Matthew Mottola started freelancing in 2012. In 2015 he took a regular job and knew within two weeks that it was not for him. That question, how should you work, runs through his opening talk on 14 May 2025, which he built around data on what he prefers to call the flexible workforce: freelance, gig, fractional and digital work together.
What the talk covers
- The right question is not how many freelancers exist, but what share of a company's external spend goes to flexible talent. By his figures, more than half of a company's workforce is already external, and he sees the share of freelancers within that external spend growing toward 2030.
- The good, by his slides: companies hiring freelancers are up 52 percent, demand for interim leaders up 310 percent, and freelancer numbers have grown more than 30 percent since 2020, with revenue up around 7 percent a year. Freelancers use AI more than employees do, and downsizing at companies tends to be followed by freelancers filling the gap.
- The bad: income swings from a very good month to zero, there are far more freelancers than work, and over half of freelance work still happens offline through referrals, which he calls a digital divide that keeps companies from scaling it.
- On the horizon: AI, fractional work (his rule of thumb: if you do strategy plus execution, you are fractional, and if a client wants to call you interim, take the job), skills-based hiring and Asia's lead on long-term engagements.
Three things to do
- Augment yourself with AI.
- Specialise, so clients can hire you easily.
- Own the trust: freelancing is the lowest-risk way for companies to find people they can trust.
Who it's for
Freelancers who want the market picture behind their own pipeline.
FUN
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