Complete Story
12/19/2017
Newspaper groups invest in ‘Moonlighting’ to grow digital classifieds
When we think of online job sites, we think of Craigslist, Indeed, Monster, CareerBuilder. But what about Moonlighting.com? It’s a three-year-old startup that caters to the fast-growing gig economy, where handy people, dog walkers and piano players (and tuners and movers), among others, connect and bargain with their hirers.
Three major local newspaper groups — McClatchy, Gannett and tronc — are partnering with Moonlighting to build a new, mobile-first base for their job classifieds, which were a big revenue source in the print era but have been devastated by new-generation digital sites. The partnerships include a $2.3 million investment in Moonlighting by the three news media companies.
In this Q & A, Jeff Tennery, founder and CEO of Moonlighting, talks about the growth of his firm and why it fits into the digital-mobile strategy of local newspapers:
How big is the gig economy?
It’s worth has been estimated at $1 trillion and it involves 50-60 million people doing freelance work.
Your company has signed up 600,000 freelancers in its three-year existence. What’s your growth target?
Our original plan was to reach 7 million users by 2020. With our upcoming initial coin offering we believe we can accelerate our timeline and reach that much earlier. We are seeing interest to expand our platform globally, and if we execute properly, could reach 5 million users by end of 2018.
