More and more companies are willing to outsource an increasing number of tasks. However, dealing with individual freelancers is a lot of hassle. Companies are in need of marketplaces to search for entire teams at once. Yet, marketplaces are also reluctant to take on the hassle of assembling teams from individual freelancers 😉 Therefore, to align with this growing trend, it’s better to replicate the model of such a marketplace. …Read more

Essence of the project

Prosal is a B2B marketplace that connects companies and agencies that can provide them with the services they need.

The range of possible services is very wide: advertising and creativity, training and coaching, software development and IT, financial accounting and accounting, market research and analysis, event organization, oral and written translation, and much more.

Prosal promises agencies a simpler way to find clients. Instead of meeting with company representatives at events and finding out if they have any work that they could do, you can now simply keep an eye out for new requests for services on the Prosal website. You can even subscribe to receive new requests that meet your criteria by email.

The startup claims that this way of finding clients increases the number of business opportunities by 5 times, some of which can be turned into real orders. At the same time, the agency will spend 10 times less time to get this amount of opportunities than before.

Prosal promises companies that on the marketplace they will be able to find trusted contractors who are ready to take on the work they need much faster – and choose the one that best suits their price-quality ratio.

To find a contractor, companies need to place a request on the marketplace (RFP, Request For Proposals, request for proposals).

Some companies immediately prepare such requests as soon as they need to find outsourcing. And some don’t. But that’s not a problem, because the startup’s specialists will help the company to compile and publish such a request on the marketplace.

A request on the marketplace is not just a few lines about the service that the company wants to receive. This is a whole landing page with a detailed description of the goal, the composition of the required service, the budget, the time frame, as well as a set of supporting documents that the agency can download and study before sending a response to the request.

Requests to the marketplace come in different ways:

• The company can come and publish a ready-made request.
• The company can contact the startup’s specialists to help them compile and publish a request.
• The startup’s specialists track the appearance of new requests published by companies somewhere on the internet (for example, on their own websites), and contact companies to have them republished on the marketplace.

Some of the published requests are free for agencies to read. However, for access to the most “sweet” requests, they will have to subscribe to a premium subscription, which costs $69 per month.

Companies can publish requests on the marketplace for free. However, if they need the help of a specialist in compiling the request, and/or if they need to find a trusted agency that can do the job quickly, they will have to pay for it. The cost of such a service is still determined individually by the startup.

The founders started working on Prosal as a hobby in 2021. In 2022, they decided to quit their jobs to focus on developing their startup. And now they have raised $1.18 million in investment for this.

What’s Interesting

A similar marketplace for agency search has already been created by the startup Breef, which I wrote about in February. However, Breef focuses on creative agencies offering marketing, branding, software development, and content creation services. Despite this, the startup has already raised $21 million in investments.

The overall trend that today’s Prosal aligns with can be broken down into two components.

Firstly, an increasing number of companies are willing to outsource a growing number of tasks rather than hiring and maintaining in-house staff. This allows them to save on monthly fixed expenses while still selecting the most qualified performers when needed.

Secondly, as a result, companies are prepared to outsource increasingly complex tasks. However, these tasks require not just individual freelancers but entire teams with complementary skills necessary for solving comprehensive problems. For example, developers and designers or marketers and creators of advertising videos.

Searching for such specialists individually, and then managing their work at their level to obtain a cohesive result, is too cumbersome and defeats the purpose of outsourcing problem-solving.

Hence, companies have become interested in marketplaces where they can find ready-made teams capable of handling complex tasks, understanding all the details of collaborative work.

In line with this trend, marketplaces like Collective have emerged. I wrote about it in 2021, and it allows finding teams rather than individual freelancers. This startup raised $8 million in investments in its first round.

Another example is the startup A.Team, which I wrote about last spring. It also created a marketplace where companies can assemble a team of freelancers for developing applications and web services. This startup raised $60 million in investments, with $55 million obtained at the market entry.

Small agencies are also teams of specialists, some of whom are freelancers. Their main difference is that they have worked together longer and more closely, allowing them to deliver results faster and with better quality.

So, the overall trend of “team marketplaces” is the same; it just encompasses both classic freelancer teams and agencies.

Where to Go

The outsourcing market is vast and growing. It is projected to reach $350 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow to $440 billion by 2028.

The market’s growth is driven by companies’ ongoing desire to be more flexible and save on fixed personnel costs. So, entering this trend is advantageous and promising.

While you could certainly engage in creating marketplaces for group freelancing, it involves more complexity and requires greater control over the quality and timeliness of work from the marketplace’s side.

Therefore, a simpler approach is to focus on working with existing agencies. It’s easier to find them to attract them to the marketplace, and their work is easier to control with the already established vertical management they have.

Thus, a potential direction within the identified trend is the creation of marketplaces for connecting companies and agencies, following the example of today’s Prosal and Breef.

About the Company:
Prosal

Website: prosal.io

Latest Funding Round: $1.18 million on December 11, 2023

Total Investments: $1.18 million or more, Rounds: