a lot of bad work being done on those labour markets. The clients don’t know. And there’s a lot of fraudulent work going on there. And there’s a lot of client’s being burned because they are doing the work they are paying the freelancer to do. And no one wants to step into an environment like that, its not a safe place to transact.

At Solvate, It’s entirely based in the existing professional reputation of that professional. We won’t let you into the network unless you have a verifiable track record. We will not allow you onto our platform if you don’t meet certain criteria and that’s all there is to it.

Y’know, it’s a lot like Hotels.com.

(Wise Man Say knows nothing about Hotels.com, but in the line with standard business practice, presses on regardless)

Yes?
There is already an infrastructure there which we can build on that. If you have done X for Apple or Y for Google then, you’ve got third party references that we can trust. A lot of those labour market’s is all about quantity, our argument is all about quality. We have 1600 people and they are all really good.

Y’know, the most important thing is client satisfaction. And every single client that comes on to Solvate gets client satisfaction….

…..Woah Mike, that’s a big comment. Are you sure about that statement?
Absolutely!

Every one of our Talents delivers the goods or we give the client a refund. We are accountable for the work. That’s why we go through the effort of vetting the Talent before they become part of the platform. One way or the other, the client gets a positive client experience.

It’s all designed to build accountability, trust and transparency. We feel that we are kind of like the Zappos of work. We deliver on the promise. It’s not about the shoe, its about the all the things that go around the purchase of the shoe. If we can deliver the same kind of service, we’ll win.

Let me take it from a different angle Mike. I’m an employer, I want Talent, what do I do?
OK sure. So we have three tiers of service:

We have an A La Carte – where you sign in, you find people on your own, it cost you nothing but the hourly rate for the Talent, and you’re good to go.

If you want more support, we have Recruiter – only $99 a month – and you will get a dedicated recruiter who will find you the Talent, help build the relationship and manage the whole process.

Finally we have the Premium service, which is Enterprise – this is where there is more than one executive at an organisation, this is where you have several people at the company, who may be looking to build a pipeline of talent. Our pitch is ‘Hey don’t just start a project, build a relationship’. We help companies build a virtual org chart of flexible resource on the Solvate platform and have it ready to go when you need to go. So you go in, start the conversation and have labour on demand.

This is how we build organsiations these days: less overhead, more flexibility, totally on demand. You come in, you build a team of your core guys, and then you have a virtual team to fill in everything else. It’s a more cost effective way to operate.

Do you do anything in terms of assessment of the Talent?
We built a social interface to be very like Yammer or Chatter, and allows the Client and Talent to message through the platform. We’ve integrated Twilio into it to facilitate calling through the platform. We’ve made these tools to help people ease through this mating ritual of getting to know each other. For example, Talent can only log hours in the interface if the client has logged budget for it. Y’know, these type of things build trust and promote transparency….

…hey Mike, I’m going to through an idea at you. Hope you don’t mind my completely unqualified opinion?
…er sure. Go ahead

(15 minutes later, Mike agrees that it was a GREAT IDEA)

So….how do you make your money, aside from charging the Clients for higher levels of service?
We don’t charge the Talent to be on the network, but we take a percentage of their hourly charge……hey listen, I actually got to go. It’s nearly 7:30 over here and I’ve got another call coming through……hello? Hello? Can you hear me?

Yeah Mike, I’m here.
Are there any other questions you’d like to ask me?

Sure. Just one more. How long till world, or should I say, US conquest?
I think we’re going to have a very big 2012. We’ve just hired the Head of Sales from The Ladders. He’s been running a lot of people over there. Everything we’ve been doing to date has kinda been on our own, but now we are ready to push it. So, give him a year to build up the sales force and we’ll see where we are.

Mike, it’s been pleasure
Thanks for taking an interest Wise Man Say, keep in touch, lets keep the conversation going.