Guru.com

Guru.com is a freelance marketplace.[1] It allows companies to find freelance workers for commissioned work. Founded in 1998 and headquartered in Pittsburgh, Guru was initially known as eMoonlighter.com.

Websoft, Inc.
TypePrivately held company
IndustryInternet
Service Marketplace
Workforce Management
Crowdsourcing
Founded1998 (1998) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
FounderInder Guglani
HeadquartersPittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Websitewww.guru.com

History

Guru Inc. was founded in 1999[2] in San Francisco as an online clearing house for high tech workers seeking short-term contracts. The company, led by brothers Jon and James Slavet, raised $3M in angel funding and a further $16M in a full venture round led by Greylock Partners and August Capital.[2] In a May 2000 interview, Paul Saffo cited Guru.com as an example of a company using the Internet to provide new kinds of services where individuals negotiated directly with potential employers.[3]

In May 2001, Ray Marcy, who had been the CEO at Spherion, a Florida staffing company, became CEO of Guru Inc. He hired industrial psychologist Janz and Dan Crow to develop new software.[4]

In February 2002, Guru unveiled its SmartMatch technology, which matched résumés and other information about job applicants to jobs.[5] The company also developed a candidate profiling system using techniques from Industrial and organizational psychology to better understand a candidate's suitability for a particular job.

The company was acquired[6] in December 2002 by Unicru, a human resources software company based in Portland, Oregon. Guru's technology and staff remained with Unicru. Guru has overall, received an approximate of $41 million in funding.

How Guru Works

Guru connects employers and freelancers securely online, allowing freelancers to research open positions matching their services and skills. Employers can review freelancer profiles and portfolios, choose a payment agreement, and begin working together through the platform’s dedicated WorkRooms.[7]

Guru’s WorkRooms feature allows clients to manage their team of freelancers, assign roles, and keep interactions, time tracking, and payments in one place.[8]

Guru currently claims to have around three million online users, with nearly one million visits to the site each month.[9]

Merger & Present day

Unicru sold the Guru.com domain name and logo to eMoonlighter.com, and eMoonlighter was renamed Guru.com.[10]

See also

References
  1. Guru.com puts freelancers to work Archived 2008-05-24 at the Wayback Machine – PC World
  2. "The New-Boy Network, E-Commerce Article". Inc.com. 2000-01-01. Retrieved 2018-06-05.
  3. Walker, Leslie (May 18, 2000). "Discussion with Paul Saffo, Director, Institute For The Future". The Washington Post.
  4. Clifford, Stephanie (July 2002). "Guru's Gamble". Business 2.0.
  5. Crow, D.; Desanto, J. (2004). "A hybrid approach to concept extraction and recognition-based matching in the domain of human resources". 16th IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence. p. 535. doi:10.1109/ICTAI.2004.12. ISBN 0-7695-2236-X. S2CID 13378806.
  6. Earnshaw, Aliza (4 August 2003). "Unicru expands capabilities with two acquisitions". Portland Business Journal.
  7. Maria Guzzo,"eMoonlighter buys Guru, a rival freelance job site". bizjournals.com. 30 June 2003. Retrieved 30 April 2022.
  8. "Guru Review: Is Guru Worth It for Hiring?". lancerreview.com. 17 December 2020. Retrieved 30 April 2022.
  9. "guru.com Traffic Analytics & Market Share". similarweb.com. 17 December 2020. Retrieved 30 April 2022.
  10. "Is Guru.com a Scam or a Legit Freelance Site? [Full Review]". Gig Hustlers. 2018-09-09. Retrieved 2020-10-23.
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