AI Agents & Smart Collaboration with Philipp Thomaschewski (Fratch.io)

If your business becomes basically more efficient, more profitable as a good investor, you probably would invest more, right? That potentially is you invest more software, you hire more people to get more out of it, right? To make your business bigger. I I I I kind of feel this take in terms of that. I really think yes there will be shifts and we need to see how we navigate this but in the long term it will foster growth and there with you always so need need more people right yeah >> hi my name is Dmitri Bonichi and I'm a content creator agency owner and AI enthusiast you're listening to the AI agents podcast brought to you by Jot Form and featuring our very own CEO and founder Idkin Tank this is the show where artificial intelligence meets innovation productivity and the tools shaping the future of

work. Enjoy the show. Hello, my name is Demetri and welcome back to another episode of the AI Agents podcast. In this episode, we have the CEO and founder of FRA, Phillip. How you doing, Phillip? >> Uh, great to be here, Dimmitri. Thanks for the invite. >> And, uh, it's great to have you. I really appreciate you for making the time. And, you know, just to kind of kick things off, you have a pretty unique product and we'll get into that, but first of all, just kind of give us a little bit of background on who you are, your story, and how you got into what you're doing now. Yeah, sure. So, um, my background actually is in in management consulting. Uh, that's where I kind of kicked it off. And, um, I think there's also the the the first origin for for Fred actually because,

uh, when I worked in in management consulting, we often worked with freelancers. So, we basically enhanced our teams with experts like, you know, Zo experts or whatsoever. And, um, yeah, from then on, I basically went into freelancing myself. and uh help large corporations to set up their digital business units. You know, in the midst of the 201 years, every every large corporate wanted to have like a digital unit or some sort of that and that was uh partly my job to help them to to kick that off and uh yeah, from there on I went into freelancing and then uh yeah, founded Fred roughly two and a half years ago and uh here we are. >> Very cool. Um, and what uh got you into in general? I know obviously you said management consulting was kind of the beginning point, but what sparked your interest

in, you know, the AI kind of portion of what you're doing? Because obviously, you know, you you have a product and I feel like most people um nowadays when they have a digital uh, you know, SAS product or platform, it is AI driven, but what really got you into being interested in AI in general? >> Yeah. So basically I mean I see AI like more like as a tool right so if we could solve the problem which we're solving differently we would use a different technology but obviously as in many other industries AI is a huge enabler right and I mean at the end what we do at FRE is we help hiring managers or recruiting companies to find the right freelancers basically within seconds right so and what we saw or what I exper experienced working as a freelancer myself and I was on

the other side basically and I worked with these consultancies and and um recruiters and hiring managers. What I saw was that the process of is so tedious and manual and that so many people are involved and basically trying to find the right person to find the right candidate which often was very subjective. So basically as a hiring manager it was often actually difficult to get the right person for you because there was some subjective recruiter or a recruiter which who didn't have a good day today or didn't have the knowledge about the position. So it was difficult for him to assess the best candidate and basically what what I saw was okay it's kind of you can kind of objectify this with AI and you can make this quicker and faster and a cheaper process and at the end of the day what our vision

is and was is kind of like similar like you know you have Uber and the cap industry or taxi industry. So you have like the cap which was a very manual thing. You called it and then later you you know tried to to hire through the phone and then somebody rked up. So Uber took the same product basically and digitalized it right and said hey we put all this in an app. We make the process way more smoother. We make it cheaper. And this is exactly what we're trying to do with the with the freelance uh recruiting industry. And AI obviously is a is a huge enabler for this right. >> Yeah that makes sense. I mean, people remember or for people that don't remember, they originally were called Uber Cab. They weren't called uh >> just Uber, right? And maybe you were called uh

you know, you were called FR Freelance beforehand, but no. Um yeah, that's a good that's a good point, you know, and um I think uh every company is trying to in spaces like yourself digitize, you know, products that maybe exist or services that exist. So I guess maybe to give a better idea of the landscape, you know, obviously you said it was hard to navigate. It was annoying. Like are you competing with or working against so to speak companies like Upwork or or Fiverr? Like how how do you kind of sit in in what a business decision maker um is uh you know going for when it comes to finding freelancers is my >> Yeah. >> the reason I'm asking the question. >> Yeah. Well, I I guess we're doing similar things in in a different segment. I I would describe it this way. So,

what we are really focusing on is more uh white collar corporate long-term projects. To give you a concrete example, if one of our clients wants to implement a new ERP system into his company and he needs a project manager for the next three to six to 9 months, then it's very unlikely that you're going to uh Fiverr at the moment because Fiverr in my opinion is more focusing on for example, hey, you have a web shop, you have a Shopify shop or whatsoever and you want to, you know, you need a a logo logo designed or something similar. So it's much more short-term, much more gig work like versus ours is more long-term projectorientated and along with that so we're working with a bunch of large corporations especially in Europe and it's I mean it's way more complex than just finding the right candidate right

so that is one big portion of our job but all the contract compliance work along with that um is something which we offer to corporations as well and that is something which Fiverr obviously for example is not focusing on so much as we do right so it's I think similar product to be fair different segments which we're operating on yeah you know and I think it's it's like hard when you're early on in a uh situation as such you know what where do you where do you go for the um I guess where do you go for the right platform or opt option to give you the best freelancers, you know, and I I personally have had pretty negative experiences um with uh with a certain I can neither confirm nor deny. No, I'm just kidding. It's it's I don't like Fiverr. I do not

like Fiverr. I think I think Fiverr practically for the purposes that I need it is not that good. I think that Upwork is uh is a better more like reputable platform in my perspective. And and just just kind of speaking from from where you're coming from, right? Like I think I would just love to kind of hear what is your um basic I don't want to say hermeneutic that's a little bit too like technical of a term. Uh what is your basic like method as a person who's now started a company that helps people find freelancers for figuring out why a freelancer would be a good fit for a company. >> Yeah. So I think I mean one of the reason how online platforms have been designed and why it was probably so difficult for you to find the right candidate on these platforms is

that it's kind of overwhelming, right? And and it gives you the feeling or it structures the platform in a way like you're going shopping for shoes or clothing or like car configuration. So you have this overwhelming inventory of candidates, right? So you're saying, "Hey, I need a UX designer." And then you have like uh 40 40 different uh UX designers which you basically can choose from and where you need to read reviews and stars and compare pricing and what's so what all that kind of stuff, right? So everything basically which uh recruiter should presort. So that makes it very difficult for you obviously who's not doing the hiring job every day to quickly assess who's the right candidate and where are the red flags right so >> and that's why we actually came along with Fred where we said okay let's design it in a

way it's your personal recruiting assistant right so and instead of you know you putting in like a like a search term like project management by way which can be written com like in three different four different variations. So you need to write all of that to to to find the right candidate basically on the certain keyword. You want to communicate to a system like this like scratch in your natural language, right? You want to say, "Hey, I'm looking for a new UX designer or project manager or whatsoever." And it should then give you a first kind of recommendations in terms of hey, have you thought about like you know how it is with your remote on-site ratio? Uh where's your company base? So like everything which basically a recruiter asks you should be asked by the system so that you only get a selection of

like three to five really well-fitting candidates, right? So simply by having a system which asks you a bunch of questions, you can already eliminate uh a bad experience, right? And then think about it, a good recruiter does not throw over or does not send you an email with like 20 CVs or something like this, but he curates basically out of these 20 the best three to five, right? And that is a system which we are building with the help of our AI agent to present to you three to five really good candidates and then if you want to have more, you can get more, right? But like you're not getting lost in data and that's I think um what the next generation of these platforms needs to do instead of building building this uh the shopping sites which shows you inventory of like 100 different

freelancers for the same position. >> Yeah. And you know, I guess just to speak back to my experience with with other platforms like Upwork and stuff, like it really does kind of put the onus on the person uh to be the curator, right? And be the curator of that information is very hard. And and I guess another issue I'm sure some people are concerned with with these platforms is uh reviews. you know, I don't think it's a secret to anybody that reviews um well, they can be transacted in a way that's not, you know, with the terms of service uh in mind, I guess, on Upwork and Fiverr. And also people, and that would be like cuz people actually buy and sell reviews. Uh but there's also a unfortunate situation to my knowledge that you know people may not give a five out of five

experience but they'll still get a five out of five experience because they just kind of feel bad um about like how the relationship ended up going. What what do you have to say about like how someone um can be sure that you know you're curating the information well as to how uh where in the other platforms and and the other sourcing so to speak. It kind of comes from a pool that has already had like a a well that's kind of poisoned. >> Yeah. Got it. Got it. So I think um to your point in terms of references, references can be a valid data point taken into account to assess the quality of a freelancer, right? And we also take this into account, but it's just one of many. Right? Still the problem is that I'm or the traditional platforms throwing so much data at

you that you have to combine all of these data to to get a holistic picture, right? And this times 40 or 50 candidates which you see on this uh on this page. So I think what AI agents in general do and specifically in our case is they are way better at analyzing large quantities of data right so to give you an example in our case um you're looking for a certain developer so let's say you're looking for a Java developer right so an AI is way better in reading the CD and is saying is and and analyzing hey out of his 10 projects, there have been six Java positions. And by the way, in CVA, the Java positions have been recently in the last, you know, 3 years versus the other candidate, he had this Java positions like five years ago. So actually candidate A

might be the even though both have the same years of Java experience, candidate A might be the better choice for you because the knowledge is way more recent, right? So and having like references having data points like this but having also many other data points like skill assessment waiting uh I said location daily rate and so on and so forth and bringing all of these together so purely by the amount of data you're just getting a better decision basically made for you or better pre-selection made for you instead of you going through the whole inventory again right so I think that is a little bit the secret sauce and that is also why AI in my opinion is in so many in so many areas but also specifically in ours where we're dealing with large amount of data right just imagine all like we have

we have CVs which are like 10 to 20 pages long you know when a freelancer has been working for uh 10 15 20 years as a freelancer his CV is like massive you know it feels like a phone book but there's so much there's so much you know valuable data in there which you want to consider in making the decision but for a human even if you're an experienced recruiter that is just you know undoable and I mean probably you and many of your listeners here themselves I mean we all have hired people right so we all have seen the stacks of CV and now bring yourself into the position where you're reading at CV number one and you're reading it very carefully right and then you're going to number two and then you're saying ah yeah and then by the time you're at number

five you're like ah this will work you know and then you then you have the stories where where you hear from hiring managers oh the last 10 one didn't are not lucky basically they're going to the trash can right away right without even looking at them so >> yeah no I think you've made some good points here it's it's it's really difficult to to sort through all this information nowadays with everything that's being put out and I I actually we interviewed a HR company a little while ago about this that um spoke to it pretty well I think I don't know if who um were got a chance to check out the episode, but they made a point that HR right now is battling a battle that I don't think many people maybe think of, which is the more that people are able to mass

apply and not only mass apply, but mass apply to even just general jobs at a very specific uh promptbased level. So, you know, you have your job, you you're like, "Hey, this is my resume. Can you improve it? This is my resume. Can you write a cover letter?" HR is having to deal with this. So, in the same realm, I'm guessing you're you're solving a similar issue, which is the the the freelance issue. Um, which is I'm sure they as well are taking the positions or the project listings and then saying, "Hey, this is what my skill list is. Can you write me a cover letter or write me a proposal um that aligns with this?" And that that probably is caused uh from my perspective the the biggest issue which is like you can't even on Upwork for example when I would post a

job there I was having issues figuring out who necessarily was maybe not reading the job description that well. So, I would uh I found out this trick from a a content creator called Ali Abdal where he would essentially put a uh little request to say at some point like very deep in the cover letter saying, "Could you make sure to write blue elephant at the top of your uh at the top of your proposal?" And that actually told me who was actually good at attention to detail and who was actually looking at the job. But now you can't even do that because they probably have they have AI just like noticing it in the thing uh in the Yes. in the request. So >> and the applicants are are confused why all of the sudden there's blue elephant at the beginning of their resume. Right.

>> Mhm. Yep. Exactly. So it's very it's a very intriguing situation that I'm I'm sure you're battling through as you know people are getting better and better at introducing themselves in a more preferential way to an employer so to speak. >> Yeah. I mean uh there there's nothing wrong with that, right? So I mean recruiters for years have been have been complaining about that that candidates are mass applying and and not individualizing their application right and now they're doing it obviously and then people are also kind of complaining about it uh and and kind of get it. I think it's as you said it's uh we need to build systems and and some areas of companies are better than others at that but we need to build systems how to handle and manage the data and and obviously with um yeah coming back to the

beginning I think we saw that freelance recruiters and and hiring managers or the systems for hiring freelancers in large corporations are still often very very manual And actually I mean this brings or causes other huge problems for for organizations right so the more manual a job is right then then the higher the markup on the freelancer's daily rate needs to be right because otherwise um the recruiter cannot really you know obviously he needs to lift off something so he tries to mark up the price of the freelancer as high as possible you know sometimes 30 40 50% % on top of the freelancers daily. Right. So, right and and he's all the his whole incentive is to do that actually because obviously the the recruiter who on an operational level works with you is highly incentivized by marking this up because that's his bonus, right?

And I think that is another huge problem which we're solving is we're bringing transparency into the market saying clearly, hey, that that's the daily rate of the freelancer which he applied with on the platform. We're doing a markup of 10 to 15% depending on the project length. So you have clear transparency actually in in many cases for the first time. I know that Upwork and and Fiverr for example, these platforms are doing that already also. But if you're then thinking about really traditional recruiting firms who are working in this space, obviously they're doing everything to to to hide this markup. And I think that is something where where there's also huge potential for for large organizations also to drive cost-saving initiatives obviously which I mean we all know that is in the in the current state of things uh a big a big driver to

to become more profitable. >> Oh absolutely. Yeah. >> And and so I think there's a big lever in many organizations which they haven't pulled actually although there's huge huge potential. Well, I I guess I you know, kind of fair question probably to follow up. What other like unique capabilities are uh does your platform have that kind of can ease the worries of a of an business owner on on the different fronts of hiring, right? Like obviously I think there's, you know, issues I'm dealing with freelancers a lot of times um when it comes to I know Upwork's at like a 10% um >> uh fee. >> Micro fee. Yeah. Uh I'm not sure actually what fibers is cuz I stopped paying attention uh when I got off there. But you know what? That's obviously one component to it. There's other components like you know the

do you know and this goes both ways, right? Maybe maybe you know we're speaking to it from the business perspective but also the freelander freelancers uh perspective. Is there anything from the uh from either side that you feel like you do much better than your standard uh oper optured option? Gez, sorry. Uh yeah definitely I think that there are many points I mean let let's take the it's very simplistic but let let's go with the freelancer first right so what we're seeing at many um platforms or application systems is that you as a freelancer you're being basically asked to register on the platform and then basically please upload your CV and then after uploading your CV you're being asked to basically copy paste all of your CD into the fields of the platform so that they can generate a profile out of it. Right? So

what ends up happening and we were able to benchmark this actually that obviously it's a very like very stupid and monotone work. So people start making a mistakes and people get bored. So they do not upload their whole CV right or do not copy paste their whole CV into this. So what we did to solve this is actually that we use AI to extract all the data from your CV and automatically generate a profile for you with a current accuracy of like 95 to 97%. So, but which also means is that we have often way more data than other platforms of the freelancer because he had not to put it in himself manually but we extracted it through AI and thereby we have way more data about the freelancer and obviously then can make better or can take more data into the decision process right

or into the matching process. So I think that is that is a huge huge improvement lever actually. So what we see on the other side is and that's why we build it kind of like a chatgbt like agent is if we're really being honest when a client first comes to us and uses chat uh FRGBT our AI agent they kind of know what they want but they do not really know what they want. Um so I mean authors probably know it like there is this term uh blank paper problem right so you're sitting in front of your of a blank paper or blank page >> and then you need to start writing and you do not really know what to write and then once you're in the flow or once you have the first like 20 40 50 60% it feels much more easier to

improve to to think forward right and that's exactly where we help for example hiring managers as well so you're coming to us you're going to our AI agent and say, "Hey, I need a UX designer for um developing uh a streaming app for example, right?" So, our AI agent takes this information and says, "Okay, based on the information I have and pass project descriptions I did within this area, this could be a project description which I would use as a basis to look for profiles, right? But please consider you might want to add further details like I don't know which uh in which area of the company are you working in uh where's the position based is it remote is it on site what's the daily rate and so on is it like full-time part-time whatsoever right so we are helping actually the hiring manager

or the HR department to structure the project description way more detailed so that you get the results quicker which you really want to have better quality results quicker basically, right? So, so there we are helping on on the other side and then bringing these two pieces to together. So, better project description with actually better data because the freelancer has more accurate data uploaded. We then bring together basically the better product and that is a better matching results than than an average human could do actually. >> H you know I guess just kind of on a more general level, right? Obviously, you know, we talked a lot about you, your product, and and that kind of stuff. What What do you think some of the biggest trend shifts um are that you're seeing in regards to to hiring with freelancers, right? Like fre it's it's almost

seems like in the market, right, for these different early stage business owners. I'm guessing you're going for people who are probably smaller mediumsized businesses that need some help but don't need employees, right? what what has the impact kind of been with AI agents on freelance hiring or even full-time hiring from from your perspective? >> I think I mean and that's no news. I think we are seeing obviously there will be freelance positions in in my perspective which will not exist in in in two or three years anymore or not in that >> quantity obviously and we see it ourselves right so things which we have hired freelancers for we can now with do with AI right or or at least part of it with AI so but that being said I think as as we have seen like in the past technical revolutions starting with

the steam machine right um they will always develop evolve something new out of it so I'm I'm I'm pretty sure that when we are looking looking down the road that like in 5 to 10 years we are working with more freelancers than we do today and and there there's another reason which I want to emphasize there in a second regarding this but what we see in the really short term actually is that organiza organizations start working more with freelancers in very specific fields because there is a lot of preparation preparation work to be done to basically set up these AI systems right from getting your data structure right getting your data cleaned up getting you know getting the systems connected right so and that is all positions obviously where you do not want to hire full-time because once you have set it up then then

you do not need a full-time position for that, right? So what we see actually right now is that a lot of companies are hiring a lot of more freelancers in this specific area to to get it set up actually. So which then will basically lead to the next phase in my opinion where I say okay I potentially hire less people because you know I'm being more efficient with the people I have in house and my AI systems but then again new jobs from my perspective will emerge and and and there was uh um I I recently listened to to quite a quite interesting thought that was like if your business becomes basically more efficient, more profitable. As a good investor, you probably would invest more, right? That potentially is >> absolutely >> invest more software, you hire more make your business bigger. So, and that

is kind of my or or I kind of am like I I I I kind of feel this take in terms of that I really think yes there will be shifts and we need to see how we navigate this but in the long term it will foster growth and therefore you always need need more people right and um >> yeah no I think you're know this is a great point actually this is one of the better answers I've heard on the subject because a lot of people will say um what you said at first, which is true, like you know, probably jobs will go down in some ways or they want to hire want to hire as much, but uh the phrase is always then uttered, well, maybe there'll be more entrepreneurs, right? And that is actually one of the more clear explanations I've heard,

which is like, well, those would maybe be software um entrepreneurs, right? As an example, I haven't quite heard any examples usually when I get give that question, so that was fair. Uh because like you know one would ask the question yeah well what am I what am I using the these employee like who are who's going to pay these entrepreneurs so to speak and yeah it would be the same companies that are saving on hiring and maybe the some of those people had an idea they always wanted to go after AI helped facilitate them build a one-stop shop solution for a specific thing right and that's uh the nice thing about SAS building now I think is that >> if you want to get really get at one thing, you can build something out now um in a lot easier of a way than than

previously. So that that's a fair point. Um and maybe we'll just see a lot of smaller companies, but it doesn't mean we'll have like we'll see more companies though >> potentially. Um and I think there's one other huge aspect which we haven't even touched on is um I mean all major economies including the US not as strong as Europe, Europe, Asia, all of them have a huge issue with demographics. So what we're seeing in demographic data at the moment is that all of these parts of the world are actually declining in terms of number of people right so >> yeah it's true >> so and that is nothing which which you know is now like 60 years away actually especially in Europe we this year in Germany the generation with the highest birth rate ever in Germany goes into retirement so What we're seeing is

actually that we need to make the existing companies and systems way more efficient just to get status quo right but that also means for these companies it will be way harder to hire people permanently and make fixed hires. So one solution so obviously there are two solutions to this right either you can automate the whole thing um through AI for example or alternatively if you do not get get it automated and you do not get somebody hired for this position obviously you want to you know bridge it with a freelancer until you have automated it or until you found the person which you permanently hire for this position right so from my perspective actually that was one of our main foundations why we said let's make a company out of it because we think that you can look at it in a short term and

obviously freelancing is highly volatile and dependent on on the economy but if you look at it from a long term and with the demographic development which you see in Europe in the US even in China or especially in China to be fair um there's such a massive opportunity because you need then systems to quickly bridge the gap and obviously as you said we have more data, we have obviously then potentially more people, maybe more small entrepreneurs, freelancers, whatever you want to call them. So having systems and an operating system to get these people quick on board and into your organization, I think can be a key success factor for any any company, right? >> Yeah. No, that's fair. I I definitely think so. Um and for me, yeah, it's always I I didn't even consider the birth rate thing, by the way. Um, >> it's

a it's it's a huge >> I consider it I consider it generally, but I actually have never considered it for business, which is funny. >> Yeah. Yeah. But it's it's actually it's a I read a book on it recently. Unfortunately, I I would recommend it to you and your your listeners, but it's um it's unfortunately in German. >> But it it's stunning how how that is impacting I mean obviously you know the the the the people countries get older in general but that the impact of it economically I mean is huge. So I mean I I was discussing it with a friend lately who's working for a cell phone company or a telecom provider and I was saying to him look imagine like like you're operating in a market which is 100% like satisfied right so there's like every person has a cell phone contract

so imagine in Germany you have 10 million less people that basically and and you're operating in in in a business where you're not like can increase the prices like like that, right? Because there's so much competition. So like for a lot of businesses, this will be a huge impact like how do you mitigate this like declining factor, right? Because it will decline your your your top and bottom line actually and it's it's stunning. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's No, that's actually a very good point. You know, you think of the cell phone company. Yeah. It's like all right, well that's just they're just gone. Um, Vodaf Vodafone's like, Vodafone's like, "What are you doing? I have more. >> Where are you guys?" Right. >> Um, Vodafone is the primary like European, right? Is that for like cell data? >> You got phone. You got Telefonica or

or O2 here. >> All right. I'm a little cultured. >> I'm a little cultured. That wasn't bad. >> Um, actually, you could send me what it is. I I can uh >> I you know, I I can't speak it that well, but I can laz a little bit. It's called I can say that maybe you have one or two two German listeners. It's called so >> okay >> it's basically it plays a little bit with the words you so usually say there's always the fear of having too much unemployment right so the two too high unemployment rate rate but it basically turn twist this around and says well >> uh the great lack of of workers >> translated >> and then it takes examples from it's it's a really good book I mean highly recommend >> for Sure. No, for sure. Appreciate that. Um, well,

you know, I think, uh, where we're at in the conversation. That's, you know, I guess I'd just like to ask to kind of close things out. What would be your one last closing statement on why everyone should check out uh, FRA and what necessarily uh, anything else you have to say is about, you know, freelancing and hiring freelancers and whatnot. >> Sure. Um, I mean, let's start with the freelancers. So, uh, why should they do that? because I think it's definitely a no regret move. You know, the the sign up takes uh uh less time than my pitch right now. So, you basically just put your name, email address, and upload your CV and it's basically for free for freelancers. So, uh take a look at it. Nothing nothing to lose. Um, I think on the on the hiring manager side, um, just think about

the process next time when you're hiring a freelancer and you're writing an email to your recruiter or, uh, you know, talking to your HR department. While you're doing this, you basically could already have the first candidate on the phone if you like that, right? While actually, while you're writing the time to take to write this email, you could already be on the phone with the candidate on our platform. So, um, >> nice. >> And you're saving money, basically. But, uh, yeah, >> save money, save time. Usually two good value props. >> We like that. >> All right. Well, Philip, we really appreciate having you on the podcast. So, make sure everyone here to leave a like, subscribe, but also, of course, make sure to go check out FRA. And the domain for that so you guys will know where to go is fra.io. That's fra.io.

Um, Fresh is the leading AI powered freelancer recruiting assistant out there. So, if you guys need any help in that realm, please make sure to go check it out. Thanks for listening and please your please make sure to leave a review on Apple Podcast and Spotify. Thanks for watching. We'll see you in the next one. Bye. >> Thanks for having me, Dimmitri.