Field Nation, which matches contract IT and other freelancers with corporate clients, has raised $30 million from Susquehanna Growth Equity.
In an interview Friday, CEO Mynul Khan, who is also Field Nation's founder, said this is the first outside investment in the seven-year-old company.
The money represents a minority stake in the Minneapolis-based company. And it is also one of the biggest investments reported so far this year in a Minnesota private company.
Field Nation, recognized by Inc. magazine as one of the 500 fastest growing private companies in the nation in recent years, said it has created one of North America's largest technology platforms that serves a growing network of 1,000 employers. They hire as needed on a contract basis from a pool of 65,000 freelance workers.
The contract-worker market boomed during and after the Great Recession, fueled by companies who didn't want to add permanent staff. The contract workers constitute a range of IT professionals, marketers and financial professionals who rent their own businesses and work as they choose rather than rejoining corporate America as permanent employees.
"On one side you have freelancers, working on what they like to do, whether accountants or logo designers or IT professionals, but they don't want all the baggage of doing the administrative paperwork," said Khan. "Our platform brings the economic opportunity but takes away the other baggage. You just get the work done to best quality. And then you get the money in your bank account within 24 hours.
"The businesses just want the work done. We connect the business with the right person."
Khan said the firm will post gross revenue of more than $100 million this year. Field Nation employs about 100 people in North America and 60 in Bangladesh. The company keeps up to 10 percent of the contract payment to cover its Web-based placement-and-administrative services.
Kahn said Field Nation will use the Susquehanna investment over several years to increase product development and marketing efforts in existing and new markets, and likely double its own employment.
"We are thrilled to be working with Mynul and the Field Nation team," said Ben Weinberg, a director of Susquehanna Growth Equity who has joined the Field Nation board. "We are deeply impressed by the company they've built and believe there is an enormous opportunity for growth as they continue to address the many needs of buyers and providers of contingent work."
Khan, 32, is an immigrant from Bangladesh and computer scientist out of St. Cloud State University who worked several years at an analytics firm before starting his own firm.
Susquehanna Growth operates from offices in Philadelphia and Israel.
Neal St. Anthony • 612-673-7144
