NEW YORK — Fiverr International Ltd. (NYSE: FVRR) announced the acquisition of Stoke Talent, an intuitive all-in-one solution to help companies manage their work with freelance talent, for $95 million.
This includes tools to onboard, pay, track budgets and more. With Stoke’s product suite, Fiverr is looking to add more value to larger businesses and integrate with existing corporate workflows.
“The Stoke acquisition made complete sense on multiple levels,” said Micha Kaufman, Founder and CEO of Fiverr. “It supports Fiverr’s move upmarket and allows us to engage with much larger customers; It allows Fiverr to offer software solutions to businesses that already have freelancers that they work with and now can manage them easily; It allows Fiverr to pair its marketplace talent with large customers that need access to freelancers they still do not yet have a relationship with; It gives Fiverr access to the offline freelancing market that is still orders of magnitude larger than online freelancing; and finally, Stoke is a fast-growing best-in-class product with an incredible team behind it that we are delighted to add to our family.”
Micha Kaufman
Stoke Talent was founded by Shahar Erez and Hilik Paz with the goal of making it easier for businesses to leverage freelance talent. Stoke gives companies the ability to build their own talent directory for both online and offline talent, track budget and milestone completions and provides solutions for tax, legal and workforce classification compliance. Joining Fiverr significantly expands the company’s capabilities, from freelancer management to talent sourcing and matching while accelerating and expanding its go-to-market strategy and pace. The company has almost 30 full-time employees and is headquartered in Tel Aviv.
“We share Fiverr’s vision that freelance talent can help propel companies to new heights, both from a productivity and agility standpoint,” said Shahar Erez, Co-founder and CEO at Stoke Talent. “This is an amazing opportunity to continue doing what we love to do, but on a much larger and broader scale. Together with Fiverr, we have the ability to build an ecosystem where businesses can implement a multi-channel freelancer strategy, and provide tools for them to efficiently manage not only freelancer engagement on Fiverr’s marketplace, but those off Fiverr’s marketplace as well. There are meaningful synergies between the two companies and we’re excited for what the future holds.”
Stoke Talent’s current offerings will remain independently operated. At the same time, the two companies will work together to unlock the synergy between Fiverr’s suite of B2B products, including Fiverr Business, and Stoke’s freelance management platform.
