Our vision: building the global freelance platform from France

Freelancing is not a post-Covid fad that will fade in five years. It is a structural recomposition of the global labour market, already well underway. Our ambition is not regional: we are building from France the vertical platform that will serve freelancers in the most dynamic markets on the planet, across Europe, the United States and Latin America. Here is how we read the market, and where we position ourselves.

A few numbers that frame the scale of the phenomenon:

1.57B + Independent workers globally 47 % Of the global active workforce $8.35B Freelance platform market in 2025 $20B + Projected by 2030, CAGR 19%

The freelance consulting economy is estimated at more than $1.3 trillion in annual revenue generated worldwide in 2025. Nearly 28% of qualified knowledge workers in the largest economies now operate as freelancers or independents.

The key point for an investor is not the raw size, but the dynamics. The share of independent workers among 18 to 34 year-olds is progressing far faster than in other age brackets, and it is no longer suffered. According to Malt/BCG studies, close to 90% of freelancers have chosen this work mode voluntarily, and that figure rises to 96% among tech freelancers. According to Fiverr, 48% of Gen Z workers are already freelance or independent, and 67% plan to become so.

« This is not a bubble. It is a generational transfer happening on every continent. »

Our market reading identifies four waves of opportunity, with distinct dynamics but the same underlying friction: freelancers cruelly lack integrated operational tools.

- Around 76 million freelancers in the United States in 2025 , roughly 38% of the workforce.

- Projected to reach 50% of the US workforce by 2027.

- Economic contribution: approximately $1.27 trillion to the US economy in 2023.

- 5.6 million American independents earn more than $100,000 per year , a massive and solvent high-end segment.

- Freelance income growth: +78% YoY according to recent estimates.

The US is the market where freelancers spend the most on SaaS (HoneyBook, Bonsai, Indy, Found, Collective). It is also the most competitive. But the segment of European-style high-end freelancers (high day rate, long missions, B2B) remains under-served by local players focused on solo creators.

- More than 15 million freelancers in Brazil in 2025 , making it the third-largest freelance market globally behind the US and India.

- The Brazilian freelance platform market is worth around $300 million in 2025, projected at more than $1 billion by 2033 (CAGR ~18%).

- Brazilian freelance income is growing +48% YoY , one of the highest rates worldwide.

- Brazilian self-employed workers saw their income grow +5.6% in 2025, versus only +2.3% for permanent CLT contracts. The historical gap is closing fast.

Brazil concentrates three rare characteristics: enormous market size, double-digit growth, and the near-total absence of a vertical SaaS reference player for freelancers. It is our bridgehead in Latin America.

The European freelance platform market was worth around $1.46 billion in 2025, projected at $5.55 billion by 2033 (CAGR ~18.5%). Detail of the targeted markets:

- France : home market, highest CAGR in Europe (~17.7%), 1.2 million freelancers, projected at 1.5 million by 2030.

- Germany : dominant market in absolute value in Europe, projected at approximately $1.2 billion by 2032.

- United Kingdom : mature market, around 4.2 million independents, strong penetration of vertical platforms, freelance income growth of +59% YoY.

- Spain : later market, marked acceleration driven by the Madrid and Barcelona tech ecosystems.

France is not just one market among others. It is the ground where we build, test and validate every brick of the product before deploying it elsewhere. We went from around 530,000 freelancers in 2009 to more than 1.2 million in 2024, a +92% growth in a decade. Average day rate is around €478, with 76% under the micro-entreprise status. It is a market that is both mature and growing, with a particularity that serves us: the regulatory and statutory complexity of France is an excellent test bed for building a platform that can absorb any jurisdiction.

This is where most existing platforms miss the point.

The myth is that the main difficulty for freelancers is finding missions. That is half the truth. The real problem runs deeper: a freelancer is a one-person SME that must handle commerce, prospecting, admin, legal, banking and accounting, with no support.

A few documented friction points that we resolve one by one:

Freelance missions are scattered across LinkedIn, Welcome to the Jungle, HelloWork, Indeed, France Travail, Malt, Comet, FreelanceRepublik, Crème de la Crème, and dozens of smaller platforms. In the US, the same applies with Upwork, Fiverr, Toptal, Contra, Braintrust, LinkedIn, Wellfound. In Brazil, GetNinjas, 99Freelas, Workana. An active freelancer spends several hours per day scrolling, comparing, copy-pasting. That is non-billable time, therefore lost income, in any country.

According to several industry studies, 74% of French freelancers find their clients via their network and recommendations. That works in the short term, but does not scale. When the network runs out, the freelancer switches to outbound prospecting, and the benchmarks are brutal: 15 to 30 minutes per lead to personalise outreach, response rates around 5%, leaking pipelines because they are managed in spreadsheets.

Without a dedicated CRM, a freelancer who applies to 20 missions per month loses track of half. No follow-up, no pipeline discipline, no visibility on conversion rates. This is exactly what we corrected with our V2.1 release (CRM Pipeline, Email Finder, follow-up tasks).

Opening a business account, depositing capital to set up a company, managing accounting, choosing professional insurance, declaring taxes, paying social contributions. Each step consumes time and costs money. Our partnership with Shine on the banking side is the first brick of an administrative layer we will extend on each market, with equivalent local partners.

Freelancers have no colleagues, no manager, no HR channel. The embedded community in V2.1 answers this peer-to-peer need: client recommendations, experience feedback, flagging of bad payers.

Each of these frictions represents non-billable time. A freelancer spends between 20% and 30% of their time on unpaid activities (prospecting, admin, training, management). On a €478 day rate, that represents several thousand euros of lost income per month per freelancer. Our job is to convert that time back into revenue. At the scale of 100 million freelancers in our target markets, the opportunity is massive.

The legitimate question from an investor: why would Upwork, Fiverr, Malt or LinkedIn not capture this value?

Our answer rests on three points:

Upwork, Fiverr and Malt take a 10 to 20% commission on every mission. Their interest is to keep the freelancer captive. The freelancer wants to diversify acquisition channels. We are on the freelancer side: we aggregate missions from everywhere, with no commission on found missions. Our revenue comes from a subscription the user pays consciously, and from partnerships negotiated in favour of our community.

They do not distinguish a permanent role from a freelance mission, do not understand day rates, do not handle the legal statuses specific to each country (French microentreprise, SASU, German Auto-Unternehmer, UK Limited Company, Spanish autónomo, Brazilian MEI, US 1099 / S-corp). A vertical, multilingual, multi-jurisdiction player has a structural advantage over generalists.

Three factors converge: (i) the first regional vertical players (Malt in Europe, HoneyBook in the US, Workana in LatAm) have validated market appetite but remain single-product and single-geography; (ii) the penetration of sales tooling among freelancers outside the US is still very low; (iii) new regulations (DAC7 in Europe, 1099 classification in the US, MEI reform in Brazil) reinforce the need for structuring and compliant tools. The first player to deliver a coherent experience across these four geographies takes a hard-to-catch lead.

Mission Freelances is today the leader in freelance mission aggregation in France, and is progressively extending its commercial and administrative tooling layer. 

Our trajectory:

- Short term (3 to 6 months): European expansion : launch of the UK, Germany and Spain markets. Linguistic, legal and banking localisation. Equivalent partnerships to Shine on each market (banking, insurance, accounting).

- Medium term (6 to 18 months): US and Brazil entry : adapting the product to the American and Brazilian markets. In the US, focus on the high-end segment (day rate over $80/hr, long B2B missions), positioning complementary to marketplaces. In Brazil, capturing the fast-growing market with a product designed for the MEI and the Portuguese-speaking tech freelancer. Building the tooling layer: intelligent profile-mission matching, opportunity scoring, day rate recommendations by profile and zone, native integrations.

- Long term (18 to 36 months): Becoming the global freelance operations hub . A single platform to find, sign, invoice and manage, in the language and jurisdiction of every freelancer. Recurring SaaS model per subscriber, complemented by partnership revenue on adjacent services (banking, insurance, accounting, training).

Mission Freelances builds the vertical platform that converts a freelancer's non-billable time into revenue , by centralising prospecting tools, sales pipeline management and administrative tooling, on the most dynamic freelance markets on the planet.

The market is massive (1.57 billion freelancers worldwide), structurally growing (CAGR ~19%), under-served outside a handful of niches, and the entry windows to become the reference player are closing fast. Now is precisely when to build.

Primary sources: Malt/BCG, INSEE, Eurostat, World Bank, ILO, Upwork, MBO Partners, IBGE/Ipea (Brazil), Grand View Research, KBV Research, Business Research Company, Statista, market studies 2025 to 2026.