Uplink
👤 Manuel Meurer (Coded and freelanced in Berlin for 8 years before Uplink — so he knew precisely which recruiter habits developers despise.)🌐 sitekrautcomputing.com𝕏LinkedIn
A freelancer who hated recruiters built the placement service he wished existed — one whose fee expires.
Will it work? · our read
Fair by design. A calm two-person talent network winning on trust, not scale. The expiring fee builds fierce loyalty and referrals. But it is single-region and self-limiting by design.
01How the money moves
Company posts a freelance role — free to post
→
Uplink vets its member pool, introduces a fit
→
Freelancer bills client; Uplink takes 10% for the first six months
02The numbers
$16K
rev/mo (2019)
founder
6,200+
vetted members
uplink.tech
10%
fee, first 6mo
founder
Free for companies. Only freelancers pay — and after six months with a client, further work is fee-free.
About $16K/month (2019, founder-stated) · bootstrapped · team of 3
🔒
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(demo: preview the full teardown)Sourcesupdated · daily
Starter Story — How I Started a $16K/Month Business Connecting Companies and Tech Freelancers (Dec 2019, founder-stated revenue)Uplink — The Network for IT Freelancers (vetting and 6,200+ member count)Uplink blog (Medium) — founder posts on growth and the fair-fee philosophyManuel Meurer — founder site (Kraut Computing)
Revenue is founder-stated in a December 2019 Starter Story interview (about EUR 16K / USD 16K per month); current revenue is undisclosed, so treat it as a dated snapshot — the company still operates with 6,200+ freelancers per its site. The documented fee (Dec 2019, first-party): 10% of a freelancer's invoices for the first six months of each client engagement — a time-based limit, not a monetary cap. The current site does not disclose the fee, so I describe the documented 2019 model, not a current figure. No third-party audited revenue exists; this is first-party disclosure, not a filing. We never score you.