INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Labor markets, particularly those in the tech industry, are incredibly lopsided against employees
Companies screen, interview, and negotiate with thousands of candidates per year, while employees may only go through recruiting a handful
Inevitably, they can select the wrong positions, pick the wrong managers to work with, and end up with a salary well below market rate.New
York City-based Free Agency wants to become the advocate of choice for this high-priced talent
Taking its cue from Hollywood and the sports world, the growing startup wants to identify great workers and offer them the career
Bloomberg Beta last year.The way Free Agency works is simple
As an example, given that median tech salaries at top companies have hovered around $200,000, that would be a fee of $10,000-$20,000.That
may sound exorbitant, but for the founders of Free Agency, it is anything but
They believe that many employees regularly fail to find the most ideal companies to work for and to negotiate the best salaries, which means
that a significant amount of money is being left on the table by their potential clients.Free Agency founders Alex Rothberg, COO, and
Mashayekhi, who is CEO, explained to me
Happy candidates who feel fairly paid will remain at their jobs longer and contribute more productivity
which my colleague Eric Peckham has written about extensively in recent months
In lieu of tuition, some new education startups are using ISAs as a way to guarantee better employment outcomes for students while limiting
Their growing popularity has spawned significant investor interest.Today, Free Agency is barely one year old with just about 11 employees on
projects to work on, helping its talent develop their own skills, brands, and thought leadership, and helping them network with key
point, but Free Agency is really a career-long partner
Film directors and baseball pitchers want to practice and hone their craft, not spend hours negotiating with studio execs and club owners
Agents also are more up-to-date on industry salary trends, and also where new opportunities are arising
Plus, they often work with talent managers to optimize all the ancillary revenues that comes from these careers (product endorsements,
speaker engagements, etc.)Furthermore, these industries have extremely strong superstar income patterns, where top talent can easily make
tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of a career.While the tech industry has traditionally not had
agents, tech talent is increasingly having similar superstar properties
Star engineers, product managers, and designers can make tens of millions of dollars across salary and equity packages, and often have a
range of ancillary revenue sources from consulting engagements with VC firms to lecture circuit payments
Even better, new talent is often making six-figures, whereas the early years in an entertainment or sports career is often focused on
securing any paying job.What remains to be see is whether engineers will willingly give up a segment of their income in order to get better
Certainly Free Agency is not the first company that has tried to tackle this emerging field
10x Management is a talent agency that has focused on vetting top freelance developers, and was profiled in The New Yorker a few years ago
Other startups have also entered the space over the past decade.Free Agency believes it has the timing and service quality to win this
While it is early days, much like the excitement around ISAs in education, I expect models like Free Agency to increasingly become popular
as a way to manage our careers, and this is one startup worth paying attention to in the coming years.In addition to Resolute and Bloomberg,
Ludlow Ventures, Background Capital, Parker Thompson, Will Oberndorf, Amrit Saxena, Jenny Fielding, Greg Schroy, Gordon Wintrob, and Orrick
LLP also joined the round as investors.
