Meet GoWorkaBit, an Estonian temporary staffing startup that launched its services in Lithuania as their first expansion market late last year. Their Marketing Manager in Lithuania Gediminas Galkauskas suggests that Lithuania has rather complex regulations related to employment, and yet developing their technology and processes to cope with our country’s legal requirements has been a valuable experience for the company.

Hi Gediminas, so could you please introduce GoWorkaBit?

Gediminas: The story of GoWorkaBit started in a car:) Two of our founders from Estonia were working in a staffing agency. After a meeting with a client when they drove back to the office they realized that classical staffing agencies are not able to solve the problems of business in a fast changing world.

There are business spheres where you can‘t plan a lot ahead, with huge seasonal fluctuations in workforce demand. But most importantly, the old recruitment model makes it is very hard to find motivated and responsible people for temporary jobs that require little or no qualification.

So we decided to turn the whole idea around. There are people in the market willing to dedicate some days of their lives to do some work, but they don‘t want to do it for a long time. And if these people decide to use their free time to do any job themselves, they are already motivated to perform. It is very simple, but essential insight what makes GoWorkaBit special. Also we take care of all administration process, so for companies it is a way to find motivated workers fast, without any headache.

Our technology allows companies to post what we call workbites (short termed jobs) on our platform and then users apply to these positions. 4 hours this is average of how long it takes for companies to find a workbiter on GoWorkaBit platform. And our record is 6 minutes!

GoWorkaBit was launched in Estonia in 2013. In 2014, GoWorkaBit won one of the most prestigious startup contests in Europe – the Seedcamp, putting us to the same family with Transferwise, Revolut and others.

In 2014, we also participated in the Estonian National TV show for entrepreneurs “Ajujaht” (Clash). Together with Taxify we got to the finals.

How has your business been so far?

Gediminas: Currently we can talk about our Estonian case. Since our launch, we have turned 200.000 work hours into workbites and made more than 80.000 GWB users happy by offering possibility to choose when and what they want to work.

In 2016 we experienced tremendous growth. Number of registered business clients grew by 68% up to 2.136 companies. User number also grew 68% and now we have 80.000 registered users who are ready to do workbites anytime. Our monthly revenue has been growing by some 190%. We are very happy with these numbers in Estonia and it serves as a proof that this kind of service is truly needed for companies. And that‘s why we will step by step bring GoWorkaBit to more and more countries.

When did the company launch in Lithuania? Why Lithuania was chosen first instead of other countries?

Gediminas: We made a soft Lithuanian launch in August 2016, and hard launch took place at the second part of November when we did our homework and started to offer GoWorkaBit platform to business clients.

Lithuanian companies face similar problems as in Estonia – shortage of motivated employees and a need to cope with changing workforce needs.

GoWorkaBit will give these companies a chance to tap into a pool of motivated, flexibility loving employees and connects them within a couple of hours.

How different are taxation/regulation/legal environments from the startup perspective in Lithuania, Estonia and other neighboring markets you have been considering for expansion?

Gediminas: Working as we have known it is changing fast and legislation is always a step behind in coping with these changes. Lithuania has much more regulations related to employment and some of them make it extremely difficult for people to access flexible jobs fast and easy, i.e. getting permission from the doctor to work.

But despite the legal complexity and different requirements, Lithuania has been a great place to learn for GoWorkaBit. Developing our technology to cope with requirements here and automating these processes has given us a valuable lesson we can use in other countries.

As we tend to joke in GoWorkaBit – if we manage to do it in Lithuania, we are invincible 🙂

What have been your biggest challenges in Lithuania and how are you overcoming them?

Gediminas: The biggest challenge is a conservative HR approach, but it is not a surprise – the same problem we had in Estonia at the very beginning. So now we are in market education mode: things in HR and staffing can be done differently and we want to show companies how embracing technology and new approaches can help their business.

How big is your team in Lithuania? What are your first and target customers?

Gediminas: Currently in Lithuania we have team of 4: sales manager, customer support manager, marketing manager and local developer.

We want to help companies that are constantly experiencing staffing shortage, require additional workforce on-demand or always needs additional help in high season. Such companies are from hotels and restaurants, logistics, retail and many more sectors.

How is the company funded?

Gediminas: We have been lucky to monetize our business from day 1. Our revenue is growing (closing 2016 with 1,1M EUR in annual revenue) and we are able to invest the profits that we make into growth.

Faster scaling and launching in new countries requires additional investment of course so we closed our first round of investment in 2016 to support these efforts.

What are your nearest plans and biggest future ambitions?

Gediminas: In Lithuania, we want to grow fast and to show companies that they can do staffing in a different way. In addition to Lithuania we aim to launch GoWorkaBit in 3 new markets this year.

In general in the future people will work in a totally different way. Work will become more project based and it will be more about people, not about companies. There is a forecast that in the nearest future people doing project based work, gig jobs or working part time will make 40% of total workforce. It is a huge change and we want to be in the front of it.