Labor as a service startup CloudCrowd has just raised $5.1 million in funding, according to an recent SEC filing. We’ve confirmed the funding with the startup, which had previously raised $1.5 million in seed funding. This recent round of funding was led by DFJ with and the startup’s co-founder and CEO Alex Edelstein participating in the round.
Like CrowdFlower and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, CloudCrowd is trying to bring labor into the cloud, by creating a vast network of workers around the globe. The startup has roughly 25,000 workers, who have completed more than a million tasks since the site’s launch in October 2009. You can read our recent coverage and video interview with CloudCrowd here.
The bulk of CloudCrowd’s business are client-driven tasks: a company submits tasks to CloudCrowd and the service will farm that out to eligible workers. Workers can also access CloudCrowd through a Facebook app, where they can pick available tasks and arrange payment.The tasks can be as simple as checking the quality of an image or involve the translation of entire web pages. Because pricing is determined by the level of difficulty, the payouts range from one penny to several dollars. Once a task is completed, a different user will check the finished product for an additional fee, creating a level of quality control.
With each task completed, a worker earn a credibility rating that determines the types of tasks they are offered. Workers who don’t have a rating yet are assigned basic tasks until they develop a reputation. Workers are able to see how much each separate task pays, and earnings are distributed through PayPal.
CloudCrown also has a consumer facing business. The company offers EditZen, a simple web site, where consumers can submit pages for editing at $4 a page. The also plans to launch TranslationZen, which will offer translation services with a similar labor model.
And the model is seeing success. The company is on track to complete 2 million tasks, and this round of funding should help scale the business further.