Gig Marketplace Fiverr Files For IPO Amid Growing Losses

Freelance marketplace Fiverr has filed paperwork with the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) to go public on the New York Stock Exchange.

The filing showed that the Tel Aviv-based company’s net losses grew from $19.3 million in 2017 to $36.1 million in 2018. But revenue grew by almost 45 percent, from $52.1 million to $75.5 million.

“Our mission is to change how the world works together,” Fiverr says in the filing. “We started with the simple idea that people should be able to buy and sell digital services in the same fashion as physical goods on an eCommerce platform. On that basis, we set out to design a digital marketplace that is built with a comprehensive SKU-like services catalog and an efficient search, find and order process that mirrors a typical eCommerce transaction.”

Launched in 2010, Fiverr reported that it has facilitated more than 50 million transactions between 5.5 million buyers and 830,000 freelancers, who work in industries including logo design, video creation and editing, website development and blog writing. The company previously raised $111 million in venture funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, Accel, Square Peg Capital, Qumra Capital and others.

Its also made some key acquisitions, including buying ClearVoice, a high-end content marketing platform and talent network, earlier this year.

In a PYMNTS interview, Micha Kaufman, founder and CEO of Fiverr, said that the company was created due to his experiences as an entrepreneur, as well as his search for the best freelance talent for his business needs. While doing so, Kaufman said he was “exposed to how high-friction those transactions can be — finding and getting in touch with a person, figuring out if you want to work with that person, and anything to do with transactions, [non-disclosure agreements (NDAs)], file exchange and all that.”

In the filing, Fiverr says one of its benefits is that the marketplace can be easily scaled up as it adds more freelancers. The filing also pointed out the need to continue growing the community, as well as the chance that the freelance market may not grow as quickly as expected.