Revolancer

"Giving freedom back to freelancers" - Fast-growing challenger freelancing platform. VC-backed. 10,000+ users. Early revenue: 4-figure MRR, rapidly on track to exceed £10k+ MRR. Advised by founding CMO of Just Eat.

Highlights

• Freelance marketplace with proven SaaS revenue model and strong traction
• VC-backed by SFC Capital (lead investor in pre-seed round)
• CEO has a previous exit in the freelance platform space
• All existing angel investors already committed funds to this new round
• Featured in 30+ publications including Insider Media and Business Live

Overview

Target	£500,000
Minimum	£10,000
Investment Raised	£350,000
Previous Rounds	£175,000
Stage	Achieving Sales
Investor Role	Any

The Business

Problem: To enforce an unfair 20% commission fee, Revolancer's competitors ban freelancers from communicating with clients off-platform. Additionally, a lack of quality-control creates a race to the bottom economy where everyone loses.

Solution: ​​Revolancer is an award-winning freelancing platform with no commission fees for freelancers, where users can communicate freely. Offering SaaS subscription plans that empower users via an ecosystem of innovative tools, Revolancer is automating quality-control using an in-house AI classifier.

Vision: To become the no-brainer solution for the freelancing community. Having onboarded over 10,000 users, Revolancer is already generating 4-figure MRR, with 70%+ month on month growth.

The Market

What does ‘freedom’ mean to you? For 1.1 billion freelancers globally, it means the flexibility afforded by their self-employment. That’s why over half of US workers will be freelancers by 2027 (Forbes). With a global economy adjusting to WFH post-pandemic, this trend is sure to continue.

Despite the industry’s growth, freelancers lack a worthy marketplace solution. Users of existing platforms face painfully outdated moderation practices, steep commission fees, and race to the bottom competition.

Revolancer is forcing change by challenging archaic practices, ‘creating a brighter future for flexible work’. By allowing disintermediation (Zoom, emails, etc), scrapping freelancer commission fees, and leading the industry on quality-assurance.

Progress/Proof

• Advisory board includes the founding CMO of Just Eat
• 10,000+ freelancers and clients onboarded
• VC lead investor at pre-seed (SFC Capital)
• 700,000+ data points on freelancers collected (data set for AI)
• Active blog and community, 150+ articles published
• Web & mobile platforms live and post-beta since January
• National finalist of Engineers in Business Fellowship grand final competition, winner of audience vote for best pitch

Objectives/Future

Revolancer aims to permanently improve the freelancing industry by innovating, challenging conventions, and providing the no-brainer solution required. Revolancer is giving freedom back to freelancers.

Having agreed on exciting commercial relationships with large clients such as Hibernian FC, and nurturing existing partnerships with several Universities and co-working spaces including ICE, Revolancer continues to scale its business both internally and externally.

Revolancer is perfectly positioned to continue scaling rapidly post-seed. Immediately, the expansion of the team, and finalising the development of agency and enterprise SaaS subscription plans will provide a compelling platform for significant future growth.

The Team

Revolancer’s team is led by founder & CEO, Karl Swanepoel, a freelancer turned entrepreneur who has a previous exit with a freelance marketplace. The team holds strong experience and a successful track record in marketing, technology (specifically AI), and design (UI, UX).

Revolancer is backed by a number of top industry professionals, including the advisory expertise of Just Eat’s founding CMO, Mat Braddy.

CEO & Founder: Karl Swanepoel

Former freelancer and founder with previous exit in freelance platforms market.

Youngest ever brand ambassador of Europe’s largest business conference (The Business Show London).

BSc. Artificial Intelligence and Robotics degree, with specialisation in NLP (Natural Language Processing), and ANN (Artificial Neural Networks).

CTO & Co-Founder: Skye Brady

14+ years of experience building and scaling large web applications, MEng Software Engineering, previously built an app that uses AI to generate film recommendations based on preferences/behaviour.

Design Lead: Ewa Gorka

Award winning graphic designer, first class Computer Science graduate (Vision/Graphics speciality).

Advisor, founding CMO of Just Eat: Mat Braddy

Founding Chief Marketing Officer at Just Eat, serial marketplace founder, "don't cook, just eat" marketing pioneer.

Advisor & Investor, former Executive Director at Morgan Stanley: Edward Falzon

30+ years experience in financial services, former executive director at Morgan Stanley, current angel investor and board advisor.

Risks

As with any investment, investing in Revolancer carries a level of risk. Overall, based on the key risks highlighted below, the degree of risk associated with an investment in Revolancer is higher than in a company that's trading on a public market.

Early-stage investment

Revolancer is at one of the earliest stages of the business lifecycle, and the failure rate of companies at that stage is usually much higher than those at a later stage.

Illiquid investment

The number of transactions in shares of private companies is usually significantly lower than in public companies, typically resulting in it taking longer to sell shares in private companies at a price that is at least equal to the price that the shares were bought at. Accordingly, the Revolancer investment opportunity is considered to be higher risk than more liquid companies.