PeoplePerHour is the UK's leading marketplace for business services. We've been through multiple iterations as a business and in this presentation share some of the key lessons across funding, product development, go to market strategy, hiring, process and operations.

1. A SERVICES MARKETPLACE DISRUPTING THE LABOUR MARKET

2. A BIG THANK YOU TO
For hosting us. And to my PR team for doing all the rest!

3. A BIT ABOUT ME
• Engineer by background, Cambridge university
• 2 time entrepreneur
• Not a dropout but almost
• Service entrepreneur turned internet geek
• Always wanted to be an entrepreneur.
• Best thing I ever did !
• The entrepreneurs acid test: True entrepreneurs tread on a thin line
between greatness and lunacy 
• Always happy, seldom content, never complacent!

4. WHO WE ARE: 38 GEEKS SPREAD ALL OVER
Xenios Thrasyvoulou, Founder & CEO
Two-time entrepreneur, starting fresh out
of graduation from the University of
Cambridge (MA/ MEng).
500,000 PPHers ready to jump in when needed!
PPHers have produced our logo, our tag line, all of our
promotional videos and marketing collateral, helped
numerous times with admin and so much more
Kleanthis Giorgaris, Director of Product
Formerly Head of Product at GoldenDeals,
formerly McKinsey and Microsoft.
Spyros Lambrinidis, Head of Engineering
Responsible for making sure that the ship runs
on time. Spyros has recruited most of and runs
the Engineering team based out of Athens.
Formerly Amadeus.
Katie Kitiri, Director of Operations
Formerly head of Customer Services, Trust &
Safety at Gumtree, eBay. Formerly Accenture.
Aylish Jarvie, Head of PR
A former PPH top seller turned Brand aficionado
PR guru.
Tom Fotherby, Lead Developer
Tom was employee No3 at PPH and has been holding
the ropes of the tech infrastructure and code base ever
since. Prior he spent 4 years writing assembly code for
Amadeus. He holds a computer science degree from
Imperial
Darren Montgommery, Marketing Director
Formerly Marketing and Product director for EA for
10 years. Cambridge (MA/ Meng), MBA at the Haas
School, UC Berkeley.
Eirini Mirmiridou, Head Designer
Head of design at GoldenGroup
(Goldendeals, GoldenBrands), XE (Chrussi
Efkairia), Amoweb.

5. A BIT ABOUT PPH
• Founded in 2008
• 2 years in the den boot-strapped
• Refused to take VC money even though we were cashless until we got
the terms we wanted in 2010
• Raised >$7m dollars to date from mix of angels and VCs
• Key Stats
– 500,000 active professionals
– 500 new jobs completed per day, growing >10% per month
– In 150 countries
– Market leader in the UK. US is the second largest market
• We’ve constantly re-invented ourselves to get to where we are
today, and that’s the only reason we are still here!

6. WHAT GETS US OUT OF BED EVERY
MORNING : SERVING A GRAND MISSION
• We help people follow their dream of becoming entrepreneurs, being
financially independent and in control of their won destiny. We help people
build their entire business growth the ground up
• A whopping 1/3 of the US and UK working population now freelance !
Over 45 million people in UK and US
Earnings of $1 trillion and £100bn in US / UK respectively
Over 40% face problems of late/nonpayment and having irregular income:
the problem that our model solves
• We believe that buying / selling of services online will in 5 years be
as commonplace as buying a book on Amazon is today

7. ARE YOU TRULY DISTRUPTIVE?
• True disruption comes from delivering value orders of magnitude to the
incumbents
• Eg on PPH
– For Buyers: >10x cost saving to traditional way of doing things
– For Sellers: financial freedom & independence is life changing
• Disruption is step change, not incremental change
• Remember: you don’t need to be disruptive to be successful!

9. THE ONLY DEMAND AND SUPPLY DRIVEN
MARKETPLACE OUT THERE
Post a Job and get proposals Browse Hourlies (fixed price offers) and purchase

10. >FUNDING
>PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
>PROCESS / OPERATIONS
>HIRING
>GO TO MARKET
OUR KEY LEARNINGS: ON STAYING LEAN
AND AGILE, BY CHAPTER

11. >FUNDING
• Only raise VC if you a business that can scale fast !
• ~ >3x the amount you raise for VCs to be happy
• So, if you raise $20m and give 50% of the business away, you need to
achieve a valuation of $120m for VCs to be happy!
• Retain control for as long as you can
• Cash doesn’t always make you more efficient or move faster
• Don’t spend it if you don’t need to
• Best time for angel funding – better terms
• Terms are more important than valuation
• It’s not how much you raise its how much you return !!

12. >PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
• Focus on the what not the how.
• Scrum / agile processes overrated. Do what works for YOU!
• What made us go faster is
– getting rid of technical debt
– leaner roadmap
– Smaller teams, clear ownership of KPIs from ground up
• Build a culture of iteration: mistakes are OK !
• If 50% of what you build moves the needle you’ll do great!
• Be very disciplined with retrospectives
• Clear and transparent roadmap
• Prioritization, prioritization, prioritization !
• Clear business case for everything you do
• Product is King, Content is Queen! Next wave of internet is around
content curation and discovery
• Don’t just start in MVP mode, stay in it! Get rid of ‘nice to havs’

13. >PROCESS / OPERATIONS
• Clear responsibilities and lines of accountability
• Build structure early, minimize ad-hoc but don’t eliminate
• Get the communication flowing across not just up and down
• Death by power point! Ban it !
• Ban long meetings – just stand ups
• Eliminating complexity is better than solving for it
• KISSS: Keep It Super Simple Stupid!

14. >HIRING
• Hire past the pain point. ‘Ahead of the curve’ is not for startups
• Get the best people no matter where they are
• Keep it lean and focussed. Don’t over hire
• Great people will
– Want to join for your vision
– Take a cut for more stock
– Bring other great people
• Remote working can do miracles
– Cheaper
– Attract better talent
– Less time wasted in meetings. More productive and efficient
– Need to invest in making it work
• Hire slowly fire fast! Set yourself up for remote working

15. >GO TO MARKET
• Stay close to your first customers: they are your evangelists
• Listen but filter out the noise.
• Customers are not entrepreneurs
• PR can do miracles: milk it as much as you can
• WOM is the most understated marketing channel
• Measure NPS fanatically
• Leverage all the free channels before you start paying
• Paying acquisition should lag behind organic growth
• Measure your unit economics with surgical precision
• The best go to market strategy is building a great product!

16. PRESS & WOM HAVE BEEN OUR MAIN
CHANNELS

17. CASE STUDIES: blog.peopleperhour.com

18. CASE STUDIES: blog.peopleperhour.com

19. GET IN TOUCH !!
T: @xenios
E: xenios@peopleperhour.com
Blog: www.xeniosblog.com