Instant Teams: Bringing Remote And Freelance Opportunity To Military Spouses All Over The World

Instant Teams: Bringing Remote And Freelance Opportunity To Military Spouses All Over The World

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonyounger/2020/04/15/instant-teams-bringing-remote-and-freelance-opportunity-to-military-spouses-all-over-the-world/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter#1a3a992bf75e

Jon YoungerContributor

I write about the freelance revolution as a mindset to paraphrase Paul Estes of Staffing.com, but also as the engine of an innovative and dynamic new industry that is redefining the future of work and organizations. Sometimes I worry about having left the wrong impression, that digital talent marketplaces are the same wherever they operate in the world. Nothing could be further from the truth.

John Winsor, CEO of Open Assembly and a respected futurist and expert in crowdsourcing informally “guesstimates” the number of digital talent marketplaces as nearing 1000, and he may be right. But, each of these startups, none even twenty years old, is unique in several respects. Governing philosophies range from the communitarian to the unabashedly proto-capitalistic “you eat what you kill.” Focus varies from the thousand categories of freelancing on the Fiverr platform to a singular focus on architecture at Handiss in Lebanon, scientific staff at Kolabtree in the UK, or OBHG providing freelance obstetric physicians across the US.

Platforms also vary by their creation story. Startup founders are a unique cohort. Many are drawn to fix a problem or inequity that bothers them until they figure out how to scratch that itch by creating an entrepreneurial organization that offers a practical solution.

That’s what led Erica McMannes and Liza Rodewald to create Instant Teams. Their vision focused on a population of talented individuals –spouses of active duty servicepersons - for whom Instant Teams offers an economic lifeline, interesting work, fair pay, and a community of colleagues.

McMannes and Rodewald saw the untapped potential of military spouses first hand.  As military spouses themselves, they recognized an innovative way to both meet a need for corporates and startups, and improve the employment prospects and financial resources of military spouses and other military-connected individuals. As McMannes describes it, “Military spouses are often highly skilled and experienced professionals who find themselves in a new country with limited employment prospects and the need for flexible employment that acknowledges that military families frequently move.”