Upwork Inc. (UPWK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Great. I think we're live now. We're excited to have everybody here. Thanks for joining. I'm Nick Jones, Internet Analyst here at Citi. We're super excited to have Upwork here. We have CEO, Hayden Brown; and CFO, Jeff McCombs. Thank you both for attending.

Thanks for having us.

Yes. So I hate to pause here. The OpenEx person, we're seeing a video of ourselves. Can you remove this from the screen, please?

Unfortunately, that's part of the feedback.

Okay. So to kick things off, let's start with the total addressable market. I think that's an area that investors often spend some time trying to think about because there are so many categories that can be accessed through a platform like Upwork and in a gig economy. And Hayden, you joined -- you became CEO early last year, Jeff, you joined shortly after. Can you maybe update us how we should think about the total addressable market?

Sure. I'll start. So first off, we think we're playing in an incredibly large market. We've estimated at $1.3 trillion, and we updated numbers that we provided at the time of the IPO, which were a little over $500 billion. We see multiple secular trends playing out that are accelerating in our favor, including the acceleration of remote work adoption, competitive pressures on businesses everywhere, around cost and the need to hire. Third, with remote being an option for workers, they are seeing -- there's the additional opportunity for clients to tap into the demands that workers have in terms of wanting to be able to work wherever they can, not necessarily in the most expensive city where rents and everything are challenging and the rise of the creator economy. Third, we believe that the changes that are taking place are structural and permanent in nature, in that clients are understanding the benefits and companies are understanding the benefits of being able to tap into remote work. And we're seeing it play out across virtually every category, every size of clients that we work with. And one of the questions we often get is, as clients and companies go back into the office, will they stop using freelance talent and remote talent? And we don't see anything like that at all. We think they understand the benefits of remote work and the freelancing benefits. And we don't believe our cohort curves will be impacted that -- in any way whatsoever. Our approach is to be a marketplace for work for the world. And then we're trying to do that across every way that companies and freelancers are working together in whatever way they want to across every category. And so it's a significant opportunity that we're really excited to be playing in.

Great. So maybe to help dimensionalize the $1 trillion-plus addressable market that you've laid out at the Analyst Day, what are the key categories investors should really be thinking about? I think there's a lot of things here. Is it marketing? Is it development? Is it operations? What are the key categories to help investors kind of dimensionalize or focus on where the opportunity is from kind of a job perspective?

So Nick, our platform is large and horizontal. We have over 10,000 skills on the platform. Over 90 categories of work represented. Last year, we're $2.5 billion transacted. And yes, as Jeff mentioned, this is really early innings. So we are focused right now on 3 core personas. So we have a sales team. And when they go to market talking to customers, they're very laser-focused on going after these 3 personas. So number one, it's CTOs and kind of product leaders; secondarily, CMOs and marketing leaders; and third, COOs and operations leaders. And that really is where they're really speaking to leaders in those organizations about how they can work with freelance talent to really unlock new ways that they can grow their teams, augment their teams, get work done more effectively with more agility, et cetera, inside of those 3 kind of core use cases. As we continue to grow the business, we can go from those 3 core personas to many others over time. So that's where we're focused today. But the platform itself has many more skills and categories represented because it is very broad and very heterogeneous in nature.

Great. So maybe a follow-up on the addressable market. What are the gating factors in unlocking GSV within the TAM? Is it attracting more freelancers or improving the supply? Is it improving buyer perception and adoption? Is it just kind of an educational element of helping buyers understand what can really even be done with remote talent?

Yes. It's absolutely brand awareness, I think, is number one for us. So today, we have single-digit brand awareness amongst our target buyers and that's with that $2.5 billion gross services volume we had on platform last year. So we're really looking at how do we raise awareness amongst our target markets, that they know Upwork is a solution for them, which the vast majority of our target market does not even know about Upwork today. The second thing that you mentioned is kind of that jetpack perception. And what drives me nuts, someone who's been in this business, I've been here nearly 10 years. So many of our customers are wildly happy with what they're doing in the use case that they have on the platform, and yet they're not even aware that there's so much more they could be doing. So they might be happily transacting with Project Catalog, doing small transactions or with staff augmentation, doing -- building out their team on the tech side perhaps, but they're not aware that there's so much more they could be doing in other departments or in other use cases versus what they're doing today. So a big focus for us is one, building brand awareness amongst all of the customers that don't even know about Upwork. And then number two, even amongst our existing customers, helping them realize that we are not just a vertical platform in the niche that they know us and trust us in, but we're actually a horizontal platform that can serve them and their entire business in so many more ways than many of them even imagine. So those are the two big unlocks that we're focused on right now.

Great. So I'd love to kind of focus on recent trends or maybe pre-pandemic trends to kind of the trends you're seeing now, and maybe how you're thinking about exiting COVID. What have you seen in terms of adoption, cohort spend? Do you see this as more transitory? Or do you think this is really a structural change and will be a bit more permanent from here?

Yes. From a -- I guess prior to the pandemic, remote work was already being adopted over the entire course of our history. And the pandemic accelerated that adoption. And we saw significant increases in our spend per clients, in our quarter-over-quarter spend or client retention. And what we're -- as we're -- and in whatever phase we're in, in COVID right now, we're seeing those levels remain elevated. So obviously, I'm not going to say that we're on the other side of COVID, but whatever phase we're in, these record levels of spend for clients are holding at those levels. And to us, that's a reflection of the benefit that the clients see from a platform like ours. They're going through the dynamic that we historically have seen clients have, where they come to our platform, they start to understand what we can do for them as they build and grow their business, and those benefits aren't forgotten. They continue to work with us. And we're excited to see that, that continues to play out in this phase of the pandemic.

Yes. And Nick, if I can just add to that, one of the analogies that we look to as we think about our business and where we are, this is really early innings, and we're unlocking this giant trillion dollar market opportunity. And an analogy that I think is really relevant is the cloud computing analogy. In the early stages of that market, people were really skeptical and CIOs and CTOs were like this cloud computing thing, not sure. A lot of people felt like it was not for them, and they were crazy to be putting their workloads in the cloud. Fast forward 5, 10 years after that, those early phases, and it was the complete opposite, and everyone was kind of looking at each other like you're crazy not to have your workloads in the cloud. And we think the same is true for work, where workers are now so much kind of on-prem. Everyone's working on site and with these FTEs today. But increasingly, as we look at our business and our platform, people are really realizing that they need to have a much more agile and dynamic solution for their workers and are using our solution to do that. And if you fast forward to the later phases of this, companies are going to realize and going to be in this place where they have a much more dynamic model for how they manage their workers and have their workers in the cloud, so to speak, on a platform like Upwork because they need the freedom of the flexibility, the agility, the cost savings of having a different way of managing their workforce. So we think we're in Phase 0 or 1 of that shift. And you can see that the remote work piece of things has really cracked open for companies a new way of thinking about agility in managing their workforce and Upwork is a key piece of how they can really get that agility on a permanent basis, by putting more workers into this type of a solution to manage it dynamically and with the flexibility that they need. So we're in those early stages, but really working towards, I think, a very different ecosystem of how work will be in the next 5 to 10 years.

Great. So well, maybe focusing a little bit more near term, Jeff, you had mentioned on the 2Q call that you're seeing kind of a return to more normal seasonality in the back half of '21. Can you kind of walk through what normal seasonality is? And are those trends holding as maybe variants are cropping up? Or is that kind of waning a little bit?

Sure. So 2020 and throughout the pandemic, obviously, there was no sense of normal seasonality. During last summer, there was no travel, people were locked down; during the winter, the same dynamic. And as we mentioned on our Q4 call, we didn't see the normal dynamics that would play out where people would step back a bit from work and not be engaged on the platform nearly as much as they would during non-holiday times. As we've moved into 2021, we've seen some of the numbers look more like pre-2020 trends, I should say, like on a week-to-week and month-to-month basis, and particularly related to periods when folks would travel. And we know that, in general, that folks -- there was a pent-up demand for people to get out and see family and friends, and they were doing more traveling than they had throughout the last -- far more than they have during the last 18 months, and probably greater than they had before just because of that pent-up demand. And we're not seeing that level of dynamics play out on our business. We're seeing it look very similar to what pre-2020 numbers looked like. So as we start -- as folks start to travel more, there's a flattening of the numbers. And then as they start to go back to work, there's kind of normal trends that you would expect. And that's really the key dynamics. Now clearly, it's hard to predict where the variants are going to take us, what restrictions will be in place, whatnot, but right now, we feel really good that the business is remaining at those elevated levels of spend that happened on a -- that were driven throughout the pandemic and see no softness there, just a normal seasonality now.

Got it. That's really helpful. Maybe looking at Upwork's approach to the category. It's a bit unique in the landscape in that you have a really robust offering with a lot of different freelancers. You range from enterprise clients with, I think, nearly half of the Fortune 500 as clients while also serving SMBs and entrepreneurs or individuals. Can you talk about why that's the right approach for this category, serving the entire spectrum? While other competitors do focus things out on a specific vertical like content writing or maybe who are focused on smaller jobs?

Yes. So our goal is to make it really easy for everyone to participate in this market, Nick. And I think what we've seen over the years is even larger companies, like of those in the Fortune 500 who we serve today, a lot of them start out with teams self-serving on the marketplace, coming in and signing up on for an account on their own, testing the model, getting going. And then they grow, and they grow a little bit on their own. And then our sales team can reach out, find those accounts and help them grow even faster. So what we've seen is it's really symbiotic to have a self-service marketplace on the one hand where people can just get in, have a lot of velocity and traction, prove the model for themselves, also have a lot of smaller customers who are basically testing and vetting the talent and creating a ton of reputation signals and things like that for all of the high-volume talent that is in our marketplace. And then the enterprise customers, who can either get going with the help of our sales team and all of the account services we provide, or can grow up through having tested the model a bit themselves, done a pilot maybe on their own even before we are helping them out. And so those 2 things work together really, really well in terms of really feeding the cycle and the scale of the business, which lets us help customers of all sizes and types be successful in the work marketplace, basically self-serving or getting that help and basically working however they want to work, whether it's using prepackaged offerings like Project Catalog or Talent Scout, our most recent offering, which is really where they get a recruiter to help them really pinpoint that talent that is pre-vetted, really easy to find for them because they're not even having to really lift a finger to find it. So that's been the approach that we think really does unlock that full TAM, which is giving kind of customers of all sizes exactly the ways that they want to work, which is self-service when you want it and sales enabled when you really want that help.

Great. So maybe for those a bit newer to the story, can you talk about what a typical sales cycle is for an enterprise client? Kind of what's the normal trajectory of spend once you land that account? Does it scale rapidly? Or is it -- does it take a while to kind of get the enterprise teams comfortable with the solution?

Sure. So our sales motion on the enterprise side is we have a land team and an expand team. And the land team will go out, acquire new logos, new accounts. Some of them may be have some folks within their companies that are already spending and see some benefits with us. And those sales cycles, depending upon the exact product and desired use case, can range between 3 and 6 months and have been trending in a very good improving trajectory, and we feel really good from a unit economics perspective. If you look at the spend per client for those enterprise clients, they typically start off once they're an enterprise -- once they're on an enterprise plan with us, they're spending a few hundred thousand dollars per year. And over the course of a few years, they end up spending $1 million or more with us and really are seeing the significant value from the overall offering. And our account management team, our expand efforts, work closely with them throughout that period to help them understand the benefits of tapping into new categories and really understand all that the platform has to offer. And they've been very successful at growing that spend from a few hundred thousand to over $1 million per year.

Great. That's really helpful. 15 years here, maybe the take rate, and I know you get this question a lot, both of you, but can you talk about how you view Upwork's take rate compared to some of your competitors? And then even just the broader marketplaces. Is there an opportunity here to increase take rate over time? Or is that not really a focus today?

Yes. Our focus right now is we want to make sure that we build the most valuable work marketplace possible. And so we're not trying to drive up take rate in the near term. As we think about our positioning, our pricing relative to other offerings in the marketplace, we feel really good that we have a compelling value proposition compared to some of the gig marketplaces, compared to the staffing firms, whatnot. And we know that we have the opportunity to increase that take rate over the long term. That may be driven by expansion of Talent Scout, of Project Catalog, potentially by our enterprise offering and by different value-added services on the platform, where right now, we believe if we focus on building the most valuable work marketplace, that that's the right strategy and where our attention should be.

So maybe looking at some of the new solutions Upwork's offering now, you launched Project Catalog earlier this year. Can you share what some of the early traction you're seeing within this solution?

Yes. The traction has been really encouraging, Nick, because the thesis was that we basically want to give customers every way that they want to work with freelancers online. And Project Catalog is a one-click model that really gets customers in the door easily because they can see the deliverable, the freelancers that you give them, purchase it and get going right away. And we wanted to give them the solution so that they could get going and test the model of freelancing online really easily and also so that freelancers can -- so that talent could earn in new ways, kind of augment their existing earnings on our platform with a new model as well as giving our clients, who are already buying in the marketplace, new ways that they could kind of add on different offerings to the existing ways that they were purchasing freelancers. And so far, it's been super positive. We've seen more than 10% of our new clients being acquired last quarter came in through this channel. So clearly, it's tapping into real demand in the marketplace. And moreover, we're seeing clients that come in through this pathway are cross buying into our other ways of engaging with freelancers and also our existing clients who are using other models that we have, other products are also buying into this Project Catalog offering. So our thesis that people have many needs, and those different needs need to be served by different ways of purchasing projects and time from freelancers, has absolutely been validated by the early signs that we've seen here. And so we will continue to -- basically continue to expand our work marketplace offering by giving customers all the ways that they want to work with freelance talent and all the ways that freelance talent want to earn, so that people don't have to go anywhere else. Once they're inside of the Upwork marketplace, they can get all of their work done right here in one place, and we think that, that is a very unique and differentiated value proposition, which is critical to unlocking the overall market.

Great. So maybe touching on Talent Scout as a solution, it sounds like Project Catalog is active as a strong funnel to bring people into the talent marketplace. Does Talent Scout also serve a similar funnel to the talent marketplace?

Yes. So this is another one of our very early offerings that launched in May, but it is a different funnel in that this is for people who really want more of that recruiting service for them. And so this is -- whereas the Project Catalog offerings might be a $100 job or a $200 project, Talent Scout is different in that this might be a $50,000 engagement with a highly skilled freelancer who is going to be given to you through a short list of, say, 2 to 5 people that our team provides that client through a much more kind of high-touch process that feels high touch on the front end, but is also powered algorithmically on the back end through the scale and the services that we have, given our kind of AI base of offerings. So it's a really nice solution for people who love the value proposition of Upwork, but don't want to go through the traditional post and hire model that we have in the talent marketplace. And this does represent a new funnel for people who are willing to pay a higher price point because it is more expensive, but in exchange, want to get more of that high service model. And we think that it's more, in that sense, competitive with what they might get from a staffing firm or a recruiting service or something like that. And it saves them time. It gives them a great outcome. And again, it's a really early offering, but the signs have been really positive in terms of the demand that we've seen from customers, and we think we can build with these types of offerings, these new demand funnels and again, also cross-sell for our existing customers. And the moment when they want something different, give them exactly what they need.

Maybe a follow-up on Talent Scout. How should we be thinking about this solution, its ability to compete with traditional staffing firms? I mean what are some of the advantages? It sounds like you're providing highly skilled talent for higher jobs powered by algorithms. Is that kind of the key differentiator in the effectiveness of finding these batches? Or what is the right way to think about this solution?

Yes. I think the key differentiator that we hear from customers all the time about why Upwork is superior to staffing is actually the talent they get. They get highly skilled professionals who are doing this type of work as a core living, they're rated and reviewed and exceptionally great at what they're doing, and that's not typically what they're getting in the staffing world. So the fact that they're able to get this really high-quality talent through an experience that is really effortless, really easy, powered on the back end by technology, but on the front end through a really lightweight combination of people and technology that they can kind of choose their own adventure a bit in terms of which way they want to go with that. I think that is the modern value proposition for people who might want to do the experience a lot on their mobile phone or may not want to go through a phone call, which feels like an archaic way of working for a lot of folks. But on the other hand, they might want to pick up the phone when there is a moment when they have a question or something like that. So it really gives them the best of both worlds in terms of the human touch and the technology, and then, frankly, a far superior outcome in terms of the talent they're able to access.

Great. So well, maybe talking about competitive dynamics for the talent marketplace, how do you view the competitive landscape today? Is this a market where it's winner take most? Or are we really too early to be kind of looking at it that way?

Yes. So it's a big market, Nick. And frankly, I think it's getting more and more interesting to more and more folks every day as we're proving what an interesting market it is. I don't think it's going to be necessarily winner take most. There's definitely room for multiple competitors here, but we're pleased to be the market leader and determined to keep it that way. I think some of the key things that we think about as we stay very laser-focused on executing our strategy to stay ahead of competition, so number one is size and scale will matter. And that does enable the leading player like us to deliver superiority in terms of the talent matches in terms of the type of talent that's available; and for the talent, frankly, the superiority in terms of the clients. I mean, what I hear from freelancers all the time is they love Upwork because they get to meet Microsoft here. They get to meet brand names that they've dreamt of working with on our platform, and that is a huge advantage for the market leader. So scale is a big one. And I think that will continue to matter even as the market grows. I think a second big factor that's going to set apart certain players in the market is around, frankly, the trust and safety of what is available on our marketplace online, which this is still, I think, for a lot of folks coming into this, we mentioned brand awareness and the fact that we're trying to build that brand awareness for Upwork. I think customers are very fearful still of what this looks like. They don't know if they can trust online work. They don't know if they can trust freelancing. And for a good reason, there's a lot of things that have happened in the past or that happened in the offline world that they don't know if that translates to online or how that works in an online setting. So we've spent 20 years building up the trust and safety mechanisms and have so many things in place to keep customers safe. And that is going to matter in terms of how companies can really differentiate themselves in this setting. And then I think the final thing is about ease, like the winner here has to provide an easy experience for getting work done frictionlessly, effortlessly. And I think that's where our strategy around building a single work marketplace where customers can do a $50 job one day, a $50,000 job the next day, and build a multimillion dollar program for their company through things like our enterprise offering, that is a truly differentiated approach that I think is going to be essential to really unlocking a trillion dollar opportunity like this.

Great. That's really helpful. Maybe talking about brand awareness, that's come up a couple of times now, and you talked about it being relatively low. Can you talk about what actions you're taking beyond maybe improving kind of the trust factor for consumers? Does that impact how much you're willing to spend, some kind of overall brand spend to raise awareness? So I guess the real question is, can it be resolved with dollars? Or is it more about time and perception improving?

Yes. So we started by this year, investing in different type of brand campaign that tells new stories about what freelancers and businesses together are unlocking on our platform because I think we have to really showcase that and put the customers at the center of some of this. So we started that effort this year. And then I think going forward into next year, we'll continue to double down on some of those strategies to really showcase with the talent and with the clients what truly is happening here to really debunk some of the mess and turn around, I think, some of the perceptions that are out there in the market. Investment will be required, Nick. There's no question that some of that will be required, and we have to do that smartly. We have to be patient. This isn't something where we're going to change brand perception or perception of the category in just 1 or 2 quarters. So we're very mindful of that as we're thinking about the plans moving forward and thinking about how we really build this for the long term because we think we can create real and sustained value by being the market leader and really defining the category around Upwork and what it really represents.

Great. So well, maybe we can switch to performance marketing. Jeff, you've talked about being as aggressive as possible in deploying performance marketing spend. What are some of the gating factors in your ability to spend more toward this channel?

Yes. We want to spend as much as we possibly can, wherever we see the return. And we encourage our teams to test aggressively to figure out those new channels and opportunities to do so. We look at new countries. We look at additional opportunities across platforms. So mobile has been a big opportunity for us and we think will continue to be so. A lot of our spend has been in search engine marketing, and we'll push more and more into other channels where we can find the economics that work for us. We also think that as we lean into the brand marketing, that it could have some impact on conversion of more educated on our offering. And that will also, we think, have good benefits for us from our ability to spend in performance marketing. And a lot of it is blocking and tackling of finding those increased opportunities to target and optimize better and improve conversion. And as we do that, that unlocks additional opportunities to do so. We don't feel constrained from a -- We know that the way we build the maximum value for our shareholders is by ruthlessly identifying all of those opportunities and leaning into it. And if that means that we need to adjust our EBITDA targets, we do so because we know that, that drives economic value added to the business, and we'll continue to execute against that strategy.

Great. So let's talk about the target of 20% CAGR through 2025, bringing revenue to at least $1 billion. What gives you confidence in that forecast? Is it user spend retention and growth, improved marketing like we talked about? What are the factors that give you confidence that you can achieve those numbers by 2025?

It starts with, first off, the fact that we're playing in a big, fragmented, underpenetrated $1.3 trillion market that has great tailwinds and macro dynamics that will fuel the business for years, not decades to come. Second of all, we firmly believe that we have the right strategy to go after that market opportunity. And as the market leader with a strategy of building the work marketplace to make it as easy as possible for clients and for freelancers to get work done, we think that's the right one, particularly for this moment in time. Third, we're executing very well and innovating across a number of dimensions, and that leads to a lot of growth opportunities, whether that's Project Catalog, Talent Scout, expansion of share of wallet, international expansion, take rate expansion in the long-term, brand marketing that we talked about, enterprise, which we see a significant opportunity in, where there is a lot of the TAM in that part of the market and partnership opportunities. So we feel really good that, that $1 billion opportunity by 2025 is definitely achievable and really underpinning that is our ability to execute and innovate against such a mass market opportunity.

Great. I'd love to use your comment around partnerships and maybe expand on that topic a little bit. Can you touch on that opportunity? Are there opportunities to kind of facilitate GSV with partnerships like web presence builders, hosting companies and the like?

Yes, we think there's a -- Hayden, go ahead.

Yes, I was just going to say, yes, I think there are a number of partnership opportunities. I mean we've already launched a Zoom partnership recently. We have a partnership with Citrix around a lot of the freelancer integrations. The Microsoft 365 Toolkit is another partnership we have. And looking forward, I think there are numerous ways that we can continue to integrate into workflows that people have in their businesses, where they can tap into freelance talent even more easily by having us right there integrated into that workflow as well as us bringing more tools and technology that people love, like we did with Zoom, into our own product to make it even more seamless for them to integrate things, whether it's calendars as an integration, which is another one we recently launched, or a to-do list or things like that, to just make it easier for them to collaborate with their freelance partners around the work they're doing. So I think there's numerous ways that we will continue to pursue the partnership opportunities just to make it seamless for people to do the work that they're doing with their freelance talent on both sides, bring the freelancers into the work and bring the work into their freelance teams.

Great. And I'd love to ask this question, I know investors probably ask you this question a lot as well, but can you touch on kind of what the off-platform risk is? And I guess what I'm asking is how do you monitor and maybe prevent business and a freelancer taking their business off the platform? Is there a way to monitor that? Or is kind of the value-add of the platform kind of one of the biggest reasons it doesn't happen at higher rates?

Yes. I mean the value add of the platform is one of the biggest reasons. I mean if you talk to freelancers, the number one thing that they care about is number one, finding more work, and then after that, getting paid for the work itself. So for talent, they want to use the platform because they do not want to be chasing their customers to get paid or worried that they're not going to get paid for the work. So I've heard so many horror stories from talent who said like they actually worked with a reliable customer for years, and then that customer ended up flaking on them or during the pandemic went out of business, and they wish they had that customer on the Upwork platform because then they knew it was automated billing and we had their back in case that customer went out of business or anything bad happened. So there is a huge value proposition there by definition. And then after that, we do a number of things. Number one, building a great experience that people love so that they do not want to leave is job number one. Second, everything we do from a trust and safety standpoint to make it both safe and secure and also make sure people are aware that it is against the terms of service to leave the platform. And we do a lot of things to make it a kind of delightful thing that they know those things, and it's not like a big camera, but it is known to them that should they take work off the platform, there are real penalties for that, including things like demotion in search results, if there's like a suspicion, but not a known offense. And then obviously, if there is a known offense, people are suspended permanently from the platform. So there's a whole hierarchy of things that people are very aware of. And on the talent side, people don't want their funnel of new job opportunities to be shut off. Clients don't want their funnel of talent to be made unavailable. So I think there's a lot of value proposition there that's also pretty well known to both sides, and we continue to make it easier and better and more evident to people know that they're getting such a tremendous value from the platform and don't want to lose that value by circumventing.

Great. Great. I have a few minutes left here, so I'm assuming we can squeeze in one or two more, but maybe talking about the international business and the growth that you're seeing there from both active buyers and from freelancers. Can you touch on any new geographies you're more focused on and what traction you're seeing?

Yes. I'd say we're the market leader today in both the U.S. and internationally, and that is with a platform that is all English language. And there is a lot of horizon for us to continue to grow internationally as we look to make the platform more localized linguistically and otherwise. So I'm excited about those opportunities. We've already seen even in the last year, I think international growth, meaning non-U.S., has outpaced U.S.-based growth slightly. And so that, I think, just indicates that there is a lot of runway for us. We've seen a lot of that international growth even with our English language experiences. And we'll continue to tap into that as we do more localization, which is in our future. So I think this is just an exciting indication that this is early days and there's just a lot of opportunities still ahead of us.

Great. Great. With I think a little less than maybe 1.5 minutes left here, I guess the last question I would have is, Hayden, what do you think the biggest investor misconceptions are about Upwork and the story today?

Good question, Nick. I think for anyone who thinks that this is a COVID stock, definitely, that's not the case. I think the way to think about Upwork is we're redefining work. And that is really what we're on a mission to do. We're not even just a freelance stock. I think we're all about redefining how people work together and who people get to work with in their work environment, which is super challenging and exciting and frankly, we're both in the early days, but also at a moment, which is very exciting in that work all around us, I think, is up for significant change over the next few years. And that is, I think, an exciting place to be and Upwork is at an exciting moment to help customers really redefine those workplace bonds and who they get to partner with in that. I'd say the last thing is we're really working on raising that awareness in the market, and this is an exciting moment because our awareness is very low, but our product and our ecosystem is very strong. And so as we continue to move forward and raise that awareness, build more of that familiarity with customers, I think that there's going to be a great receptivity to what we have here because the solution is incredibly powerful for customers that start to figure out what they can do with Upwork. So I'm very excited about that.

Great. Well, Hayden, Jeff, thank you both so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it. And this will conclude our fireside chat.

Thanks, Nick.

Thanks very much, Nick.

Take care, everybody.

Thank you.