Field Nation has made a fast-growing business out of connecting tech service companies with freelance technicians, but CEO Mynul Khan is thinking bigger. He believes the 7-year-old firm can be the "Amazon of work." The company in 2015 acquired a key competitor, raised $30 million in investment, tripled its full-time workforce to 140 (55 at Minneapolis headquarters) and saw the volume of its transactions grow 65 percent. It rolled out a mobile app for contractors and is now offering its platform to companies who need software to manage their workforce. Khan spoke at the firm's offices on the 18th floor of the AT&T Tower.
Q: What is a typical project that Field Nation helps get done?
A: What we do is on-site, on-demand work. We are in every Starbucks, every Walgreens, every Wal-Mart, every McDonald's, but not working directly for them. We are working with the service companies that provide the infrastructure to those multisite companies. Most of the work that we do is IT or telecom hardware-related stuff. It's installing point of sales in all Target locations, or installing ATMs in all Wells Fargo locations, digital signage at every Wal-Mart. That's the kind of work that we do.
Q: You did more than $100 million in transactions in 2015. What's your revenue from that?
A: We have multiple lines of revenue. When a project goes through the system, we process the payment for the contractors and we take a percentage — somewhere between 8 and 10 percent. But then we provide insurance on top of that to protect both sides if something goes wrong with the work that is done. We provide financial terms on top of that. We are also rolling out other types of insurance.
Q: What separates you from other online listings of contractors?
A: The way we curate the marketplace. Businesses don't find technicians or contractors from Craigslist or Angie's List, because the trust isn't there. We have such a curated marketplace and a guarantee right behind it. That makes a huge difference for the companies. The companies that use Field Nation, they run millions of dollars of contracts through our platform. It takes one bad contractor to jeopardize an entire contract for them. The only way they can trust it is because we have all these components.
Q: You don't get paid until the contractor gets paid. Why did you structure it that way?