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More stories by this authorBut for both the freelancers and the companies who hire them, the tasks of managing workflow, money, benefits contributions and the like has become daunting. Sure, there are temp agencies, but what happens to people who prefer to remain independent? Enter FreeAgent.Com, the latest offering from Opus360, the ambitious Silicon Alley start-up.
"I'm essentially a free agent because I've never held a job for more than 18 months," said Carlos Cashman who co-founded Opus360 (
http://www.opus360.com) with partner Ari Horowitz. Cashman worked for Horowitz as CIO of Grey Peak Technologies -- a Silicon Alley start-up that Horowitz sold to US Web last year. Cashman's point is that in today's economy almost everyone is a free agent at one time or another.The idea behind FreeAgent.com is to build a virtual temp agency through which freelancers can buy and manage benefits, handle invoicing and collections, and ultimately find work by marketing themselves to corporate clients of Opus360's enterprise software products. Freelancers who sign up for what the company is calling its "Me Inc." service would pay a fee - -a percentage of billings. Of course, getting into benefits management is a lot to ask of a software company, so Opus360 acquired The Churchill Benefit Corporation out of Delray Beach, FL. Cashman declined to give details.
Certainly, the idea of using the Net to enable freelancers to find work and manage their benefits is nothing new. From giant recruiting sites like Monster.Com to small Silicon Alley start-ups like MBAFreeAgents.Com have pursued bits and pieces of this market. But Opus360 has broader ambitions -- to serve both employers and freelancers with a system of software solutions and back-office services for hiring and managing freelance and project workers. To that end, earlier this month the company acquired proprietary technology from one of its clients PRT Group Inc. that will form the backbone of a new service in the works called Opus Xchange which is designed to help automated the interview, screening, and hiring process. And the company has already taken the wraps off its own piece of original proprietary software for its Opus Enterprise offering. In fact, it's based on a piece of software Cashman built when he was CIO of Grey Peak for that company to use in house to manage project workers.
Although Opus Enterprise is priced as a service, instead of a software license, the sales cycle is still a typical six-month software sales cycle, said Cashman. So the company, which announced the launch of the Enterprise product in March, has yet to announce any major client acquisitions. But that hasn't stopped the company from staffing up to around 70 employees thanks to an $11 million venture round closed last December and Cashman said the company is pursuing a second round in the range of $30 million.
The company will need the money since Opus360 will face stiff competition both in the freelance business and in the employment management enterprise software space. There's California-based Evolve Software which has already inked Netscape as a client. And there are other competitors building swiftly like the Austin, TX-based PlanView Inc., and San Francisco-based Business Engine.
DOUBLECLICK ACQUISITION CAUGHT IN PRIVACY BATTLE . . . A week after announcing a $1 billion merger with offline database marketing company Abacus Direct, Silicon Alley Web advertising company DoubleClick is girding for a publicity battle with privacy advocates over the implications of the deal for consumer data privacy. On Tuesday, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the anti-spam Web site Junkbusters announced that they could ask regulators to block the deal. The concern is that combining DoubleClick's online ad targeting technology and cookie based system for tracking consumer behavior online with Abacus' deep database of buying behavior linked to individuals by name, "would represent a surveillance machine of unprecedented breadth and depth, posing unacceptable privacy dangers to the public,'' the groups argued in an open letter to the two companies.
"The most important damage to privacy from a DoubleClick/Abacus merger would be a fundamental change to the Internet: from one where people are usually anonymous as they move around the Web, to one where they are usually silently identified unless they consistently work to protect their anonymity," wrote the companies. Whether or not the Federal Trade Commission would or could block the deal legal remains an open question, but the issue of data privacy and public perception remains a crucial one for DoubleClick. Under its deal with Abacus, DoubleClick will ultimately be able to associate a person's IP address with the name and address and consumer behavior information in Abacus' database of catalog sales transactions. That can only be done when a person willingly provides his or her name and address at a given site where DoubleClick attaches a cookie. But DoubleClick President Kevin Ryan did say that once an IP address is associated with a name and address, that relationship will remain a permanent part of the DoubleClick/Abacus database. Still, Ryan said, privacy will not be an issue since all DoubleClick's direct marketing will be done on an opt in basis. "In all areas you need to have full disclosure and you need to have opt out," said Ryan. In fact, DoubleClick currently offers net surfers an "opt-out" cookie that will keep DoubleClick servers from recognizing a net surfer's IP address. That cookie is downloadable from DoubleClick's site at LATEST NEWS
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REUTERS BUYS INTO RECIPROCAL . . . International electronic news delivery giant Reuters has made a $5 million equity investment in Reciprocal, the local start-up that provides publishers of various kinds of content with a method of controlling their copyrighted material online. As part of the deal Reuters will use Reciprocal's software and services to protect and track content the company distributes online. "Reciprocal offers a solution that not only continuously protects content but also provides the back-end infrastructure to track usage and monitor re-use and redistribution," said Bill Donner, CTO for Reuters' greenhouse program, the Reuters group that made the Reciprocal investment. In part as an outgrowth of the deal, Reciprocal (http://www.reciprocal.com) will launch Reciprocal Publishing, a practice area that will focus on building out services specifically for publishers moving to distribute content online. The deal follows on the heels last month of the launch of Reciprocal Music, a division of the company that will service the record industry. To launch the music division, Reciprocal hired the core team that had developed the a2b music distribution platform for AT&T. Reciprocal's music division was also on the move this week announcing a deal with RioPort -- the recently announced portal play of Diamond Multimedia, the maker of the Rio portable MP3 player. RioPort will use Reciprocal's services to do rights clearance for the music downloaded from RioPort.Com. Reciprocal's core product is a software package that wraps around piece of digital content and allows the content owner to set the terms under which users can access that content. But increasingly the company is offering services like hosting the material for publishers, tracking its use, and processing purchases and other transactions.
ORIENTATION GETS STRATEGIC INVESTMENT FROM PSINET . . . Orientation this week struck a deal with Herndon, VA-based PSINet that has the global portal player and the ISP teaming up to develop emerging international markets. As part of the agreement, PSINet made a minority investment in Orientation, the amount of which was not disclosed. Orientation's modus operandi as it develops portals in such far-flung places as Thailand, Costa Rica, Tanzania, and the United Arab Emirates, has been to partner with local ISPs, which provide content and drive traffic. With this deal, Orientation has, in effect, partnered with a whole host of local ISPs at once. "They have a big drive, basically in all of our marketplaces," said Darren Thake, Orientation's CEO. PSINet has, as of late, been on an acquisition binge that has it providing hosting services in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Brazil. It already had a presence in Korea, Japan, and nine other countries. Under the deal, Market Guide will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Multex. Market Guide President and CEO Homi Bryamji will continue in his job and will become a member of Multex.com's board. Market Guide offers what is becoming a traditional set of tools, tables, and other information about publicly traded companies to sites like Yahoo, America Online, Reuters, TheStreet.Com, The Wall Street Journal, and Charles Schwab & Co. Through the deal Multex will distribute its reports on Market Guide sites at those destinations. Also, Multex will add Market Guide's stock trading and information functionality to its own Web site. The deal is a one for one stock swap. Yesterday, Market Guide closed at $20.38. Multex closed at $24.69.
NADP MAKES STRATEGIC INVESTMENT IN SIXDEGREES . . . "As one of the largest media companies in the world, they will be extraordinarily helpful in building the Sixdegrees brand both online and offline," said Andrew Weinreich, Sixdegrees' president and CEO. "An investment from this world renowned media company is also a powerful endorsement of our vision." The amount of the NADP investment in Sixdegrees was not disclosed.
FOUNDER DEPARTS T3 MEDIA . . . Michael Diamant, who founded Web services firm T3 Media with Chris Bryant in 1995, is leaving the company to "begin exploring new opportunities." As part of the terms of Diamant's departure, T3's largest outside investor The A Consulting Team (TACT) has increased it's stake in the company to 51 percent. But T3 co-founder Chris Bryant, who will serve as president and CEO, retains voting control. "It's a good thing for both of us," said Bryant. "We've grown into a different company." "I've learned most of what there is to know about the agency side of the Internet business," said Diamant in an e-mail to business contacts, "and now it's time to continue to grow personally with new professional experiences in the Internet, technology and e-commerce arena." A year ago, T3 was one of the hottest potential acquisitions in town, during a period of frenetic consolidation in the services sector. The company listened to many offers, and waited to make a move, before finally accepting TACT's offer. T3 made its name doing entertainment-oriented sites like the Tony Awards, while earning kudos for back-end and project management work for companies like American Express.
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