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100. Bull, Bear & Beyond – Freelancer executive interview
5 Plays6 months ago
In this interview, Trisha Epp from Freelancer discusses the company’s recent selection by NASA as a supplier for its latest crowdsourcing multi-vendor panel. Trisha explains how the Freelancer platform can be used for crowdsourcing and discusses NASA’s use of crowdsourcing to seek solutions for complex technical challenges. She explains the history of Freelancer’s relationship with NASA and outlines the details of the latest contract, NASA Open Innovation Services 3 (NOIS3). With the remit to support not only NASA but also other US government agencies, Trisha provides examples of past and ongoing challenges and explains how Freelancer is selected for and runs projects. She discusses the types of participants and their motivations and concludes by highlighting how Freelancer’s role in managing these challenges is opening doors to contracts from other government entities and enterprises.
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About ‘Bull, Bear & Beyond’
Bull, Bear & Beyond': features candid conversations with senior executives and from our own team of experts from across industries, exploring strategy, innovation, and the opportunities shaping their markets and 60-second pieces are a compressed summary of content designed to convey our message in a single, easily shareable hit.
About Edison:
Edison is a content-led IR business. We believe quality investment content should inform all investors, not just brokers. Our mission: engage and build bigger, better-informed investor audiences for our clients.
Edison covers 50+ investment trusts, read about them here: https://www.edisongroup.com/equities/investment-companies/
Original interview published on 24/06/2025 and reposted as a podcast
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Transcript
Introduction and Overview of Freelancer
00:00:07
Speaker
Welcome to Edison TV. I'm Katherine Thompson, technology analyst at Edison, and I'm here today with Trisha Epp of Freelancer. Freelancer's core business is a freelancing and crowdsourcing marketplace. And Trisha is the program manager for the NASA Open Innovation Services contract at Freelancer.
00:00:27
Speaker
Welcome. Hey, it's a pleasure to be here. um Just to kick off, could you explain for those who are new to the concept and how crowdsourcing works on the freelancer platform?
00:00:40
Speaker
At Freelancer, crowdsourcing means tapping into the collective intelligence and skill of 81 million professionals around the world to solve complex technical challenges.
00:00:52
Speaker
At Freelancer on the platform, ah we manage the entire process. So from project posting, collaboration tools, IP transfer, secure milestone escrow payments, and IP protection.
00:01:05
Speaker
But my team specializes in innovation challenges.
Innovation Challenges and Global Expertise
00:01:08
Speaker
So innovation challenges are a where organizations bring real-world problems and present them to a global crowd of experts who then compete to deliver breakthrough solutions.
00:01:22
Speaker
It's like a hackathon, but much more complex challenges, so think moonshots, and on a larger timescale, so weeks or months or even years, depending on the complexity. And Freelance has worked with NASA since 2015 and has recently been appointed as one of 25 companies that are going to manage the NASA Open Innovation Services third contract, or NOISE 3. Could you explain to us what that contract is um and also you know why you would think you were reappointed again after being on NOISE 2?
00:01:55
Speaker
NOISE 3, NASA Open Innovation Services, it's NASA's way to collaborate with the global community to solve complex challenges through crowdsourcing. And it aims, the contract aims to empower NASA's workforce in engaging the public to find creative solutions.
00:02:11
Speaker
ah They're working on space exploration problems and they want to have rapid experimentation with new methodologies, new technologies, and unique perspectives. So it lets NASA remain at the forefront of innovation.
00:02:26
Speaker
Freelancer is NASA's gateway to the world's best minds. So NASA has been using freelancer services, as you said, since 2015. And we started doing micro-tasking, so small challenges like how do we build an app for a watch to monitor astronauts' health, looking at Robonaut, Canada-armed type projects, robotics.
00:02:51
Speaker
And then we joined the NOISE2 contract. So NOISE2 started as a $25 million dollars contract, and it was a five-year program. it during that five years the ceiling, the funding cap raised to $175 million.
Freelancer's Role in NASA's NOISE Projects
00:03:05
Speaker
And that program was extremely successful.
00:03:08
Speaker
So successful that NASA has now launched a 10-year $475 million program. Freelancer on the Noise 2 contract was top-performing company in the program. We delivered more than 20 unique projects across aerospace, biotechnology, water protection, and more.
00:03:26
Speaker
So being the world's largest freelance and crowdsource marketplace, we're an obvious partner for NASA or working on behalf of NASA to solve these challenges. We have 81 million users 247 countries, territories, and regions. And third the pool so the pool dwarfs anything else in the space, but it's not just the size. We have developed an expert pool of highly specialized freelancers. They're aerospace engineers, roboticists, physicists, and running more than 125 NASA projects overall beyond the program. including challenges that fed directly into Artemis and Gateway missions.
00:04:10
Speaker
So we're bringing precision crowdsourcing, not just lots of people, but also the right people. And why do you think NASA is so keen to continue using crowdsourcing? You know, just how do the outcomes from crowdsource challenges compare to kind of traditional R&D processes?
Crowdsourcing vs Traditional R&D
00:04:27
Speaker
First of all, NASA is able to amplify its economic impact. So in fiscal year 23, NASA has reported that it turned its $25 billion dollars budget into $75 billion dollars of economic impact.
00:04:41
Speaker
And based on a study we did with NASA on our program, NASA saw 97% cost savings using crowdsourcing methodologies with freelancer. And that's compared to traditional R&D.
00:04:53
Speaker
Other sources estimate a 40 times return on investment. So not only are you getting the the money that you put in towards the prizes, but you also are having this external funding. The solvers are putting their own efforts and money in, even the ones who aren't winning, and they're increasing the technology in that field. And that technology is then seeing other external investment come in to help fund and bring those solutions to commercial successes.
00:05:19
Speaker
the The time to solution is also higher. So to hire someone internally to solve this problem, you have to decide what the position is, get budget funding, post a project, review resumes, interview, etc., onboarding. Instead, when you're running an innovation challenge, you can have dozens or hundreds of experts working independently on divergent solutions, so coming up with unique ideas, and then you get to review all of those solutions and award the best ones. Now you have this
00:05:50
Speaker
validated talent pool who you know can solve the problems and work with them rapidly trying to solve the problems that you have. And most people would assume that as it's run by NASA, it's mainly space projects, but I understand the remit's wider than that. um Could you talk about that and maybe give some examples of any breakthrough innovations that have resulted from projects that you've managed?
Beyond Space Projects: Diverse Applications
00:06:12
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So we work with a department at NASA called the Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation. They enable departments across the U.S. government to use open crowdsource challenges to solve really hard problems that they're facing.
00:06:29
Speaker
We've worked with the Center for Disease Control, the Bureau of Reclamation, the International Trade Administration, Department of Energy, all on different kinds of problems. For example, we have a program running right now with the National Institutes of Health.
00:06:43
Speaker
We're administering the Targeted Genome Editor Delivery Challenge. Gene editing holds the promise to treat genetic diseases at the source. And this is a five-year program with $6 million dollars of prizes for winners.
00:06:58
Speaker
Another example where we've worked with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, we ran a million dollar commanding tech challenge. Solvers there advance incident command dashboards, which are something an incident responder will use when they're in an emergency. So there's they're dealing with a fire, to're dealing with some kind of emergency natural disaster.
00:07:19
Speaker
And we're moving them beyond using paper and pens to technologies like virtual reality, augmented reality and mobile and integrating data like LiDAR, 3D mapping, video analytics in order to give them all the information they need to to provide those emergency rescue services.
Challenge Management and Revenue Generation
00:07:37
Speaker
ah and As one of 25 companies on the Noise3 framework agreement, how does Freelancer get selected to run a challenge? What work goes into that from your side and how do you earn money from it?
00:07:50
Speaker
So over the next 10 years, NASA is going to release task orders. And those 25 organizations that are part of Noise 3 will bid on them by providing proposals about how they're going to deliver the work.
00:08:03
Speaker
Freelancer plans to be even more active in bidding on in the bidding rounds than we were in Noise 2. And we do hope to see a larger revenue for the company. We have this excellent track record of delivering very highly technical ah solutions so we can see that we expect to be successful in Noise 3 as well and helping NASA to solve those problems. we The way we earn our money is that we provide end-to-end innovation challenge management.
00:08:30
Speaker
So we have a specialized team that helps with problem deconstruction, challenge design, crowd curation, judging, and price payments to ensure that NASA is supported throughout the process.
00:08:44
Speaker
And we provide platform access to our 80 million, 81 million registered users. In addition, we provide professional services to ensure that our customers are receiving solutions from the most brilliant people around the world.
Motivations and Participant Diversity
00:08:59
Speaker
And in your view, what tends to motivate the participants in these challenges? And who takes part? Are we talking about students, industry professionals, PhD researchers? And have you tracked any notable success stories from either individual or team winners?
00:09:15
Speaker
What I've heard in the industry is the four G's. This is what motivates people to participate. The four Gs are gold, guts, glory, and good. Someone one might want to pursue the gold. They're interested in that million-dollar prize purse, and they're motivated to win that money.
00:09:31
Speaker
Instead, they might be motivated by guts. They see an interesting robotics challenge, and they want to see if they can make a simulation of a robot on Mars. They're they're just trying to test their mettle.
00:09:43
Speaker
Glory, someone one who wants to receive the recognition that NASA is naming them the top in their field at solving this problem, which then goes on the resume. It helps them to find further success.
00:09:55
Speaker
Or good, you are just inspired to work on these environmental problems and you want to find a better solution. Or you want to work in aerospace and you want to see humanity on the next stage going to the stars.
00:10:09
Speaker
Who participates? ah All kinds of people. Often these are very technical people. So we're talking about professors at top universities, postdocs, researchers, students sometimes, retired aerospace engineers, mathematicians around the world, biotech startups, or industry engineers maybe working at Tesla or IBM or other highly highly competitive companies.
00:10:33
Speaker
There's a lot of value in cross-industry expertise. So looking at what might be an old problem with a fresh perspective at a different angle. And the the results, the we've had solutions from, we've had 20,000 solutions come from 141 countries. And the caliber is really high. So we're talking...
00:10:56
Speaker
Research labs at MIT, Harvard, or Yale, those are actually real examples of people that we just awarded $2.5 million dollars funding round for the targeted genome editing challenge.
00:11:09
Speaker
Over the last 10 years, we've developed this specialized database of freelancers. So the pool is growing with every challenge. As you asked, what have we seen? Well, some winners who won one challenge participate in the next, and they're seeing success over and over again because they've they know how to solve these problems, and they're able to help NASA reach different solutions with unique perspectives.
00:11:35
Speaker
And finally, have any of these challenged challenges driven any measurable benefits in freelancers' core marketplace metrics? And have they helped the company um access other government or enterprise contracts?
Impact of NASA Collaboration on Freelancer
00:11:50
Speaker
The NASA program has been transformational for freelancer, not just in terms of the individual challenge successes, pushing the boundaries of science and technology, but we're elevating how we're perceived in the world of highly technical work.
00:12:05
Speaker
First, working with NASA validates our platform as a serious player in deep tech innovation. We're not just this freelance marketplace. you can You can do $100 projects or $10 projects, but you can also do million-dollar projects or multi-million-dollar projects on Freelancer and get these verified, high-quality results.
00:12:26
Speaker
So we're a strategic R&D partner for the most sophisticated clients in the world. You can have 10,000 people externally on your R&D team on demand. And winning the Noise 3 contract with its $475 million dollars ceiling puts us on the map for other U.S. s federal agencies and global institutions to see crowdsourcing as this legitimate, secure, and scalable way to innovate.
00:12:52
Speaker
Secondly, it is helping our internal capabilities. We have built proprietary tools for challenge management and high sensitivity tech talent vetting.
00:13:05
Speaker
And we're able to leverage this for industries like aerospace, energy, and life sciences. We do see inbound interests now from enterprise clients who want to run innovation challenges at the same technical caliber that NASA is using.
00:13:19
Speaker
So strategically, this opens doors to adjacent government frameworks or even civilian infrastructure research and development. It strengthens our enterprise arm of the company.
00:13:31
Speaker
If you are a Fortune 500 CTO trying to solve a moonshot problem, we're now a proven partner with NASA credentials. So in short, NASA Noise 3, NASA Open Innovation Services 3 is a signal that tells the world freelancer is where serious innovation gets done.
00:13:53
Speaker
Great, that's fascinating stuff. Keen to see what um new new challenges come from the Noise 3 contract. and Thanks so much for spending the time today to explain that. That's great. Thank you. Thanks, Catherine. Have a great day.
00:14:05
Speaker
Thanks.