{"id":8269,"date":"2023-07-12T07:58:07","date_gmt":"2023-07-12T07:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/?p=8269"},"modified":"2023-07-12T07:58:07","modified_gmt":"2023-07-12T07:58:07","slug":"is-the-1-billion-one-person-business-around-the-corner-this-freelance-platform-which-just-raised-50-million-is-betting-on-a-bold-future-for-solopreneurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/2023\/07\/12\/is-the-1-billion-one-person-business-around-the-corner-this-freelance-platform-which-just-raised-50-million-is-betting-on-a-bold-future-for-solopreneurs\/","title":{"rendered":"Is The $1 Billion, One-Person Business Around The Corner? This Freelance Platform, Which Just Raised $50 Million, Is Betting On A Bold Future For Solopreneurs"},"content":{"rendered":"


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In the latest sign of the explosive growth of one-person businesses, Collective, an AI-powered back-office platform for solopreneurs, just raised $50 million in funding.<\/p>\n

The San Francisco startup provides business formation services, S-election, payroll, tax, and bookkeeping services for one-person businesses and a personal dashboard to manage their finances.<\/p>\n

Since it was founded in 2020, the company says it has built a waitlist of nearly 100,000 businesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to continue to build the platform and scale our operations to handle the demand,\u201d says CEO and co-founder Hooman Radfar. \u201cThe space is growing quite dramatically.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Collective offers one-stop back-office services for freelancers. From left to right: Bugra Akcay … [+]<\/span> (co-founder & CTO), Hooman Radfar (co-founder & CEO), Ugur Kaner (co-founder & CPO)<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/fbs-accordion>Collective <\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Investors in Collective<\/a> include Gradient Ventures, Google\u2019s AI fund, Innovius Capital, The General Partnership, General Catalyst, QED, Expa, and Better Tomorrow Ventures, as well as Ashton Kutcher.<\/p>\n

The company has raised $82 million in total and says it has increased revenue by 10x since its Series A round in 2021.<\/p>\n

CEO and co-founder Hooman Radfar says Collective will use the investment to accelerate the use of AI in its operations.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Collective is using technologies such as Large Language Models (LLMs) to build AI \u201ccopilots\u201d to support its team of tax experts, accountants, bookkeepers, and relationship managers. The professionals can use these copilots to whittle down the time they spend on tasks such as bank reconciliation and expense categorization, allowing them to devote time to other business activities. The tool for expense reconciliation reduces the time required by 90%, Radfar says. For reconciliation, the time spent dips by 70%.<\/p>\n

Collective plans to create additional AI tools as it scales up, according to Radfar. \u201cIt\u2019s unbelievable how good some of this stuff is,\u201d says Radfar. \u201cIt\u2019s going to change the game for us and our members.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. Census Bureau has found the number of new business applications<\/a> has remained high since the pandemic, with 436,048 applications submitted in May 2023 alone in the U.S.<\/p>\n

For Collective, investing its funding in AI and other new technologies will provide a glimpse of the future of the one-person business\u2014a future driven by rapidly accelerating individual productivity, according to Radfar.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis not only helps us make our platform better to serve our members but also gives us a lens to see the future for how our members themselves can create value for their customers,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Radfar believes that, owing to new technologies like AI, the day will arrive when a one-person or very small business will reach a $1 billion valuation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt may seem like science fiction but a smart business owner could rely on a workforce primarily made up of different AI-driven applications and maybe some contractors\u2014and create tremendous value,\u201d says Radfar. James Taylor, a global speaker on creativity, has described the trend toward this type of human + machine collaboration as \u201csuper creativity,\u201d and has predicted it will transform the world of work in the future.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Collective aims to expand its services through partnerships to help the self-employed by providing access to benefits such as healthcare and financial services that are hard for the self-employed to access affordably.<\/p>\n

The thinking, says Radfar, is \u201cWe have thousands of members, so how can we turn that \u2018collective,\u2019 if you will, into a tool for the individual who’s in our membership?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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In the latest sign of the explosive growth of one-person businesses, Collective, an AI-powered back-office platform for solopreneurs, just raised $50 million in funding. The San Francisco startup provides business formation services, S-election, payroll, tax, and bookkeeping services for one-person businesses and a personal dashboard to manage their finances. Since it was founded in 2020, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":8270,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/imageio.forbes.com\/specials-images\/imageserve\/5f753f60b7cc8bdc559aff92\/0x0.jpg?format=jpg&width=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8271,"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8269\/revisions\/8271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}