Fiverr launches Business Solutions and Neo AI matching algorithm

Of all the businesses threatened by generative AI, you might conclude that Fiverr is among those in the crosshairs. The Israeli tech startup has become synonymous with its online marketplace of creative freelancers since launching in 2010, including artists, designers, videographers and more. But if more people are using gen AI tools to create content, shouldn’t that reduce the demand for the freelancers on Fiverr?

Actually, Fiverr sees the moment as a tremendous opportunity. Earlier this year, VentureBeat reported how the company experienced a 1,400% increase in searches for professionals with AI-related skills on its marketplace. And today, Fiverr is announcing the launch of two new services — Fiverr Business Solutions and Fiverr Neo, both of which it hopes will leverage the sudden boom of interest in AI to further cement Fiverr’s place as the first stop when businesses need help with their creative projects.

Business time

Fiverr Business Solutions is the new umbrella name for Fiverr’s existing offerings for mid-sized to large enterprise companies. It includes Fiverr Enterprise, “a SaaS platform which helps companies source, onboard, manage and pay your freelance talent legally and compliantly,” and which Fiverr acquired and rebranded from Stoke Talent.

Also in the lineup is “Fiverr Certified,” a service that launched in late June which allows software vendor companies to “identify, certify and promote” experts who are best equipped to help clients use their technology. Among the companies who are certifying experts in their products and services through Fiverr Certified are Amazon (specifically its Ads division), Monday.com and Stripe.

Finally, Fiverr Business Solutions also grants customers access to Fiverr Pro, the more premium offering of Fiverr that initially launched in 2017, and is where freelancers on the platform have been “hand-vetted and carefully curated” by Fiverr itself. Fiverr Pro has been redesigned for “larger customers with more complex projects,” according to an email sent from Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman to VentureBeat.

Pro also contains Fiverr’s Project Planning services, in which a Fiverr-trained human expert joins a customer’s project and helps manage it all the way through from inception to deliverables and payment. It features a new dashboard and has been upgraded with new payment options such as NetTerms.

The one for your company’s creative projects?

But perhaps most important among the announcements today is Fiverr Neo, a new matching service that Fiverr says will allow its customers to find the right professional for their specific project needs rapidly, and more accurately than ever before.

Fiverr Neo does this by engaging the customer through a new hybrid chatbot/multiple choice interface that delivers human-like questions and responses and takes into account the customer’s specific project attributes and skills needed to deliver on it.

Fiverr Neo is powered by gen AI, specifically the kind of large language models (LLMs) that are in vogue everywhere these days thanks to the likes of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude 2, Meta’s LLaMA 2, and Google’s Bard, to name a few.

A Fiverr spokesperson told VentureBeat via email that Fiverr Neo is using a “combination of in-house and 3rd party LLMs,” but did not go into specific details about which ones. However, a demo video on Fiverr’s website shows an icon with two four-pointed stars which looks nearly identical to the one used by Google Bard, and the interfaces are also very similar.

While Fiverr’s entire business model was based in some ways on search, “Neo is very different,” Kaufman said in an email to VentureBeat.

“It works with you to understand your requirements and preferences, then provides a very personalized and accurate matching experience,” Kaufman elaborated. “This can be particularly helpful for more complex projects that require multiple skills and expertise. Think of Neo as an expert with the depth of knowledge that makes it possible to pick a very specific selection of freelancers with the most relevant expertise, experience and availability to best meet the customer’s needs. It offers the customer the right amount of guidance, selection and control. It is a game changer in how talent matching is being done today.”

Describing Neo with words only goes so far. Watching the video of it in action is in some ways much more illustrative and helpful, as it shows the user experience: A user clicks on the “Talk to Fiverr Neo” button, which begins a new chat window. Neo asks what the user needs help with, and then the user enters their need as a natural language prompt in the chat box.

Neo asks the user “what kind of vibe are you looking for?” and provides a number of suggested words to choose from. Neo surfaces the applicable freelance talent as miniature informational blurbs — similar to the Knowledge Panels on Google — along with their review average out of five stars and brief descriptions of their services and qualifications, and includes a button for the user to send them the project brief.

Then, once the freelancer accepts the assignment and turns it in — in the case of the example video, a screenplay or script — Neo continues the conversation and asks the user what kind of visual style they want it filmed or created in, again providing visual examples and descriptions.

Clearly, the goal is for Neo to help Fiverr customers move throughout their entire search and assignment process more smoothly, with an ever-present, AI assistant helping them out every step of the way.

Neo is available now for free on a wait-list basis in all regions where Fiverr does business. Users can sign up here.

With the launch of Fiverr Business Solutions and Fiverr Neo, the company seeks to futureproof its operations for the gen AI era, harnessing this category of technology to further improve its own services, while still maintaining its role as the predominant marketplace for trustworthy freelance human talent.