Toptal is a global

remote company A distributed company, remote company, or remote-first company is a company where all employees are physically distributed and engage in remote work. See also * Distributed workforce * List of remote companies The following is a list of remote ...

that provides a freelancing platform, connecting businesses with software engineers, designers, finance experts, product managers, and project managers. The company has no headquarters.

History

Taso Du Val and Breanden Beneschott founded the company in 2010. Du Val was previously an engineer at

Fotolog Fotolog.com (originally Fotolog.net) was a social network for sharing primarily photos. The site claimed that its vision was to build a "good" social network which prioritizes the well-being of users. The site only allowed all members of the commu ...

and Slide.com while Beneschott was an undergraduate at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

. The name stands for "top talent", and it was started as a

virtual company A virtual business (short: virtubis) employs electronic means to transact business as opposed to a traditional brick and mortar business that relies on face-to-face transactions with physical documents and physical currency or credit. History Ama ...

with no dedicated offices. Toptal had more than $1 million in revenue by the time Beneschott graduated from Princeton. The co-founders moved to

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...

to access

software developers A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

with fewer employment options than in the United States.

Talent search and growth

The firm developed personality, language, and skills testing to remotely screen engineering candidates, and accepted the top 3% of several thousand monthly applicants. The firm matches business engagements with developers from its network and brokers the terms of each job. In 2015, it expanded to include freelance design. In 2016, it acquired the freelancer platform, Skillbridge, which offered freelance accountants, statisticians, and consultants in market research, financial modeling, and due diligence. In 2017, the company launched a vertical specializing in software engineers and designers for the automotive industry. It also launched a vertical for

blockchain A blockchain is a type of distributed ledger technology (DLT) that consists of growing lists of records, called ''blocks'', that are securely linked together using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a ...

engineers in February 2018.

Funding

Toptal accepted a $1.4 million

seed round Seed money, sometimes known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor invests capital in a startup company in exchange for an equity stake or convertible note stake in the company. The term ''seed'' su ...

of financing from

Andreessen Horowitz Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Andreessen ...

and

angel investor An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital for a business or businesses start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or owners ...

s including

Quora Quora () is a social question-and-answer website based in Mountain View, California. It was founded on June 25, 2009, and made available to the public on June 21, 2010. Users can collaborate by editing questions and commenting on answers that ...

founder

Adam D'Angelo Adam D'Angelo (born August 21, 1984) is an Americans, American internet entrepreneur. He is best known as the co-founder and CEO of Quora, based in Mountain View, California. He was chief technology officer of Facebook, and also served as its vic ...

. The company is said not to have raised additional funds since its seed round because it has been profitable. In 2015 and 2016, Toptal's annual revenue was $80 million and $100 million respectively.

References

External links

*{{Official website, https://www.toptal.com/ Remote companies Online marketplaces of the United States Online employment auction websites Freelance marketplace websites Employment websites