March 10, 2021 The Opportunity Explosion: How Creatives Advance in the Freelance Economy

As the Future of Work podcast, Uprisor features leaders of the space each week having conversations with Topcoder VP Clinton Bonner. In the most recent episode, Clinton talks with James DeJulio, co-founder and CEO of Tongal. Tongal is a virtual studio that connects the world’s creative talent to the world’s creative work, allowing businesses to simplify and scale video production while amplifying in-house capabilities 100% remotely.

During their conversation, Clinton and James discuss the transformation of content creation and how on-demand talent has helped companies develop strategies to connect with consumers. Listen to the full episode and check out the highlights below. 

CONNECTING TALENTED PEOPLE WITH NEW OPPORTUNITIES 

In 2008, the primordial soup of Tongal started on the back of a napkin. One of the main concerns for James and his co-founders, Mark and Rob, was getting the community right in the beginning. Therefore, they built the company around creating a community that works for both creators and companies needing talent. 

Tongal was built on the foundation that many talented people are completely blocked out of opportunities because of some reasons listed below: 

• Lack of connections or experience in the industry
• Geographic boundaries to the work they do
• Ethnic boundaries
• Age boundaries 

All these limits keeping people out of workforces can lead to companies hiring less qualified or productive workers. Using on-demand talent removes these roadblocks and allows companies to fill opportunities more efficiently with the best person for the task because they specialize in the specific field. 

“Tongal is an opportunity machine.” – James DuJulio

The Ease of Creating High-Level Content

As the demand for video content grew, the creator network grew along with it. From streaming and micro-streaming services to YouTube, there is really a great amount of high-level content available nowadays. Creators’ ability to easily access these networks and work with one another more fluidly has helped increase quality content. James talked about how Tongal has been a leader in this industry by presenting creators from around the world with opportunities to connect with organizations to do things that the organization probably couldn’t do before or help improve the ways they were doing things in the past. 

Thanks to James DuJulio for coming on the Uprisor podcast to discuss how freelance talent platforms are shaping the Future of Work.

“There was a guy who made enough money on Tongal to do an independent movie that got released by A24 last year. This system, this community can do just about anything.” —James DuJulio

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