Fiverr Acquires Freelance Management Platform Stoke Talent In $95M Deal

Israeli-founded digital marketplace firm Fiverr announced on Tuesday the acquisition of Stoke Talent, an intuitive all-in-one solution to help companies manage their work with freelance talent, for $95 million.

In a statement, Fiverr said that it wanted to add Stoke Talent’s product suite, as it seeks to add more value to larger businesses and “integrate with existing corporate workflows.”

“The Stoke acquisition made complete sense on multiple levels,” said Micha Kaufman, founder and CEO of Fiverr. “It supports Fiverr’s move upmarket and allows us to engage with much larger customers; It allows Fiverr to offer software solutions to businesses that already have freelancers that they work with and now can manage them easily; It allows Fiverr to pair its marketplace talent with large customers that need access to freelancers they still do not yet have a relationship with; It gives Fiverr access to the offline freelancing market that is still orders of magnitude larger than online freelancing; and finally, Stoke is a fast-growing best-in-class product with an incredible team behind it that we are delighted to add to our family.”

Founded in 2019 by Shahar Erez and Hilik Paz, and now headquartered in Tel Aviv with approximately 30 employees, Stoke Talent is an all-in-one solution that provides companies with a platform to onboard and pay freelancers while also tracking budgets for projects and more. Stoke provides companies with the ability to build their own directories for both online and offline talent, track budget and milestone completions and also provides solutions for tax, legal and workforce classification compliance.

“We share Fiverr’s vision that freelance talent can help propel companies to new heights, both from a productivity and agility standpoint,” said Erez, who as well as Co-founder, is the current Stoke Talent CEO. “This is an amazing opportunity to continue doing what we love to do, but on a much larger and broader scale. Together with Fiverr, we have the ability to build an ecosystem where businesses can implement a multi-channel freelancer strategy, and provide tools for them to efficiently manage not only freelancer engagement on Fiverr’s marketplace but those off Fiverr’s marketplace as well. There are meaningful synergies between the two companies and we’re excited for what the future holds.”

Fiverr was founded in 2010 by Shai Wininger (also the founder of insurance tech company Lemonade) and Micha Kaufman as a platform where people can buy and sell digital services starting at $5. It has connected skilled freelancers offering digital services in more than 500 categories, across 9 verticals including graphic design, digital marketing, programming, video and animation.