Operating the company · 9 of 110 stories

Upwork

A marketplace for freelance work: a business posts a job, hires a freelancer from the applicants, and pays that person through the site.

Price: A client pays a 5% fee on each payment to a freelancer, plus a one-time fee of US$0.99 to US$14.99 for each new contract (Basic plan) (read 13 October 2026) Free plan: free to join www.upwork.com

Who uses it, and for what

One row per story. The grade is for the claim that the business uses this tool, not for its revenue.

Story	What it does there	Grade	Source
Formula Bot	Marketplace where the founder hired contractors for Bubble development while he still had a full-time job.	B	Tiny Empires newsletter, 10 October 2025: 1.2 Million users as a solo founder
Tweet Hunter	Marketplace for hiring contractors, listed in the founder's Starter Story tool list.	C	Starter Story, 18 May 2023: How we built a $3.5M ARR LinkedIn tool that will be acquired for $10M-$15M
Talknotes	Hiring marketplace in the founder's tool list on Starter Story.	C	Starter Story, 4 April 2024: I Taught Myself To Code And Now Make $5K/Mo
Postiz	Hired a freelancer to find the owners of n8n groups on Skool and their email addresses.	C	Nevo David on Hacker News, 28 November 2025: My SaaS jumped from $6,523 to $12,648 monthly, here is how
Umax	Source of freelancers for occasional work: he hires five to ten for an hour or two and keeps the best.	C	Starter Story, 29 December 2024: He made $10M with 3 iPhone apps (video interview with transcript)
My AskAI	Listed by the founder as the hiring tool of the business.	C	Starter Story, 18 June 2024, interview with Mike Heap: I Built A $300K/Year AI Business For Less $50 Bucks
Neural Frames	Listed by the founder as the hiring tool; he worked with freelancers in 2023.	C	Starter Story, 16 November 2023: How A Doctorate In Physics Built An AI Video Generation Tool [$17K MRR]
Coachvox AI	Hiring marketplace in Starter Story's tool list for the company.	C	Starter Story, 5 September 2023: We Built An AI Coach For Creators And Hit 6-Figures Revenue Pre-Launch
Lancer	The marketplace the product depends on: it bids through customers' connected Upwork accounts.	C	Lancer: llms.txt, the product summary for AI agents

Grade A: the tool's maker or a payment processor confirms the use. Grade B: an independent report, or the tool is visible in public code. Grade C: the founder or the company says so.

Used in the same businesses

Other tools in the stories above, with the number of stories that share both.

Stripe8 OpenAI API7 X6 Product Hunt6 Google Ads6 LinkedIn6 Google Analytics6 Reddit5 Next.js5 Google Workspace5

Other tools for the same job

Operating the company, with the number of stories that use each.

Slack17 Google Workspace12 Notion12 Acquire.com6 Fiverr3 Telegram3 Termly3 Asana2 Basecamp2 Loom2 Mercury2 Sprinto2

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