FVRR

I don’t post my numbers because I’m “only” doing about 40% YTD. It would’ve been about ZERO YTD, if it wasn’t for you guys, so “Thanks!”

Here’s what I’ve found about FVRR, with info taken from:

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4369211-fiverr-explosive-mo…
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4377430-fiverr-massive-run-…

Fiverr is a global online marketplace for freelancers in creative industries. Buyers can typically go to Fiverr in search of logo designs, website building, video editors, article writers, and so forth.

The company has pioneered the Service-as-a-Product (“SaaP”) model to create an on-demand, e-commerce-like experience that makes working with freelancers easy and straightforward. The benefits to both buyers and sellers are substantial in comparison with the old offline model.

Other similar platforms such as Upwork (UPWK) mostly price the transactions by the hour, which generates more uncertainty for buyers and more complications overall. Upwork is also focused mostly on corporate buyers, while Fiverr is more oriented towards small businesses, entrepreneurs, and self-employed professionals.

The numbers for the second quarter of 2020 are truly impressive, with Fiverr reporting an acceleration in demand and expanding profitability levels. Revenue during the quarter reached $47.13 million, surpassing analyst’s expectations by $10.59 million and growing by 82% year over year. The number represents an explosive acceleration versus a 44% increase in revenue during the first quarter of 2020.

The size of the total addressable market is very hard to quantify because Fiverr operates in a wide variety of categories, including logo design, translations, game development, and podcast marketing, for example. However, it is easy to see that the company is barely scratching the tip of the iceberg when it comes to its long-term opportunities.

Management considers that the size of the U.S. freelancer market is currently above $750 billion, and the categories currently relevant to Fiverr are around $100 billion. Fiverr’s 2019 total revenue was only $107 million.

The pandemic has clearly produced an acceleration in demand for Fiverr, and the company is benefitting from a powerful flywheel effect as it gains size over time. More buyers and sellers create better opportunities for both sides, so the platform becomes more valuable as it gains more size over time.

DoesMIWork

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  • There is no value creation in Fiverr type companies. They do arbitrage, opportunistic and can be easily put out of business.
  • The top tier talent will always be full time employees. For the company hiring top talent it is about protecting IP, retaining the talent pool, grooming them, etc. Even if some of the top talent go freelancing route they rarely need to be on Upwork or Fiverr. Their reputation and references will get them the next gig.
  • Hiring managers and companies prefer to work with agencies who know their preferences. So most managers have built relationships with agencies.
  • Barriers to entry is really low in this business. Anybody can get in…
  • Fiverr’s margins will keep getting squeezed.
  • Covid tailwind can temporarily create a boost, i.e: Lots of people employed put up their profiles on Fiverr, companies getting rid of employees looking to hire freelancers, etc. When Covid ends, this trend will reverse. If you were a freelancer you are gonna want to have job security, benefits. If you are a manager that found a talented resource, you’ll want him/her locked into your org so you can commit and build something together. Kinda like dating vs marriage.
    Yes, there are people who do side gigs and companies that want small one off work. Again, no margins in that.

I have hired via Fiverr/Upwork in the past, it is hit or miss. Mostly miss.

Not the type of business I feel comfortable owning. No ong term growth outlook.

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Meant…
Lots of people UNemployed put up their profiles on Fiverr…

Thanks for your opinion and thoughtful analysis. I will rethink my investing thesis most likely put it on a short leash if it starts to underperform. Sorry to distract attention from the other excellent companies.

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fortun8,

from :https://seekingalpha.com/article/4372621-buy-fiverr-marketpl…

“One of the main reasons Fiverr has seen such a huge run-up in share price is that the market believes that many of these new buyers will reuse Fiverr again, building long-term relationships with individual sellers and continually providing fees for each transaction. How Fiverr manages these new buyers and optimizes this increased traffic on the site is paramount to the company’s future success.”

“A recent Business Insider article highlighted this where one 27-year-old freelancer was able to build up a business on Fiverr that makes over $350,000 a year. The majority of sellers will not make this amount, but the opportunity is still there - particularly when freelance and working at home is becoming more appealing to people. This is particularly true due to the fact that more Americans are now becoming unemployed and are therefore looking to do freelance work.”

Freedom, once tasted, is hard to forfeit. Many people would love to stay at home and live life on their own terms.

In addition, FVRR focuses on smaller businesses who do not have an army of programmers/experts at their beck and call. From the an older CC: “Today Fiverr has over 2.4 million active buyers. The majority of whom are entrepreneurs and very small companies, with 15 employees or less. There are over 30 million SMBs in the U.S. alone, so we are barely scratching the surface. As with many disruptive technologies, we see a natural path of adoption from the bottom up.”

With respect to competition, In its most recent shareholder letter, Fiverr acknowledged the competition by explaining: “Our expansive and ever-growing service catalog continues to be our key competitive advantage. During Q2’20, we launched nearly 30 new categories and added depth in certain popular areas including e-commerce management, social media marketing and music and music videos. We now have over 400 categories on our marketplace.” At the very least, they do have first (or early) mover advantage.

DoesMIWork

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“There is no value creation in Fiverr type companies. They do arbitrage, opportunistic and can be easily put out of business.”

I consider Fiverr the eBay for services. Many, many companies have tried over the years to dislodge or at least compete effectively with eBay and failed miserably because while a site like eBay or Fiverr is easy to create, the network effect of having the most buyers/sellers is not easy to create/duplicate.

I don’t think it would be any easier to put Fiverr out of business than eBay once it gets established. Only finally over 20 years later are Etsy and Amazon able to take a slice of eBay’s sales. Etsy by carving out a niche to be 10% the size of eBay and Amazon, after having failed at auctions trying to compete head on, just integrated 3rd party sellers into its main website.

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@DoesMIWork -
Fiverr has first mover advantage?

This business model is as ancient as time. Plenty of other companies enter and exit this field in droves…90s saw a huge spike in such companies. They are nowhere today.

After a bit of initial momentum, almost a 100% of the client-freelancer relationship is taken outside of the portal. Why pay Fiverr the fees and lock into their process. Or if the person is really good, hire him/her full-time.

The BI article - ‘This is particularly true due to the fact that more Americans are now becoming unemployed and are therefore looking to do freelance work’
That unemployed American is desperately trying to get full-time work in parallel. When the economy picks back up, do you think they’ll want to be on Fiverr?

Some of the work that gets done via Fiverr,

  1. Logos for instance, there are branding specific community sites where people proudly exhibit their work and get hired
  2. Website builders and other tools such as Wix or even Shopify have progressed to a point where they come with neat logos, editing tools and some others have their own marketplace
  3. Even for voice…say recording professional v-mails, transcription etc… tech is a major disruptor, e.g: Amazon Polly
  4. Transcription? Every few months theres a new tool coming out

Theres competition from 100 different angles…

Fiverr’s shareholder letter -
‘expansive and ever-growing service catalog continues to be our key competitive advantage. During Q2’20, we launched nearly 30 new categories and added depth in certain popular areas’
: ) Expanding service catalog? Added depth in popular areas?
Thats marketing drivel. Look at the site and see what differentiates each ‘service’ on the catalog.

@12x
If you think selling your used NutriBullet on eBay is the same as selling your skills, I have no arguments there.

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FVRR is something that I’ve been thinking about as a contributor to the massive deflationary trend that has taken place in the past decade. In this sense it reminds me of Amazon. Amazon has been pushing the cost of goods down for years. Their advantage has always been their willingness to sacrifice margin for market share.

Fiverr is playing into the global democratization of the global market. If you’re a graphic designer in NYC - good luck! Anyone can hop on fiverr and hire a guy in the Philippines or Argentina for 1/10 the price. This is awful for workers in the US, but is a key driver for Fiverr.

Yes, it is arbitrage. And yes, it’s probably going to mess up all sorts of local economies. But Fiverr’s the clear beneficiary. I heard of a story of one shopkeeper in New Jersey who decided to just sell his store back in 2015 and buy Amazon with the proceeds. He realized he couldn’t compete. I’m wondering if freelancers should just cash in their business and buy Fiverr stock for the same reason.

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Services outsourcing as a whole is the deflationary trend…for decades now. Fiverr is a relatively new entrant, playing in the lowest margin, most commoditized subset of services.
What next?

Uber - another ‘democratization’(what a term) trend. Current drivers are a stepping stone to driverless rides eventually making transportation more efficient, cost effective, etc. What about Fiverr?

And take into account with Amazon, Ebay, etc. transaction is relatively straight forward. Tangible product.
Services is very subjective.

All of a sudden FVRR is a darling of investing blogs and fintwit perhaps because rev growth and margins in Covid times is good.

For me - there are plenty of other businesses I believe in and want to be a part of.

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I’ve been using Fiverr for many years, way before it IPO’d, I’m not an investor and currently don’t plan to be, here’s why…

While I use the service a lot in my business, and I recommend it to many clients and friends the total $ value that I spend on the service each year, and that Fiverr actually receives in their revenue (not what the freelancer collects) is minimal.

Most Fiverr purchases, from what I know and use, are not monthly on-going. So we’re not talking about a subscription based recurring model.

While I continue to be a Fiverr customer and think they company will continue to do well, I’m just not as excited about it as an investment. I prefer companies that have subscription recurring revenue, where each customer is worth higher $ value, and my other investments provide that.

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fortun8

“ When the economy picks back up, do you think they’ll want to be on Fiverr?”

Yes, if being on their own is so easy and good why would Hilton, Mariott and other well branded, well known hotel brands be on a website like booking.con when it creates absolutely no value other than taking a fee? And gets you found

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@MK76
Found - thats the key.
After you are found, Fiverr serves no purpose. No recurring revenue as someone else pointed out earlier.

Marriott rates are significantly higher when you book direct. Booking.com has volume discounts with Marriott, and passes on some of the savings to the consumer.

Joe’s Pretzel Company on the other hand does not get a discount by using Fiverr to book Alexey in Russia to do logo development. Alexey, after connecting with Joe’s, is looking to cut out the middle man, and get paid a few bucks more maybe share that savings with Joe’s.

Alexey didn’t like logo dev work and went back to newspaper delivery.
Joe’s after spending 2 months with Alexey realized its futile to translate their spec and expectations to someone 9 time zones away. When billing issues/dispute cropped up the Israeli middleman(FVRR) was not of much help.

And this is not high end stuff. Logos, voice transcription, data entry.

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As a small business owner. I think it’s wonderful having access to a huge pool of people willing to do tasks for sometimes 1/10th (or less) the price of people working locally.
I have used UPWK many times, for many tasks and will continue to do so.
If you need some programming done, good luck finding someone locally for a reasonable amount of money. I have been quoted thousands of dollars for work I contracted on UPWK to a programmer in India for a few hundred dollars. Many small businesses just don’t have the time and resources, services like FVRR and UPWK make life easier and save you a ton of money. The services give you access to labor pools in many foreign countries. A lot of the contractors have full-time employment and use FVRR/UPWK gigs to make extra income.

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There are two common negative viewpoints on Fiverr in this thread.

  1. it’s not recurring revenue/subscription in nature. There are plenty of examples repeat business and many of the top performing stocks of all time were not recurring/subscription revenue in nature. Applied Materials for example. You can see even the person who pointed this out said they used Fiverr multiple times. While Fiverr may not be subscription based, there is a large amount of repeat business in their business model.

  2. churn. There will always be churn. There will always be people being “stolen away” from Fiverr but my counter to that is they will be replaced by new entrants. Temp agencies have this same problem yet here they are decades later.

When I bought Fiverr I bought it as a hedge against a recession but that is looking less and less likely with each unemployment report. Still Fiverr is doing well stock price wise, and it was also growing over 40% before coronavirus, albeit off a small base.

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It’s really worth mentioning Fiverr Pro in this discussion. Fiverr Pro sellers are vetted for quality. I’ll post the link just in case its something people aren’t aware of. https://www.fiverr.com/pro

I like Fiverr and my thoughts are along the same lines as 12x. Freelancing isn’t for everyone. But it’s a big market.

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I have used UPWK many times, for many tasks and will continue to do so.

Curious what your experience as a business owner is with FVRR vs UPWK?

Seems like FVRR is taking over as the top-dog in this niche

I recently added to my Fiverr position at USD156 per share. My overall position is still small because of the high valuation but I think Fiverr should continue compounding revenue at high rates because of the following reasons:

  1. Recurring income and a proven ability to grow : Transaction fees make up the bulk of Fiverr’s revenue but repeat buyers made up 58% and 57% of the company’s revenue in 2019 and 2018 respectively. While a 20% take rate for sellers may seem hefty, sellers are incentivized to stay on Fiverr because the platform makes it easy to sellers to find and win Gigs while ensuring payment certainty. Buyers also benefit from Fiverr’s refund guarantee if they are displeased with the service or a late delivery. Buyers also benefit from Fiverr’s Gig rating system which allows them to assess the quality of sellers.

  2. Fiverr will help buyers to benefit from outsourcing trends: The arbitrage factor has already been mentioned by others on this board. With Fiverr present in 160 countries, Fiverr makes it easy for companies to outsource work globally which allows companies to benefit from lower rates and reduced fixed costs.

  3. Secular shift to online retail will be a tailwind for Fiverr: Fiverr sellers typically specialize in skills desired by online retailers such as website/app design, video editing, programming and graphics design. Fiverr’s company’s addressable market should continue to increase as Fiverr is already present in 160 countries.

  4. Network effects act as a moat and a growth flywheel: Fiverr has been benefiting from network effects which has resulted in more active buyers and greater spend per buyer. Spend per buyer has more than doubled to USD184 over the last 12 months from 2016 levels while the number of active buyers has been consistently increasing over the last 3 years.

  5. New revenue sources: Fiverr is introducing new sources of revenue which will make Fiverr a more vibrant ecosystem for freelancers and buyers. “Promoted Gigs” is a Fiverr advertising tool that allows sellers to market their services. “Fiverr Learn” is an online learning platform with course content in categories such as graphic design, branding, digital marketing and copywriting. Fiverr is also building financial tools to help freelancers get early payouts on their earnings. Fiver’s “Promoted Gigs” initiative look promising given its profit margin potential and the popularity of seller ads on other platforms such as Amazon. Amazon’s advertising revenue has compounded 60% over the last five years.

https://evergreen-investing.com/2020/10/24/fiverr-a-5-bagger…

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1) Recurring income

Fiverr does not have recurring income, which by definition “is earned by creating or acquiring an asset that continues to pay of profits regardless of if there is still active work being done to the asset.” There is not even a subscription that’s automatically renewed AFAIK.

I’m not saying whether it’s a good or bad investment, just that each transaction fee that Fiverr earns has to be, well, earned each time for each job.

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Fiverr does not have recurring income, which by definition "is earned by creating or acquiring an asset that continues to pay of profits regardless of if there is still active work being done to the asset.

Fverr’s lack of recurring income implies that it will not have the same growth impetus as CRWD for example. However in 2018 and 2019 repeat buyers made up 57% of company revenue. In their annual report they display the behavior of annual cohorts dating back to 2010. Buyers ,it appears, tend to stick with the service and continue to spend. Moreover Fverr has achieved a positive ROI from its customer cohorts within an average of 7 months.

Revenue has compounded at 43% over 2017-2019 and accelerated to 65% Y/Y in 2020. The most recent quarter has shown revenue growth of 82%.

And its LTM revenue shows that its current sales are less than .2% of its claimed addressable market. Taking into account rates of increase in spend per buyer compounded by increase in number of buyers and increases in product offerings as well as covid tailwinds its possible that Fiverr will exhibit 50% CAGR for a few years. (Bear in mind for purposes of comparison, that T Gardner projected that ZOOM may go to an EV of 1T over a decade, which is a 28% CAGR)

IMHO Fvrr is worth a modest allocation, at least until it shows more definitive behavior over the next few quarters.

cheers

arnie

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I have read something yesterday that their new FVRR BUSiness is going to be subscription based , first year free, annual fee is $149 and it provides the company sufficient collaboration tools for up to 50 seats , if a business requires more than 50, they will need to pay more. It’s interesting to watch how this part of business grow in next few quarters
My real concern is once the seller and buyer gets connected they can totally do further business without FVRR

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