Select Page

Worksita is an online commission-free marketplace for finding and hiring freelance data scientists. 

Tell us more about Workista.

 Workista is the only marketplace that specializes exclusively on hiring freelance data scientists. Employers can easily hire expert freelance data scientists in just a few clicks. For quality control we rigorously prescreen our freelancers through rounds of interviews to form a network of expert data scientists. On top of that, we use state of the art AI matching algorithms to find data scientists that are best suited for each job. Best of all, we offer all of this commission free – and companies can post a job for only $20 per project. 

What inspired you to start Workista? 

I’m a freelancer myself working as a software engineer / frontend developer for startups. I noticed that startups were having lots of problems when it comes to hiring freelancers, and I wanted to bridge the gap between employers and freelancers by creating Workista, so that one can search freelancers or projects more transparently and democratically. 

Why is this problem important? 

Due to the influx of data consumption, businesses are actively looking to outsource data scientists to help them manage their tasks. However, this is surprisingly hard because many agencies and devshops charge hefty commission fees, from 20% all the way to 60%. Searching manually on social media sites like linkedin is also difficult, because sometimes, the project is too big and complex to search (for example, many data science jobs require immense amounts of knowledge in the topic, so typing job requirements in a single one-line search bar is very difficult. 

Who is your target market?

We are focusing on early stage startups and small businesses, who are struggling to find data scientists due the process being too consuming and too expensive. 

How is B-Lab helping your venture develop?

B-Lab has provided so much help throughout the course of 8 weeks. I had access to EIRs who would help me think through some business decisions and solidify the business model. Guest speakers also helped tremendously, because they would talk about their expertise and experiences that often impacted my business decision making processes. 

What is something surprising that has happened thus far?

I didn’t have surprises, but I definitely think bottom up research is one of the most important aspects of validating the business idea. For Workista specifically, I initially thought about tackling the entire tech industry but realized that businesses were looking for niche platforms instead, particularly data science centric platforms.

What non-professional skill do you value most?

I’m not the best cook, but I can definitely cook! I love to cook on the weekends, usually barbecue and fried chicken. (hopefully this was the answer that you were looking for… if not, I would say I value time management as a soft skill. I micromanage my tasks a lot day by day.) 

Andrew Kim is the founder and CEO of Workista. He is a rising senior studying computer science and applied math at Brown. He worked as a freelance software engineer for four years and is very passionate about solving problems in freelance workspace.