Released on: January 20, 2008, 5:39 am

Press Release Author: PHPR Ltd.

Industry: Human Resources

Press Release Summary: Xenios Thrasyvoulou, CEO of the innovative London-based
online skills marketplace, http://www.peopleperhour.com predicts small businesses
and freelancers will need smarter ways to generate income or handle work in 2008

Press Release Body: Edinburgh, UK - January 21, 2008
Xenios Thrasyvoulou, CEO of the innovative London-based online skills marketplace,
http://www.peopleperhour.com predicts small businesses and freelancers will need
smarter ways to generate income or handle work in 2008. He predicts:
1) The credit squeeze will also hit small businesses hoping to fund expansion
through re-mortgaging their home, so many will be cash-strapped in 2008. With
lenders looking more carefully at income to service loans, finding additional income
streams like PeoplePerHour.com. boosts smart small business owner\'s borrowing power.
2) Small businesses get tougher on clients that delay payments, thanks to sites
like www.payontime.co.uk which show how to get money in faster. Higher interest
rates make it punitive for small business to go into debt so they will be more
likely to charge Late Payment Interest (statutory rate is 8% over base rate - set
twice per year).
3) Smart freelancers and small businesses beat chasing debt by finding work on
sites like PeoplePerHour.com, where they get paid almost immediately for their work
through www.PayPal.co.uk.
4) The credit squeeze will mean small businesses will have less to spend, so will
use more flexible labour, from PeoplePerHour.com to cut costs without cutting
resources.
5) Smart small businesses will use virtual workers to help make the business
\'disaster-proof\' from floods, fires, pandemics etc so they can keep going.
6) Small businesses buy in \'just enough\' expertise on-demand to create the
workforce equivalent of the \'just in time\' processes that revolutionised
manufacturing. They use PeoplePerHour.com to buy in \'just enough\' expertise from
virtual workers to handle more work, or extend into new areas.
7) Small businesses will start learning how to use technology better, for example,
by using the web to its full capacity, along with VoIP to become more global. With
sites like Peopleperhour.com you can now have a developer in India, a designer in
central Europe, a bookkeeper in Berkshire, and an engineer in California.
8) Small business globalisation will accelerate, now that sites like
Peopleperhour.com open up foreign markets with less risk through secure payment and
ranking systems.
9) Holiday cover is a thing of the past for smart small businesses that spread the
load with a choice of virtual workers through PeoplePerHour.com.
10) Despite banking estimates to the contrary, entrepreneurship will rise driven by
increasing nervousness about job stability. Taking control by venturing out alone
is more attractive to the entrepreneurial spirit when there\'s less to lose by
staying put and astute entrepreneurs realise that small businesses are more
resilient than large corporates during economic downturns, with fewer shareholders
and debt to service.

ENDS (background information follows)
For further comment, interviews, or photos please contact Penny Haywood at PHPR on
0131 669 5190 (day or evening) or email penny@phpr.co.uk.
PeoplePerHourcom Background Information
Founded in 2007 by two Cambridge graduates: Xenios Thrasyvoulou and Simos Kitiris,
PeoplePerHour.com are targeting an estimated £5 billion opportunity. That's based on
the Federation of Small Business (FSB) figures for 2006 showing the total annual
spend on part-time, agency workers and casual labour in the UK across all businesses
was £70 billion a year. 4.4 million small businesses in the UK are currently growing
by 10% annually and account for 35% of the UK workforce, but only 44% of the small
business workforce is in full-time employment.
PeoplePerHour are already the UK leaders for the online skills market. To date over
1,000 projects posted by UK businesses on PeoplePerHour.com have been successfully
completed by a selection of 2,600+ registered providers from the UK (49%), and (in
decreasing order) from US, India, Argentina and Spain, enabling UK small businesses
to tap into a global labour market.
Buyers choose from an average of five bids per project posted and in many cases can
access CV, photo, description, sample work and referee contact details.
PeoplePerHour.com ensures providers get paid on completion through a combination of
their unique escrow facility plus PayPal.
The company has already attracted £350,000 of seed investment from prominent angel
investors and is in discussions with a number of VCs.
PeoplePerHour practises what it preaches. Their team consists of developers in
India, designers in the US, a virtual assistant, PR agent and bookkeeper - all from
the site.
Busiest work categories are (in descending order): Web Development & Programming,
Design, Admin Support, Writing (including Translations and Transcriptions),
Marketing & PR, and Research.
The typical buyer runs a small business (usually less than 20 people). No sectoral
bias: companies seem to vary from boutique financial firms, Internet companies,
property and PR agencies. See PeoplePerHour in action on www.peopleperhour.com

Web Site: http://www.peopleperhour.com

Contact Details: Penny Haywood at PHPR on 0131 669 5190 (day or evening) or email
penny@phpr.co.uk