In today’s world of disruption, everybody can do and be anything we want to be: 

We can be taxi drivers (Uber), hoteliers (Airbnb), bloggers (WordPress), celebrities (social networks), headhunters (LinkedIn and lately, social recruiting sites like Wantedly from Japan) and, with Freelancer, the global outsourcing marketplace, freelancers.

Matt Barrie, CEO, Freelancer, the opening speaker at Echelon Asia Summit 2015 this morning said that services is the next big space to be disrupted and he sees no reason why an Alibaba of services would not emerge.

His start-up, established in 2009 and which went public on the Australian Securities Exchange at US$1.03 billion in November 2013, connects entrepreneurs who are looking for freelancers for online jobs �" it lists 6,000 jobs a day. He calls it a platform for international micro trade.

He said the notion of employment had changed. The average job span of a Gen X may have been five years but for freelancers, it’s two weeks. “People are creating jobs rather than taking them. You can now architect your education (on the web) and your career (through marketplaces).”

Asia dominates Freelancer with countries like India, Philippines, Pakistan and Bangladesh leading.

“Crowd-sourcing is huge in Asia,” he said. “If you’re young and you’ve got no money, you can jump in and do jobs for free first and build up your skills and reputation. Then you’ll start appearing high on the list. With 20-30 reviews, you can win more jobs.”

He cited the example of a mother in the Philippines who had to quit her job to look after her children “who now makes more money freelancing than she did fulltime”.

“The days of being average are over,” he said.

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