Upwork: Conferences/Goldman Sachs

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Here is a summary of what was said in the conference held on September 7, 2023;

Macro environment (from minute 0:05-1:50)

• There were mixed signals. That's, they continue to see same trends in Q2 as in Q1 when it comes to enterprise business.
• SMBs feeling more confident in Q2.

Marketplace Opportunity (from minute 1:50-7:00)

• It's a trillion dollar market opportunity.
• Want to unlock it with enterprise customers.
• Landing team is also targeting marketplace customers in their attempt to win more enterprise customers.
• Large enterprises are already aware that they need to have strategy to tap into freelancers.

Pricing Change (from minute 7:00-9:34)

• New freelancer fee will drive lower pricing for clients because freelancers are bidding for lower fee(10% instead of 20%).
• Thet have other monetization tools but they'll experiment on them as of now.

AI (from minute 9:34-13:34)

• Upwork wants to serve the world as AI destination for talent.
• Saw 1,000% increase in AI posts in Q2 versus Q4 and 1,300% increase in searches.
• Talent is usually the first in the economy to upskill.
• Talent already using AI tools to perform tasks.
• AI reduce time spent to write job posts by 50%.
• Upwork team using AI tools to become more efficient.

Talent (from minute 13.34-17:37)

• Rapid adoption of AI tools by talent.
• Open AI were note able to find talent to help its clients deploy AI that's why they entered into partnership with Upwork.

Margin (from minute 17:37-19:20)

• Cost-savings will continue to show up in margin throughout the year and that's refllected in guidance.

Productivity in salesforce (from minute 19:20-24:03)

• Expect enterprise business to continue growing in scale.
• Praised new general manager of enterprise.
• Some of brand compaigns were polarizing to some customers though effective.

Long-term margin trajectory (from minute 24:03-28:50)

• Committed to growing margins and reinvesting into the business,
• Currently refining the margins of different business units.

Competition (from minute 28:50-30:55)

• There are many business entering the industry but hard for them to scale.

Key priorities in the next 12 months (from minute 30-55-31:58)

• Driving profitable growth through innovation and enterprise customers growth.