Expert Home page | Bio | Contact
DISCOVER THE EXCELLENCE
Pietro Bonomo
Marketing/Product Designer

I consider myself an “Evangelist of the new digital... Learn more

YOU MIGHT LIKE
The Web Summit, the Dream, the Community, and the nine dots that change everything. Road to Lisbon
By Pietro Bonomo
Learn more
Viral Octopus Beta v2.5 “Ulu” is coming
By Pietro Bonomo
Learn more
Introducing Viral Octopus Beta 2
By Pietro Bonomo
Learn more
CEO Alerts

Introducing H.alg: disrupting the outsourcing market

The innovation of Viral Octopus: H.Alg, offer the best team in the world for the project.

Comparing Delegation Solutions possible: Marketplace Vs. Agency Vs.Viral Octopus

There are dozens of more or less effective delegation solutions. Contractors and their clients to collaborate remotely. Fiverr, PeoplePerHour and design99 allow independent freelancers to offer their services at a base price.

Then, there is a myriad of marketplaces, that, to a certain extent are either successful or vertical such as Behance for Visual Designers and Codementor for Programmers.

If we consider that an estimated  50% of the workforce will be freelance by 2027, we can imagine that many more initiatives will appear in the market.

These marketplaces, while offering partially different business models, all have four elements in common:

  1. Tasks and services are approved upon reviews
  2. The job board is open to anyone
  3. The client is responsible for the management and selection of each service offered
  4. Services are by a single independent freelancer

Agencies. Many are structured as is: they hire and train their staff, then delegate a surplus of work to freelancers working under them. An agency’s main objective is to optimize profit by leveraging cost reduction. 

Viral Octopus is different because we’ve created a completely new model. Rather than outsourcing platforms, Viral Octopus

  • is a platform made for freelancers that meet a criteria
  • takes charge of management and creation
  • is a collaborative space where freelancers work in teams

Rather than operating like agencies, Viral Octopus

  • does not hire personnel
  • does not have to optimize profits
  • host best professionals in the world without a physical office space

Pros and cons of delegation solutions. Viral Octopus, Marketplace scalability, agency care.

Marketplace 

Pros

  • The speed, wide variety, affordable costs, and the guarantee of withholding funds and reimbursements, are without a doubt the great drivers of success for these marketplaces.
  • Users enter the platform, type out a role in the search box, then click “submit”. A list will appear and those with stars on their profile indicates the quality and reliability of their work.
  • Freelancers with good reviews receive a constant flow of leads at no cost.

Cons

  • Those who have tried the service can understand that at times it can be difficult and time-consuming to find the right freelancer for the job. Clients have to put their trust in a single person who may unexpectedly decide that they no longer want to work on the project. And the search for a new freelancer begins again.
  • Luckily, the review system offers a great way to help clients keep freelancers responsible for the project they agreed to collaborate on. The more good reviews a freelancer has, the more projects they are able to get.
  • In addition, the assessment is sometimes diverted from the information asymmetry. Customers don’t always have the skills to evaluate a result.

Agencies

Pros

  • Agencies are more structured. They guarantee greater customer care, training a team of salesman and customer care specialists to keep their clients happy.
  • Agencies dedicate teams to a specific project and if someone on the team is no longer available to help, they are often replaced rather quickly.
  • Clients never have to worry about how the project is executed. They just need to evaluate the final output.
  • Freelancers/employees don’t have to worry about managing any loss or their reputation.
Cons
  • Agencies are confined to a specific space. They have offices where employees come into work, meaning, their employees must already live in the surrounding area or be relocated.
  • It is not always possible to find employees who have all the necessary skills within a useful radius. Thus, sometimes they have to be satisfied with the risk of lowering expectations to meet demands.
  • When there is a lack of expertise within the company or if there is an overload of work, agencies rely on external freelancers. Doing so puts them at risk of losing freelancers on any given day without the bandwidth to find another freelancer in advanced. Inevitably, the risk, also in this case, is to lower the quality and accuracy of the final result.
  • Additionally, agencies have many costs including commercial, office, accounting, project manager, just to name a few. These costs are then reflected in the client’s project rate.

Viral Octopus 

Pros

  • Companies find everything they need in the marketplaces that aggregate freelancers, with the same money-back guarantees.
  • The project is placed in the hands of a team and not the individual freelancer, getting the typical agencies’ level of customer care at a fraction of the cost.
  • The evaluation of the freelancer’s work is in the hands of a company and not just of the client.
Cons
  • This new model may cost more than hiring a freelancer. Those who are not used to working remotely, doing video call conferences, or accepting the absence of offices can find the transition difficult.

Robots make Viral Octopus different from marketplaces and agencies.

The objective of companies is not to hire people or agencies. 

Companies want to delegate part of their business processes to someone they trust to achieve the best possible result, within the budget and time frame defined. 

Viral Octopus meets this need.

Companies look for the task, buy it and a structured team performs the task. Simple, fast, transparent price. 

What makes Viral Octopus different from a traditional agency? The answer is: robots and scalability.

H.alg selects the best possible team in the world.

H.alg is a complex algorithm, as well as the heart of Viral Octopus. With H.alg, Viral Octopus is able to select the best team possible for the project by choosing the best professionals according to many parameters such as:

  • skills
  • performance
  • suitability
  • track record
  • passions
  • willingness
  • language
  • time zone


Let’s get a little more into the operation without revealing trade secrets.

Professionals must pass a test to be part of the system. We’ve provided for a test for every role that’s needed. The test consists of 30 randomly selected questions from a  large pool written by the community and validated by the Viral Octopus team. 

It includes psycho attitudinal, logical, and technical tests.

At the end of the test, the professional complete a survey where they list their

  • experience
  • passions
  • availability
  • language
  • time zone

The score obtained in the test will place each professional in a ranking that categories them by experience, passion, role, and performance. 

How does the ranking work?

Powered by passion. The project is in the hands of those who really care.

The ranking is updated over time according to several parameters, the most important are:

  • peer-to-peer evaluation to assess aptitude and performance
  • the client’s evaluation of the project
  • the test itself
  • responsiveness
  • reliability

Each of these macro-categories of evaluation is composed of several factors with different weights. 


At the end of each month, the Viral Octopus team receives an anonymous evaluation sheet of the other components that considers communication, teamwork, and performance. 

The client receives an evaluation sheet of the work done that month that considers: punctuality, communication, and keeping the promise. The average of each evaluation compared with penalties composes the ranking. 

The ranking, in turn, is divided by experience and passion. 

When the client selects the task to be performed, they fill in the brief, and H.Alg will search the database for team members to match according to their language, role, passion, and skills. 

The top three team members that match the ranking will be sent a request to work on the project. If the first match is not available, the request will be sent to second, then third, and so on until the team is composed. 

This makes for the best project team in the world.

This is Human Creativity powered by Robots.

Love this article?

Get stories just like it, delivered to your inbox. Singing up you are going to have FREE access to the Viral Octopus private community, tools and perks
Choose your topics | Optout Anytime
SIGN UP
DISCOVER THE EXCELLENCE
PietroBonomo
Marketing/Product Designer

I consider myself an “Evangelist of the new digital era.”

I owe it all to internet and its potential. 

I saw the birth of internet, it’s growth and it becoming universal. 

It has given me the economic stability and the happiness... Learn more

YOU MIGHT LIKE
The Web Summit, the Dream, the Community, and the nine dots that change everything. Road to Lisbon
By Pietro Bonomo
Learn more
Viral Octopus Beta v2.5 “Ulu” is coming
By Pietro Bonomo
Learn more
Introducing Viral Octopus Beta 2
By Pietro Bonomo
Learn more