Toptal acquires "one of the best" companies in the global freelancing market

Toptal is an online community, a platform that brings together software developers and designers. On Tuesday, April 5th, the company announced the acquisition of the Skillbridge “talents” online marketplace . The latter brings together outstanding professionals in non-technical specialties. The two founders of the company will go to work at Toptal.



The deal will allow Toptal to expand the scope of activities at the expense of the segment of non-technical and “elite” specialists. The decision to acquire Skillbridge was the first step towards a new market niche, Toptal CEO and co-founder Toptal Taco Du Val said.



Skillbridge will be able to expand its customer base, scale its business, and use the rich tools of the Toptal platform.

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Both companies understand that their business is becoming increasingly popular with the spread of self-employment and other forms of independent, distant work.



Toptal believes that Skillbridge is one of the best (if not the best) in its market niche. Skillbridge was founded in 2013. Among her clients are the 10 largest private US firms from various business areas. The weak side of the Skillbridge platform was not the most successful technical implementation.



Toptal combines, under its own flag, 3% of the most appropriate professional companies to companies that meet the highest requirements of professionalism. 5 years ago, Toptal, a regular freelance network, employed only 25 developers and the same number of clients. Today, the Toptal network includes thousands of programmers and designers (the company does not say the exact figure) and more than 2,000 clients. As development management costs have doubled over the past couple of years, the Toptal model is finding more and more supporters.



In an interview with "Megamind", Taso Du Val told about the company's mission:

There are many professionals on the market whose high level is obvious. At the same time, you yourself know many highly professional people in your own environment. They are just as cool. There is no real way to draw a parallel between them and compare who is a rock star and who is not, in the labor market, in specific companies or, in a general sense, on the Internet.



At a certain point I said to myself: “A solution must exist. People should be able to find out that there are cool specialists and they can be hired. And the way to find out about this should be absolutely scalable, and most importantly, all participants should trust it. ”