How does Moonlighting scale the company?

Moonlighting is comprised of successful entrepreneurs who have built billion dollar companies and worked as technologists in supporting platform companies manage billions of dollars in mobile/digital transactions. Moonlighting has built a world-class sales distribution strategy via third party partnerships with Gannett, Tribune, McClatchy, Verizon, Monster, Yahoo and over 450 news media sites around the globe including new partnerships with the Johnston Press for UK expansion and Post Media, to bring Moonlighting to Canada. 

How does Moonlighting make money?

Moonlighting monetizes both sides of their marketplace with a simple $10 per month subscription called Boost, which helps freelancers stand out and gain more business on the platform. In addition, Moonlighting allows recruiters and staffing companies to post 30 day listing ranging from $40-$100 per month to promote specific jobs.

Do you have your Meet the Drapers appearance transcript?

Tim:                          We've got some amazing entrepreneurs today, this is gonna be really fun. But before we do, let's see what's happening backstage.

Jeff:                              Hi, my name's Jeff Tennery. I'm the founder and CEO of Moonlighting; one of the fastest-growing freelance marketplaces in today's gig economy. I live in Charlottesville, Virginia, which is not the mecca of employment.

Jeff:                              When the market crashed I was scared to death. My wife was pregnant with our fifth child, and I wanted to build something I knew I could use if I ever lost my job, to find work. And I knew that if I could use mobile technology, then I could help people find jobs anytime, anywhere around the world.

Jeff:                              I'm backed by three publicly-traded companies, we've raised over six and a half million dollars. We built the product, now we're just gonna enhance it with blockchain cryptocurrency.

Jeff:                              I got a chance to meet Tim a couple of times at some of the bitcoin and blockchain conferences. I actually spent one-on-one time with him and his family. That means a lot to us. We're a four year-old company. It was scary, but we picked the right path, and that's why we have 650,000 viewers on the platform.

Jeff:                              Welcome to Moonlighting, my name's Jeff Tennery, I'm the founder and CEO of Moonlighting. One of the fastest freelance marketplaces growing in today's gig economy. Back in 2008 when the market crashed, I was deathly afraid of, you know, where I would find my next job. We're based in Charlottesville, Virginia. It's not like a mecca of a ton of employment there, and we built a mobile app that would help people find work very, very quickly. The experience looks and feels a lot like Uber, but we mixed it with a little bit more of LinkedIn and Facebook. What we have is over 650,000 people over the last two and a half years have signed up for Moonlighting. Every type of job you can imagine. We joke we got the fire jugglers, the stilt walkers on this side, and you've got professionals like accountants, attorneys, photographers, DJs.

Jeff:                              What we're looking to do is expand globally, and we made a decision a year ago to get into blockchain. When you have 650,000 users on your platform, you gotta take care of that data. Gotta make sure that it's authentic, it's real, and that's what blockchain does.

Jeff:                              This past year we have built our own cryptocurrency, looking to do an ICO. So that's a little bit about Moonlighting and, no, I'm not Bruce Willis. I always crack that joke, it goes over some people's heads. Especially depending on-

Tim:                             You just glossed over this, "we're doing an ICO". You're trying to connect people and you're using the blockchain to make sure that they're all legitimate. Okay, that's the blockchain. Why are people every gonna buy this coin?

Jeff:                              There's two use cases; one is being able to do that to pay one another for services, to design a website, to do my taxes. The other piece of it too is we'll be able to have people use the currency so that they can buy premium services. So they can move their way up through our platform, so they get discovered faster, and they are able to get hired very quickly.

Bill:                              But getting it started, so that people accept the currency, that's a really tough job.

Jeff:                              Yeah but you know what we have? A jump-start, Bill. It's a great question. 650,000 users that are using our platform-

Bill:                              How do they appear?

Jeff:                              You know what? We've been, we're very good at social media marketing. We have partnerships with the news media companies. Not only are they investors, but they also are commercial partners. You'll find Moonlighting in the LA Times, Chicago Tribune, USA Today. In that section where people are looking for employment.

Naveen:                       What happens, I mean, the reason you do a gig-economy is because I wanna get paid and somehow, you know, feed my family. Having a coin, unless it's tradable and I can get the fiat currency, is not gonna buy me lunch.

Jeff:                              Well, you can, actually the way it's set up, you can basically use the coin back into Ethereum and still get to fiat and do that as well.

Naveen:                       But I'm saying, is there good trading? Unless there is a decent amount of trading somebody is willing to do that, it doesn't quite-

Jeff:                              We have the velocity and the liquidity in the marketplace that's taking place right now. Which again, if you think about it, there's a lot of other gig-

Tim:                             With that velocity, with your own coin? Or-

Jeff:                              Not yet. No, we haven't done the coin yet. That's really what we're here to raise funding for. We call it the Moonbit. It's built, we haven't launched it-

Naveen:                       But this seems to be the tail wagging the dog. I mean what you're saying is, "I wanna clear the cryptocurrency so what can I do?" As opposed to, "I have a problem that needs solving." I mean, crypto is one way of doing it as opposed to saying, "here is the business, here is the problem I'm trying to solve, here are the ten different ways of doing it, and I selected this."

Jeff:                              I think I need to reverse back on there, maybe a little bit of the nerves of being on here, but we've been around for 4 years. We have created a business. We've had over 49 million dollars that has been transacted on the platform.

Tim:                             And how much do you get out of that?

Jeff:                              We changed that model up dramatically again, with understanding our customers. People typically leave gig economies if you're taking too much per paycheck. So, anywhere from 20-30%. So our revenues, we've got a little under a million dollars.

Tim:                             [crosstalk 00:09:32] Over that 4 years?

Jeff:                              Yes, correct. Over the last 18 months we've done about 750,000 dollars.

Tim:                             And somehow, do you think that your token is now going to enhance your existing business? Or are you just using it as a way to raise money?

Jeff:                              No, actually. We're doing a security token by the way, much different than the utility token. Which you- [crosstalk 00:09:52]

Tim:                             Well it costs a lot more in legal fees.

Jeff:                              Well we talked about that I think a few months ago, absolutely.

Jeff:                              Blockchain is really the solution for that much data on the platform. Being able to make it secure, and also let people use that data where they choose to use it.

Jeff:                              People could take this Moonlighting profile, that's very similar to LinkedIn, and being able to use it with whatever platform they chose to use it on.

Bill:                              Wait a minute. LinkedIn is where a bunch of individuals get to know each other.

Jeff:                              That's how our platform is, it's a mixture of basically LinkedIn meets Venmo.

Jeff:                              When we started the company back in 2014, our goal was to disrupt LinkedIn. We felt like LinkedIn wasn't connecting, it was connecting people, but people weren't really hiring one another.

Bill:                              But Moonlighting isn't connecting people.

Jeff:                              Oh, absolutely. 650,000 people come to our platform and that's connecting. That's people using it for buying and selling- [crosstalk 00:10:35]

Polly:                           For jobs.

Naveen:                       It's like Craigslist.

Jeff:                              We were called Craigslist without the creepiness back in the early days.

Tim:                             Why are you doing this? Why do you care?

Jeff:                              Why do I care? I care because I'm a father of five, and in 2008 I was scared out of my mind. My wife was pregnant with our fifth child and I was afraid I was gonna lose my job. So Moonlighting, we started the company by literally, you know, Moonlighting on the side and we wanted to make sure that I had something that I could use. I was in Charlottesville. I couldn't afford to move back to big cities. So we wanted to build something that was ubiquitous, worked anywhere. We've done that very successfully for the last three and a half years, and again, not using cryptocurrency as just a way to circumvent and raise money. We're doing it for the right reasons; for blockchain, and to be able to take this international.

Tim:                             Well, terrific. Well thank you for coming in to meet the Drapers.

Naveen:                       Thank you.

Jeff:                              Thank you. Appreciate it.

Tim:                             That's terrific.

Jeff:                              You got it. Thank you so much.

Jeff:                              I jumped a little too quickly into probably blockchain and cryptocurrency cause I'm so excited about it. I think they felt like I was doing the token sale and working in blockchain for the wrong reasons, which is not the case.

Jeff:                              I think investors are looking for things that they can trust. And not only is blockchain about trust, but it's about companies you can trust, and people you can trust. All of that comes together really nice with Moonlight and I hope that did resonate with the Drapers.

Jeff:                              Our goal is to generate 100 million dollar by 2021, and being able to share that revenue with our users and customers. We have 650,000 now, we're calling to get 6 million over the next three years.

Jeff:                              I'm inviting you, at home, to invest in Moonlight, and to be a part of the biggest revolution in employment over the last 20 years.

Tim:                             So, let's see what our judges think about Moonlighting. And know that it's not all up to the judges here because you can invest in these companies. We are the only show in the world that allows you to back a start-up from your living room, and you do it just by going to meetthedrapers.com. But first, lets find out from our guest judge ...

Tim:                             Naveen, is Moonlighting a moonshot?

Naveen:                       It's definitely not a moonshot, but it's a good idea. This is the old idea of classifieds. It's really, purely an execution play at this point.

Bill:                              [crosstalk 00:12:50] There must be a lot of competition in this.

Tim:                             For Yellow Pages, yeah. Absolutely, in fact, you ran a [crosstalk 00:12:57] company who did this-

Naveen:                       Way back when.

Polly:                           He seemed like he was operating from a position of fear rather than a passion. You know, like a, "I don't wanna lose my job, life is, I better do this". Instead of, you know, this is, "kind of a dream of mine."

Tim:                             That's funny, I was thinking the exact same thing on fear. I felt like he came at it from the position of, "I felt like I had to do it 'cause I might lose my job."

Tim:                             So I was thinking the business itself, there's some potential there. The ICO that he's doing for a new token, I thought was, he's just trying to raise money. I mean, why not just use bitcoin?

Tim:                             Anyway, so I think what we'll do, is we'll go to the crystal ball. Okay? Okay so we start doing this, Naveen. We just sort of feel the power of the crystal ball. You got the vibe? Okay.

Tim:                             So, thumbs up. Thumbs down. Thumbs all around.

Polly:                           Half-measures we can do? 'cause I didn't know the rules there, I might've done a half-measure.

Bill:                              No rules.

Tim:                             We're the Drapers.