Stephane Kasriel, machine marketing, and the future of work – VB Engage

This week, Travis and Stewart continue their Web Summit series of interviews with the excellent Stephane Kasriel of Upwork, which connects more than 12 million freelancers with over 5 million customers. We find out how it manages such a diverse and expansive community, and what has changed since mobile became dominant.

And in the news, it is all about how machine learning is transforming marketing technology. Maybe in the future, marketers will be able to focus on being creative again, instead of on being technologists. Oh, and we brag a little in this episode. Sorry about that, but someone has to do it.

By listening to this episode of the VB Engage podcast, you will hear:

• Welcome to Episode 36 of VB Engage! [00:04]
• Travis #005 and Stewart #007 on the Onalytica top 100 MarTech report [00:07]
• Stewart is now the James Bond and the Denzel Washington of marketing technology! [1:05]
• Travis Wright is the Penn Jillette of Marketing Technology. In fact, Travis sometimes signs autographs as if he were actually Penn Jillette [02:00]
• Onalytica’s report was based on actual data, influencer analysis, and algorithms [03:30]
• This week’s guest is Stephane Kasriel. Next week, we talk with Joseph Gordon-Levitt [04:45]
• MIT launches PlayLabs for AI, AR, and VR startups [05:20]
• The application deadline is February 20, 2017 [06:55]
• Pokémon Go did almost $1 billion in revenue in 2016 [07:25]
• Apple is nearing $1 trillion in iOS revenue [07:45]
• Artificial Intelligence is a big umbrella that incorporates many new fields [08:20]
• Machine learning is fueling the AI technologies [09:00]
• Amplero adds machine learning to its marketing solution [09:20]
• Which of your customers are the most influential? [09:30]
• Amplero has launched an influencer optimization capability powered by machine learning [10:10]
• It uses persona data, marketing data, POS data, app usage data, and other contextual data sources [10:40]
• Customers aren’t as loyal as they once were. Solve your client’s problems [11:11]
• Amplero built this up and worked with university researchers to study 6,000 mobile customers [12:20]
• Personalized marketing campaigns to non-targeted customers that were within the target consumer’s network gained a 28% lift [12:35]
• We are going to see a lot more machine learning in 2017 [13:15]
• Machine learning gives us the ability to understand the cause, the effect, the ripple effect, and what is happening at a local level [13:40]
• Maybe AI will allow marketers to return to being more creative, instead of becoming technologists [16:10]
• Today’s guest is the CEO of Upwork, Stephane Kasriel [17:50]
• Over 5 million businesses and 12 million freelancers [18:15]
• How did Upwork transition from desktop to mobile? [18:55]
• Upwork’s biggest client uses over 10,000 freelancers [20:25]
• There’s a workforce transition going on [21:00]
• Facebook has 8x more complaints online than anyone else, but analysis showed people are actually complaining about Zynga’s FarmVille [22:30]
• How is Upwork engaging the freelancers and the clients? [24:25]
• 10,000 new freelancers join Upwork daily [25:30]
• The eLance and Odesk merger allowed them to rebrand and increase focus [26:35]
• Listen to your community when you’re going through a rebrand [28:05]
• It took the best of both Odesk and eLance to build the new site [28:30]
• There are over 100,000 jobs available at any given time on Upwork [29:45]
• End of Episode 36. “Goodbye” from Travis Wright and “addi” from Stewart Rogers (just how many languages has Stewart signed off in now?) [31:05]

This episode was the square root of 6. That shows consistency, folks. 36 episodes. Boom!

But get this: Episode 037 is even better than this one! Next week, we have the one and only Joseph Gordon-Levitt, actor and cofounder of HitRecord. He founded the site with his brother back in 2003, and it has grown a community of over 500,000 productive members.

If you missed last week’s episode with Katia Beauchamp, you can listen to it right here.

Katia Beauchamp of Birchbox invented the original box subscription service. We find out how the company has signed more than one million subscribers, and four million customers, in such a short time. We also hear how mobile has changed everything, and why it is so important now.

Thanks dear listener for all you do to spread the word about VB Engage. This podcast’s for you! Tune in next week for our interview with JGL. That’s what Stewart calls him now since they became BFFs.