9am.works Is The “Operating System” for Freelancers — Founder Interview
- Juan Diego Parra Castillo
- 2 days ago
- 26 min read
This blog post first appeared first on old medium publication (https://medium.com/startuprad-io), and was moved to this blog with the relaunch of our website in summer 2024.
This article is part of our coverage of Scaleup Founder Interviews from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
Executive Summary
This blog post first appeared first on old medium publication (https://medium.
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9am.works Is The “Operating System” for Freelancers — Founder Interview Startuprad.io brings you independent coverage of the key developments shaping the startup and venture capital landscape across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
This blog post first appeared first on old medium publication (https://medium.com/startuprad-io), and was moved to this blog with the relaunch of our website in summer 2024.
Executive Summary
9am.works is a startup platform explicitly designed for freelancers. Founded by Marc, a serial entrepreneur formerly with Team Europe Ventures and the founder of Sommelier Prive, Huus, code control, and 9am.works. The platform makes it easy for freelancers to find jobs, invoice clients, and get paid quickly and securely — most for free! It also helps companies in most steps of working with freelancers from searching and hiring to payment processing. Bootstrapped since its launch in 2016, 9am.works is transforming how freelance work is being done.
We take a lot of the pain points from companies that work with many freelancers.Marc Clemens, Founder and CEO 9am.works
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We worked with a law firm to build a compliance hub for working with freelancers.Marc Clemens, Founder and CEO 9am.works
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The Video Interview is set to go live on December 20th, 10 am CET
The Audio Interview
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The Founder
Marc Clemens (https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcclemens/) is originally from Schwaben (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabia), an area rich in entrepreneurial culture and home to some of the most iconic German companies, like Bosch and Benz. The Würth family is also from this same region, famous for their products related to screws, nails, and other construction items. He chose to pursue higher education abroad by studying at St. Gallen in Switzerland, UC San Diego, and later HEC in Paris. This exposure helped equip him with the skills needed to be a successful startup founder — something he has since become known for. His roots may have provided him with an initial spark of inspiration, but Marc’s hard work has allowed him to carve out his own place in the business world.
A serial entrepreneur, he has a wealth of experience not only with Team Europe Ventures (now team global, founded by Lukasz Gadowski https://teamglobal.net/) and also in founding his own startups. Unfortunately, his venture Sommieler Prive did not succeed, leading to a period of tiredness and burnout. Thankfully, this entrepreneur is sharing his learnings from this experience in interviews to help others avoid the pitfalls of a similar situation. His advice provides powerful insights into how to navigate entrepreneurism without suffering excessively from burnout.
After this, he was freelancing for some time. This leads him to the idea of Code Control (which he still runs), a community for IT freelancers. This again developed into the idea of 9am.works, for all freelancers, not only for IT talent.
In between, he co-founded with his wife the HUUS soundproof phone booths startup (you may have seen them in a coworking space before) https://en.huus.io/.
The Startup
If you are a freelancer in need of assistance with the various steps of working with a company, 9am.works (https://www.9am.works/freelancer) is the perfect platform for you! They provide sales solutions, and project management services free of charge for all freelancers and offer to work along any other steps needed for successful contracting. They also offer a payment solution, but this one is not for free. Thanks to their subscription software options as well as chargeable services on an à la carte basis, companies can enjoy 9am’s personalized range of packages. 9am.works is the ideal solution when it comes to making sure that everything related to contracting with companies is seamless and stress-free; in addition, its ‘freelancer’ feature enables knowledge workers to easily search and find employment opportunities that match their needs and goals.
9am has revolutionized the way companies find freelance services. By using a Software as a Service model, 9am provides comprehensive tiers of services to companies on the lookout for affordable contracting and compliance solutions. Not only that, but 9am also makes it easier and faster to pay freelancers since they provide businesses with one consolidated invoice, eliminating the need to onboard individual freelancers. With 9am, service delivery has never been simpler or more straightforward.
Venture Capital Funding
9am.works is finance with the cash flow from code control. They are interested in investors who can invest 8 digit tickets. They may look for funding mid to end of 2023.
We have unlimited holidays for employees at 9am.worksMarc Clemens, Founder and CEO of 9am.Works
9am.works is Hiring
You can learn more about the company, that is still hiring and gives you unlimited vacation here:
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Further Readings / Additional Resources
Here is our interview with Lukasz Gadowski
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The Interviewer
This interview was conducted by Jörn “Joe” Menninger, startup scout, founder, and host of Startuprad.io. Reach out to him:
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Topics Discussed in this Interview
In this interview we are talking about bootstrapping, failing, restarting, burnout, restart, it freelancing, it freelancers, Berlin, Paris, San Diego, surfing, hiring freelancers, platform, saas, software as a service, payments, invoicing
Automated Transcript
[0:00] Music.
[0:20] Hello and welcome everybody this is Joe from startuprad.io your startup podcast in YouTube blog from the german-speaking area Germany Austria and Switzerlandtoday in this is the last interview of 2022 and I would like to welcome Mark hey how you doing.
[0:39] Hi it’s Ellen thanks very good and you.Doing great as well we talked before and you’re currently in Berlin but there is a Christmas party going on on your company tonight so you are in the office of your investors actually.Yes that’s that’s true too many people to record the podcast which is have a small office in Berlin because we’re fully remote company and I usually spent my time in Fortune to ride least in the winter so that I cankite Surf and enjoy the sun mmm very nice,I have to admit I love seasons and I also enjoy a going out in the snow with my son’s buttnonetheless I can also see the charm of being in one place in the u.s. many people do that when they retire their coats no Birds because they leaving when the snow is coming and,you are and serial entrepreneur and we’ll get soon into some of the stories butI’ve been listening to some of the other podcast I found about you and you originally from Bob and the area where people may know stood cut the headquarter ofPorsche and Mercedes and also bushes headquarters somewhere there.
[1:59] Yes as much as I always try to to hide my pastor I think at the core I’m somehow or swabian I’m some of thesome in some ways the stereotypical swabian that wants to be an entrepreneur and always tries to optimize the little things and processes,yeah I do believe there are some good entrepreneurs from their Bosch Ben’s good good also schwaben.
[2:26] Yeah the worldwide brand for the small screws and all the little Parts you need there like some people say the fiddly bitsand I also learned that you been writing software pretty early on and you try to sell it.Yes but that was really early on I never managed to become a proper developer would say those really at the MS-DOS qbasic days.I think I had my first computer when I was 56 I got a computer my father’s old computer so.268 processor and then we start riding a bit of software and qbasic learning software little calculators stuff like that and trying to sell that to to other parents for their kids.So I was kind of our first little venture that we ever started together with a friend of mine and that.
[3:20] That is not too bad he tried it pretty early on and,I’ve set you are a Serial entrepreneur I’ve seen from your LinkedIn profile which of course will link down here in the show notes that you’ve been with Team your Venturesfounder and CEO CEO of some of you prove a co-founder of who’s the soundproof boothwe can go in a co-working space and have a phone conversation by the way why are you not in such a booth yeah yes that is very true in the office I got one,it’s still too many people I’m it and currently that’s what we will talk about here founder and CEO of Contour control and 9am.works we late to get into 9am.works but first can you take us a little bitalong that Journey.
[4:17] Yes I think but I’ve been even before always a bit entrepreneurs I was a DJ when I was a teenager and organizing the festivals and then.I had always my little list of.Of ideas on how to what kind of companies you start co-founded are classified ads Marketplace doing doing my bachelor and then went to team Europe after that was part of the team back then was first called submarine and became later digitalis item,so also in the classifieds field startup.In parallel and bit later to three months later deliver your started a team Europe so then I went to to Paris at my Master’s started some me PV and wind e-commerce company which was for created wide selection.For me it’s more modern or adequate way of buying wine had a bankruptcy and of 2014 with that company freelanced about a year and then started code control.And throughout the last.No I think almost seven years I’ve been doing code control build a lot of product and then who’s came up at some point because we need it.
[5:27] More space to do calls since I mentioned we’re fully remote company andmy wife and me we’re thinking and how could we do that and what would be the right set up so we started building our own first prototype together and then she said well look I’m I just got out of Parental leave why,so nice to other companies she has a Celtic background from rocket internet and lots of startups and then she took the company and,well I support here and there because I love physical products yeah and in the end started 9 a.m. we’re life since beginning of this year.
[5:58] Which is our newest little baby or freelance operating system are very excited about.Or your way ahead of my plan here I was I was just going through your profile and I found it very interesting you studiedin Switzerland the University of lausanne and sankt Gallen but with are also found interesting is University of San Diego did he go there just for surfingfor to Hawaii or I was in between San Diego which was still a decent company Earth season University but also a lot of laid-back surfing times I chose San Diego at a fantastic winter there and then went back to Cigar I seeand it’s Jesse Paris and I don’t know how this fits in where are the waves in Paris.
[6:57] Yeah that is true that didn’t work I was thinking of something else originally but in the endI should say became it and it was I mean it’s a great University and is a fantastic experience because it’s on campus so I lived on campus so it’s it’s a bit like I guess I never went to boarding school but I imagine it’slike boarding school but without the people looking over you so you can do all kinds of fun and fun is that you want to do so it’s quite nice.Sounds pretty good and it looks like from his CV you graduated from in Paris and then you instantly started this curated online wine shop atlet me guess you got a lot of exposure to French wine in ParisI definitely want to do something with a nice product and I still love wine it’s just such a.That’s what I would so many elements so much love so much.
[7:58] Craftsmanship in there and so much variety and it’s at the same time a product that is so hard to understand for the end consumer and that was where we started.After after Paris because you go to supermarket of this.You shelves of wine and you have no idea which one to pick right and that was kind of the starting point was that okay we need to find some Logic on how can we create wine and how can we create a tasting algorithm so that,people get matched with their white wine and only drink wine that they really love.And yeah we did that was it quite a journey.
[8:36] I drank a lot that was for sure it’s I think five days five days a week for sure too much wine that was the fun part was a lot of work that was a tough time because,investors were not really interested in investing in Wind companies there were a few artists that didn’t work out just about the time that I started it so I was really I learned a bad timing to start aVenture backed company so was quite a struggle we raised about a million total and had a bankruptcy and of 2014 then.Before we get into that I realize that there are a lot of wine companies that have been soldprior to or in the beginning of Corona and some of them had prices something like eight digits tens of millions or single Millionsdo you believe that you’ve been just too early with the idea or did they do something complete.
[9:40] And I think there are many things we.
[9:43] So we iterated over and over the model we started with a wine subscription model that and more on the higher-priced here that didn’t work out too well I think there were a lot of companies at the same time doing food boxes thatthat had a hard time and then we move more into a shop that is sorted.The way that based on the wine taste of the person that worked way better but still the customer acquisition costs were fairly high on there still are fairly High,so you need to make sure that that it’s you need to refinanceif you get the right customers you have really sweet clvs you’ve get a lot out of a loyal wine customer and we had very loyal by customers but you need to buy them,so you need to have the cash to buy them andthat was a bit of a tricky story because we just didn’t get investors convinced we started a wine up something very similar to today the vino or cells in parallel where you can take a picture of a wine label.
[10:37] And then by that wine incident that moment and we were to the first one is integrating that with the dropshipping and why in the market is super fragmented it’s really also very much a people business where you need to get in contact with the people and drink with themso we hadover 10,000 different wines and in our in our shop and so we were able to really deliver a lot of the wines and we were investing into that appand that was where we actually,went bankrupt because in the end first series a financing didn’t happen and we had our existing investors that said that it would preach us and.Then they push the signing appointment for the for the bridge loan.Offer financing back and back and after that push it back to second time that well as all we actually won’t do it so wasn’t that moment we’re completely out of cash we had some other investors lined up but we’re as a crowd finance and two contracts took a long while if you would need to do a Down Round so it was all a bitof a tricky set up to get out of it and we were also very tired we’ve been.Fighting for two and a half years and we were tired so I think it was a combination of.
[11:49] It’s been going on too long and we’re not getting the right cash in I think
there was.
[11:57] So many learnings along the along this journey one of the biggest was for sure to never start a company alone.Mentally but also to get investors unfortunately I did it again and again what can I say but I never wanted to do it.Yeah but I think especially if you go into venture-backed.
[12:20] Just need to have co-founders I see and you said you were tired in another interview you hint that you’ve been pretty close to burn out how did he deal with itafter the end of the company because everybody says yeah you need to fail in order to become a better entrepreneur but nobody tells you,how to get up on your feet again after you fail can you give us some tips here.So yeah Brenda out actually about a year before that because I was the first time that we had to lay off people and I don’t they have about 20 people been pushing hard for financing round and.I worked non-stop weekends public holidays completely through and day and night so what happened is in the end that I.I reared at this moment I felt like some epos slipping out of my hands and.
[13:17] And then was so weird because at that moment I fully identified myself with a company because I work too much I didn’t take care of my my friends and and hobbies or sports or anything so.It’s it and this one thing this company I didn’t know where to go anymore and that pushed me into this hole where I was.I would say for about 2 months perhaps even three months pretty useless at work I would say until the moment that I said okay I need to stop working for a bit.
[13:47] To recover and and that was that was even before the bankruptcy and that helped me a lot later throughout the bankruptcy as well because what I realized that phase is that.
[13:59] To me it’s crucial to keep it distance between me as a as an entrepreneur as a.Person at work and me as an individual person,privately and I focus on me being happy I’m focusing on having enough me time so I work less I,and make sure that usually I don’t work later than 7:00 in the evening I don’t work weekends I make sure that I do enough sports that I that I have enough interactions with my friends so that.My private personality my private me is always happy and then there is work,and work is something that I absolutely love and I spent the biggest part of my life doing that right so but it needs to have limits and I think that has been splitting those two and and giving work a limit I think this has been the,the biggest learnings and another one that happened throughout this Bernard I said in the beginning you tend to I think.
[15:02] Thinking too much of you think that you’re too important for the company that you really important for the company that that if you’re not in the company nothing will will happen right and.When I wasn’t actually bringing anybody to the company and parts not working,and I came back I looked at what was happening then I thought that everything was running and the team was doing a better job than I would have ever imagined they made decisions without me and the decisions were better than anything else helped me a lot in developing my leadership.
[15:34] More in the direction of trying to be completely obsolete at the company so.My day-to-day work is always on making myself obsoleting we ever did for our okay ours of our strategy next year as well again make Mark obsolete right it’s one of this strategic elements and I think it’s really important that we,take ourselves as Leaders or Founders not too serious and we bring value and we need to see where we bring value butthe company doesn’t depend on I should not depend on it reminds me of an interview I had even my other podcast starting y with the person who was a high ranking employee yet an American base,tech company and he had his first heart attack in his early 40s because he just completely lacked sleep you know but I also realized this in myself when I started out,as an entrepreneur in the first half year there was at least one day a week where I worked until midnight I’ve cut this considerablyplus the rule is also for me I don’t work on weekends and I realized if you put in like four five six additional hours at night in the evening the next day is even less productive and then you need more it’s kind of avicious cycle and that’s something I also tend to Break by working maximum until 10 p.m.
[16:59] Starting not to early and of course having some free time talking to other people because if you only sit in front of a laptop you don’t want can do any good ideas especially if you’re very tired.And so basically who’sthe Box soundproof boxes are the show of your wife if I understand correctly so so exactly we kind of skipped it just one question when when we are at your place at homewould that be soundproof booth for phone call somewhere nobody but there’s this little bits and Bobs that came out of it like,find a little self is something that is out of a prototype of a food and so on so yeah we love we renovated our apartment our staff so we love DIY and.Yeah so it’s part of what we do and then you started.First call control which is still alive but then you.
[18:03] Made it a little bit broader with 9 a.m. the roots are back in you’re freelancing can you take us along the journey how you developcode control and why now 9 a.m. works is the next Evolution for that and then we get into finally your current company,it’s like I’ve been always a fan of future of work in future the verification so.
[18:33] I ended up being an entrepreneur because I did internships in Banks and so on and.I always realize that this is not a way that I can be happy at work and.But I think I was arrogant enough and said well no one really can be happy like that so I always took an interest in how can you make people happy at work and then I started freelancing.And realized how many of these boxes that I’ve set myself a happy work it takes the freelancing is just such a gives you so much flexibility so much freedom.
[19:11] You decide where when and how you work you decide who you work with and every morning you decide that you’re gonna work and in a work contract you kind ofsign with your blood and then you go on till the end for that company and you wake up and you might not want to work for them anymore so that’s why 50 of people actually want to quit and what is theconcept of quite quitting all of these things don’t exist for Freelancers they do what they love.As I did that and I was fascinated about it but at the same time I realized that you spent about thirty percent of your time on things that they’re actually not at the core of,your work so you do sales admin writing invoices running after invoices which is completely annoying because you do live of that moneyinsurances finding a co-working space you need to Define what are your skills what is your career path so all of these things are you just a littlesole entrepreneur by you actually just try to sell your work and and that was the beginning of code control as well.We want to create a curated freelancer Marketplace and that case for Tech Freelancers product managers developers and designers.
[20:20] And take only the best people in this community and by having the best people in there we can afford to take.As much as possible care of those 30% that the Freelancers don’t want to do.And yeah we’ve been doing this since 2015 and end of 2015 beginning of 2016 and.
[20:43] And always build a lot of products around it and try to understand how can we make the life of Freelancers better,and naturally working with what companies also as well how can we make the life of of companies better and that’s how we ended up in the end with with 9am.works.
[21:00] Where we decided we want to make it a bit broader we’d only want to focus on a small group of tech Freelancers and the best tech freelance in Europe I want to make it open for every freelancer and we knowledge worker at least every knowledge freelancer and we may not want to open it for allcompanies and even Recruiters in the future I see and.We Now understand it has something to do with Freelancers it take some of the work,can we do like a journey of let’s say I’m an aspiring consultant in the start of space and I want to register at 9 a.m. works what do you do for me and what do you need from me.
[21:38] Yeah so for 9 a.m. that’s the bottom line of what we’re doing is we.We try to be an infrastructure for freelancing so we call it freelancing operating system and.And first everything starts with the perfect profile.That means so you have to imagine if you’ve ever done a LinkedIn research or Marketplace you see that most people don’t have good profiles and that’s that’s obvious because.Why should I know how to create the best profile.It’s all we do is you sign up you give us a bit of information give us your CV your LinkedIn your whatever profile you have your website and we create a profile for you.Because we are professional resume editors and we create a profile for you and that is the beginning of your sales Journey.Because at the core of what you’re doing and freelancing is you try to understand how to get more and better projects.And that is something that we specialize on so.We greatest profile for you you have been there a lead form sales for that you can use to qualify all the leads are coming in you can embed it on your website or on LinkedIn or whatever you want to do and then you can manage all the incoming leads through 9am.worksit’s kind of a freelancer projects here where you can just keep track of all of your projects without you yourself needing to enter anything.
[23:02] They’re on the top and eight in the community where you can get any kind of help we have on top open hours for talking to texts advisorsfor talking to lawyers and we will launch our end-of-the-year finance app or payment top where you can.Get all of your invoices financed or even under something where we currently still looking at how we do it find.Way to invoice through the platform your customers and get paid for your platform.
[23:40] That sounds pretty good what type of Freelancers can work with and.
[23:48] As we talking about payment that has to be like a legal limitation from where the people can come from in order to you also use your payment solution right.
[23:58] Yes so.Generally it’s all knowledge workers so 49m it really doesn’t matter what kind of knowledge work you do it everyone is welcome.From the geographies we are European German Centric company meaning we have a lot of customers in Germany.And we have talent all over Europe.
[24:27] For contracts it’s the easiest if it’s within the you but there are few other
countries that work out as well that’s it.
[24:37] Our product is completely for free for Freelancers just two payments part will cost Freelancers but products completely free for Freelancers and we’ve built a lot of different solutions for companies and that’s where we actually make money.That would have been my next two questions first how you make money and what is it away is it useful for companies because we do have a lot of.Entrepreneurs listening here including Freelancers yes I’m freelancing myself but also entrepreneurs can you tell us.Little bit how.Your solution helps the companies who want to hire Freelancers who want to get the best talent for a certain period of time.
[25:19] Yes the first of all that code control it always goes through us right we offer 40 within 48 Hours the best talent provided by us.That at 9 a.m. there.The different ways and that’s when we started 9 a.m. we went back to his idea of becoming an infrastructure provider for freelancing.I looked into what marketplaces do and what different Freelancers service Due Time trackers or accounting software Amazon and.Identified that we want to be different than traditional Marketplace traditional Marketplace like.Could be even like Linton they always start with owning the profile and owning the lead.
[26:06] And and then they say well this justifies that we make money and we think a bit differently we sell well in the end we don’t own the profile,please this is your profile we help you having the best profile by Place Multiplied on lots of different places and make sure that in these different placesyou can you can use the profile to sell better and then there’s the other side and just delete and then we do the same thing instead of a Marketplacewhere it’s very clear that on the marketplace you make money with the lead.We take in our case we say the project itself should not be monetized,so our Freelancers can get projects from several different external platforms we scrape them we optimize them put the tags in it categorized them and then match them against the profiles of the people so you can find hundred percent on the job of the chops in the platform.
[26:58] But that means as well that we need to rethink the way that we do pricing so traditional Marketplace just takes commissions we go in and look in this whole value chain of recruiting Freelancers.You have different steps you have certainly the profile searching for the profile then you have the vetting process then you have the Contracting and compliance process and then you have the payment process.And what we do is we split it into two different parts and take Cuts in dose but of those elements where we create value add.On the platform you can search yourself for free so if you go on 9am.works as a company you can search for talent yourself.But you can also ask us to do the search the betting the admin the payment and so on and that is where we make money.You can however as well to Contracting on the platform there’s a basic Contracting this for free that you do the Contracting directly works for yourself so it’s an online Contracting tool but if you want.
[28:01] Additional contracts other contracts additional compliance service that is where cost comes in,there are different tiers that it’s a subscription model and software-as-a-service traditional subscription model where we take based on what kind of tear you in so the more people you hire the more compliance and need the more we take.
[28:18] And the last part is payments and that is where we are.
[28:23] Kind of a payment solution for consolidating all of your freelancer invoices no matter where you,got those Freelancers from and send your only one invoice once a month and make sure that all of the elements the line items on this invoice have been approved and that is also a paid service that goes on a commercial model.
[28:43] That.Transaction fee model for everybody who’s not in who has not been in like a big project with a lot of Freelancers they will all.Invoice you at a different time likely towards the mid or theend of the month depending when they started how they how they invoice Cycle Works they’ll all have different formatsdepending on where and when you work different languages different currencies and maybe and so on and so forth so it can.Basically if you have a very large project you need at least one person in that room and staff just to do that.Just to make sure all the invoices that are checking out right and you have always two elements you havethe formal correctness of the invoice right is everything under that you need on there especially with cross-border transactions you have a lot of different issues you might need a DAT number you want to verify it and so on and then the other part isis the is the content right is this really approved and both of these pains we take away.And there’s another pain that we take away for bigger organizations that is.Usually and bigger and sessions with Erp systems you would need to get every freelancer through your purchasing department do a legal check.Too kind of a kyc.
[30:07] And give them a supplier number so you own boredom as supplier within the company now if you I don’t know torture Taylor common work with let’s say 15,000 Freelancers a year.
[30:18] Then that’s 15,000 suppliers that you need to onboard and get into your system and what we do with our consolidation and the Contracting engine is that we help that.Such a company needs only one supplier that one suppliers 9 a.m. and underneath we have all of the other suppliers which are all the different Freelancers they get Consolidated into these invoices.
[30:38] And now you can pay them out of one ear piece of flyer.I just have to smile and when is it worth for company to do this do you need any Lee 15,000 Freelancers,no but please if you do then please come nowliterally it’s a freemium model right if you’re a small organization than the product is for free and if you need here and there freelancer it’s for free and you can use it it’s not the target group where we want to make money there are certain elements like compliance in Germany for self-employment is really big so we’ve created with Hogan levels of compliance softwareto ensure that you can work with Freelancers with as little for self-employment risk as possible so these little elementscan become interesting it can be that you’re scaling a lot and you want to use our API to work directly with your 80s so perhaps the subscription element makes sense right so it’s,completely flexible you can sign-up use it for free have a look around you don’t need to use all of the hubs you can use just individual elements.So it’s a very flexible and open tool and for everybody who wants to check it out of course we have it down here in the show notes wherever you listening this wherever you watching this.
[31:58] Go down here in the show notes there is a linkin case you’re listening to this on I BT our internet radio station I’ll start up that radio go to medium.com forwards let’s start up rate -I owe that is our block and there you’ll find the show notes of 9am.works and the usual questions arethe stuff that is left so first of all I understood you have initial investors since you have been basically growing with.Their financing and your own revenues may be a little bit that added on are you open to talk to investors.Yes so we profitable since 2019 while we were profitable before we took a financing Round And since 2019 your profitable again meaning we Finance 9 a completely out of the cash flow from code control.
[32:55] We are open for talks always we are certainly at a stage where financing about needs to be 10 million plus 2 to have an impact everything else we can easily do out of cash flow and Bank financing.With nine am we believe that about six to nine months is a good moment for us to look again into the options of doing external financing.And of course it’s interesting because you are you are helping Freelancers to get new jobs but are you looking for like permanently hired people are you hiring,yes of course yeah we always higher we fully remote companies are we hiring all around the world.
[33:39] Different positions from Community managers to growth managers to recruiters account managers.Event managers literally always have a look what is open right now I know at this moment we have the growth manager all open and recruiter will open.Yeah so always definitely check out our career page there’s there’s definitely stuff on there.
[34:03] We have unlimited holidays to have mentioned it’s a nice package.That really means unlimited holidays it’s not the PTO like you know in the u.s. right.It’s it means well we have to actually 51 that is in Germany will have to track it it means that you need to take a minimum of 25 days of holidays otherwise we push you away and say you are not allowed in the office anymore.And then you take as many as you need that year we made takes we have made the experience that they’re just use where you need more and here’s where you need less so decide yourself as long as it’s more than 25 we have you.
[34:45] That is a good choice and she’s from my personal experience the yeah you become a parent it’s usually to a good good year to take more time offMark was a pleasure talking to you thank you very much for our audienceMerry Christmas Happy New Year you are the last interview going live this year there will be only the fintech review and an additional bonus episode coming up this year and we will be back in January 20 23.Guys thank you very much for being our audience here Mark again for being our guests and have a safe time relax enjoy take your time off and start the new year with the new energy.
[35:38] Music.
Key Takeaways
[20:20] And take only the best people in this community and by having the best people in there we can afford to take.As much as possible care of those 30% that the Freelancers don’
This article covers a significant development in the DACH startup and venture capital ecosystem.
The DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) continues to be one of Europe's most dynamic startup markets.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the key facts about 9am.works “Operating System” Freelancers?
This blog post first appeared first on old medium publication (https://medium.com/startuprad-io), and was moved to this blog with the relaunch of our website in summer 2024.
How does this affect the German startup ecosystem?
[4:17] Yes I think but I’ve been even before always a bit entrepreneurs I was a DJ when I was a teenager and organizing the festivals and then.I had always my little list of.Of ideas on how to what kind of companies you start co-founded are classifie
What are the latest startup funding trends in the DACH region?
Startuprad.io tracks venture capital and startup funding across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Explore our pillar coverage pages for the latest data.
About the Host
Joern "Joe" Menninger is the host of the Startuprad.io podcast and covers founders, investors, and policy developments across the DACH startup ecosystem. Through more than 1,300 interviews and nearly a decade of reporting, he documents the evolution of the European startup landscape. Follow Joern on LinkedIn.
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