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/moStatedfounder-stated 2019
2019-12-15source:
EUR 16,000/mo
the sentence on the page
Uplink $16K revenue/mo 1 Founders 2 Employees Uplink uplink.tech from Berlin, Germany started August 2016 $16,000 revenue/mo 1 Founders 2 Employees Discover what tools recommends to grow your…
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
🔒
You have the verdict. Members get the work behind it.
- The CENTS scorecard — where it's strong, where it's soft
- The founder's key move, and the counter-move
- How it could die — the evidence, and how sure we are
- The case against our own call
- A 🚀 launchpad prompt — the case, as a plan for your business
We rate our own confidence — and argue against ourselves. Nobody else in this category does.
Sources always public on all 560 cases · cancel anytime · 14-day refund
See a full teardown, free → ImportYetiSourcesSources last checked 25 August 2026
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 — written by founder Manuel Meurer since 2018 (including "How to run an efficient two-person company").Manuel 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.