OnForce has closed a $6.75 million series A1 financing round led by Accel Partners. OnForce is a “marketplace for on site IT services”. Companies use the site to post contract gigs for registered IT professionals in your area. Postings can be made to the site for $11 with 10% of the parts and labor taken after completion of the job and final payment transferred. OnForce plans on putting the financing toward expanding their operations into new markets outside of their current U.S. operations.
Marketplaces for technical services, especially coding, have been around for some time now, but the emergence of startups like Odesk and OnForce have shown there’s room for improvement. OnForce’s marketplace currently has more than 10,000 service professionals and has completed over 500,000 service events in its IT services marketplace. Their site also says they have an 18 minute median time till acceptance for work orders.
A key element for marketplaces is building trust between buyers and sellers. To that end OnForce has implemented training sessions, a ratings system, verified certifications, and optional background checks from ChoicePoint.
This is no news!
Slow day guys?
The real news is:
“Ballmer Dissed By TC40, Staff Apologizes, Riley Resigns!”
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
Here’s some (not really) news from the spyware dept: Is it time to add Claria to the deadpool? Started the year with ~200 employees, down to ~50 as of yesterday.
Hm, this would definitely be geared towards professional IT consultants….makes me feel like just giving up on trying to enter that area :’( everyone will flock to the pro’s on this site
Interesting idea, though 11% seems pricey.
thanks to share, for me still are news
11% seems pricey.
bp
trading tennis
It’s a little steep, but with the services that I can now offer as a result it’s totally worth it. Basically, I now have nationwide service coverage for those sticky situations that actually require someone on-site.
And besides, you get to decide how much you’ll pay (per hour, per gig, etc) before you send the work request. After it’s sent, who ever responds first gets the gig.
The service buyer (usually a VAR, solution provider or IT staffing firm) just pays the access fee of $11 per service event. These companies can create nationwide coverage and bring on specialized skills like VoIP, consumer electronics, point of sale, etc. And because it’s purely on-demand, there’s no upfront cost of hiring, training or retaining new employees.
In exchange for OnForce finding the project, handling nearly instantaneous payment and tax paperwork, the service provider pays 10% after the service event closes.
Aw, congrats to them! I know somebody on the team there, Accel is in very good hands.