Outsourcing: Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer.com (Part 4)

SM: You said India is number three in terms of employers. That’s the one that I find interesting. The fact that India is number one in terms of freelancers is a very obvious one. That’s where outsourcing really took off, especially software outsourcing. That makes total sense to me, but India as number three on the employer side is a bit interesting. Can you give me some more color on that? >>>

Outsourcing: Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer.com (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What is your business model? Do you charge a percentage?

Matt Barrie: We take a commission from the employer. We take 3% of the payments made or $3, whichever is higher. From the worker, we take 10% or $5, whichever is higher. But we do have a membership subscription package where if you subscribe for $24.95, it’s free for employers completely. For workers, the commission is 3%.

SM: That’s an essential difference from the oDesk business model. The oDesk business model is 10% flat. >>>

Outsourcing: Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer.com (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How many freelancers are in the system?

Matt Barrie: We have more freelancers on our site than any other marketplace in the world. The mix is about, three quarters freelancers and one quarter who are our employers.

SM: What can you tell me about the employers? What kind of employers from what countries, what industries, and what sizes? >>>

Outsourcing: Jason Beans, Founder and CEO of Rising Medical Solutions (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: How many insurance companies are there in the United States?

Jason Beans: I don’t know. There are about 150 licensed insurance companies doing workers’ compensation. But that’s only in the States. A lot of the insurance companies are forming captives or off-shores in tax havens like the Cayman Islands or Bermuda. There are lots of self-insured groups or individuals, or third-party administrators or managing general underwriters (MGUs), so I actually do not have a clean number on that. >>>

Outsourcing: Jason Beans, Founder and CEO of Rising Medical Solutions (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How many physicians do you have in your system right now?

Jason Beans: We have, according to our database, more than 500,000 physician locations. Now that’s inflated in my mind, because if a doctor treats at four different locations, each location will be registered. If she is an individual doctor in our group and also practices as a part of another group, both groups and locations will be registered. We partner with regional and national PPO networks, and, at times, directly contract. So, we probably have 40% to 50% of the facilities and physicians in the country in some sort of network relationship.  It’s a significant portion of the market, a good starting point for what we want to do.

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Outsourcing: Jason Beans, Founder and CEO of Rising Medical Solutions (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: When you look around in the healthcare IT space, what do you see in the landscape that is competitive to you, that you’re going to have to be aware of and counter?

Jason Beans: I see that it is very competitive. A lot of people trying to solve the same problems as I am. They’re trying to figure out how to get healthcare in the most cost-effective way or pay doctors based on outcomes. I’m watching for those ideas. I don’t want to give away my secret sauce until it launches, but what I do think they’re doing is they’re sticking with the same flawed models that people have been [using] forever. I’m trying to take a different tack and have it be something my grandmother could figure out – just very, very simple – and think in terms of the way people shop for everything else in life, not always treated like a complicated insurance product. We’re just taking a different path. But we have competitors everywhere. It’ll depend on our marketing and the execution of the product. >>>

Outsourcing: Jason Beans, Founder and CEO of Rising Medical Solutions (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I guess, what I’m trying to understand is – one of the case studies I know inside out is the Athenahealth story. Their business model is actually very simple. They work on behalf of the physicians, and they have all these rules engines for coding and everything, and they do collections on behalf of physicians. They service the physician constituency, and they take a percentage of payments.

Jason Beans: Right. We’re on the exact opposite side [from them], more often than not.

SM: Yes, it sounds like it. They are trying to represent the physicians. You’re trying to represent the insurance companies.

JB: More often than not, yes. Yes, that’s true. >>>

Outsourcing: Jason Beans, Founder and CEO of Rising Medical Solutions (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What do you think is the core differentiated value in what you do? Is it more the rules engine that helps you determine what is to be approved and what is not to be approved?

Jason Beans: That is a differentiator. I wouldn’t say it was the number one, just because if people were as smart as we were, they could develop similar rules. What we’re trying to do, to own – and that takes technology – is we’re trying to own service in health care, take the pain out of the process. We’re trying to make everything easy, intuitive, and painless and even provide a high customer service model to the providers, patients and carriers that we don’t think has been seen in the industry. >>>