It's a two-sided marketplace to convert audio and video to text.

In bay area, for example, housing costs create pressure on people to jump ship pretty fast, switching companies every year. It is a rational economic strategy to maximize individual's gains, given startup uncertainty, but it is not great for startups.

To build a long-lasting conglomerate like Amazon, able to take on any new challenge, you need people who stay with the company, stay energized, and look forward to building the next chapter.

AI is definitely going to shrink the market in certain areas because machine transcripts are pretty good for many use cases, but they are also nowhere near enough for many other cases.

Many clients want their transcriptions to be flawless, and only humans can do that right now.

At the very beginning, the information is very asymmetric. You don't know much about the company and the company does not know your value. You are "dividing a pie that never got baked."

The best way to approach this is to work for the company for a few months, learn about them, and demonstrate your own value, then negotiate what you want.

For most people who want to start a company one day, joining an early high-growth startup is a great way to learn across many different functions.

While Upwork might be able to find you a person that does transcriptions, their value add ends there. Meanwhile, Rev guarantees their quality and has an ongoing relationship with their marketplace, specifically focused on the transcription industry.

People working on Rev enjoy the content they are paid to transcribe, so in addition to money, they are getting value from the content itself.