Montreal-based startup Crew, a marketplace that connects developers and creatives with projects, has raised $2.1 million in funding. Formerly Crew was known as Ooomf, one of FounderFuel’s startups in its second cohort.
Techcrunch reported that Fred Destin of Atlas Ventures led the round, with participation from Naval Ravikant, founder of AngelList, Real Ventures, iNovia Capital, Boldstart Venture Capital and others.
The company pivoted last year from an app discovery startup to its current freelancer marketplace, primarily for mobile and web developers. In between it has ran well-received free campaigns like 2013’s “Launch This Year” personal app building website, as well as January’s Launch This Year 2014, which focused on helping people launch a startup, through curated online lessons and guidance.
But about one year ago this month, founder Mikael Cho shifted the company to its current focus. In the first month of private beta testing, there had been over $125,000 worth of projects approved and over 90 percent of those had connected with a developer, designer, or copywriter.
As of today the company has matched over $3 million in paid projects. The average size of the project is $8,000, and 60 percent of those are mobile-based.
While Techcrunch brought up the competitive landscape, with sites like Freelancer.com and Elance, Cho told the tech blog that Crew’s average of $8,000 per project is “around 10 times the size of many competitors.”
But what differentiates the company is its selection process. Just 350 creatives access projects in the site currently, and Crew lets in one in every 20 applicants. For applicants who build mobile products, Cho said they must have at least three live examples of their work, and “you must have worked on an app that’s 4 stars or better and in the App Store.”
It’s growing at 30 percent month-to-month and takes a 15 percent fee to generate revenue, and of its approved projects on the site, around 50 percent of those are approved and filled right away.