SAN FRANCISCO — July 2, 2018 – Toptal, a global network of top talent in business, design, and technology that enables companies to scale their teams on demand, has found that its hypergrowth clients tend to utilize flexible, on-demand solutions for their talent and technology needs more frequently than the rest of its client base. According to a recent report conducted by Toptal, its clients that are in hypergrowth—defined as companies achieving annual revenue growth of 40 percent or greater—hire 27 percent more freelancers per year, and are also more likely to use cloud-based hosting solutions and technology stacks that support rapid onboarding and team expansion.
“We’ve helped thousands of companies rapidly scale their teams and technology—from early-stage startups to innovation groups at enterprises—providing us unique insights into which companies grow, and which don’t,” says Mark Bosma, Vice President of Sales at Toptal. “We plan on continuing to partner with our clients to study the forces behind hypergrowth, and this survey is the first step.”
According to Toptal’s report, using on-demand freelance talent allows companies to realize a number of benefits, including immense flexibility in how they deploy resources, access to expertise and experience that may not exist internally, the ability to rapidly scale teams after a capital raise or for product launches, and access to key outside perspectives that can help drive innovation. Critically, on-demand freelance talent allows companies to access these benefits without the risk of taking on permanent headcount, an especially important consideration for organizations that work heavily through acquisitions or time-constrained projects.
“An on-demand workforce can support growth for organizations regardless of their industry, size or service-offering,” says Bosma.
Owler, a competitive insights platform, has relied heavily on freelance talent to scale its business.
“We’re in hypergrowth mode, with a focus on delivering innovative product enhancements that delight the 2 million members of the Owler community,” says Sumit Malhotra, Owler’s Chief Technology Officer. “Toptal’s on-demand talent has been first-rate and instrumental in helping us accelerate our growth.”
Toptal’s report also found that, in addition to favoring freelance talent, over 90 percent of its hypergrowth clients are leveraging cloud-based technologies over more traditional forms of hosting such as shared servers and on-premise hosting. While cloud hosting has become the standard solution for startups, larger organizations looking to move fast can learn from how hypergrowth companies leverage cloud solutions to avoid high up-front expenditures on hardware while gaining flexibility and simplicity of deployment.
Along the same lines, the report also found that Toptal’s hypergrowth clients tend to lean heavily on technologies like AI and blockchain, as well as the combination of Python and Node.js and JavaScript frameworks like React and Angular. By relying on flexible, on-demand, and innovative solutions for talent and technology, these hypergrowth companies are utilizing practices that will enable them to continue to scale their products and businesses.
For more information on Toptal’s Hypergrowth Survey, please visit: https://www.toptal.com/reports/hypergrowth
About Toptal
Toptal is a global network of top talent in business, design, and technology that enables companies to scale their teams, on demand. Toptal serves thousands of clients, including such Fortune 500 companies as Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Bridgestone, and Pfizer, delivering expertise and world-class solutions at an unparalleled success rate. For more information, please visit www.toptal.com/enterprise.
