Why AI Is Key to Unlocking the Future of Work with Yakov Filippenko

Welcome to the B2B Growth Blueprint podcast, where we talk with entrepreneurs, founders, and leaders at B2B services, tech, and SaaS companies to learn the systems and processes they've used to create success for their business. We'll also learn from marketing and sales experts to provide insights to help you grow your business. I'm your host, Mark Osborne, and the podcast is brought to you by Modern Revenue strategies and their 10x ROI B2B growth guarantee. Schedule a free diagnostic call to learn the fastest path to double your B2B revenues in just 90 days. B2B Growth Blueprint podcast. I'm your host, Mark Osborne. And today I'm very excited to welcome my guest, Yakov Filipenko. Now I'm gonna read Yakov's bio to make sure I get this right. Yakov is a seasoned entrepreneur with over 10 years of experience in IT and technologies. As well as scaling businesses internationally. As a product manager at Yandex, he led a team that grew the product's user base from 500,000 to 1.2 million and secured its entry into the international market. Subsequently, he co-founded SalePay, which he scaled to 45 countries and eventually exited after it was acquired by RetailRocket in 2018. In 2021, Yakov launched Inch, an AI-powered platform connecting part-time professionals with flexible roles. The company has developed a proprietary smart algorithm that streamlines the $126 billion market associated with the transition to flexible work and the quest for a better work-life balance. During 2024, Inch has expanded its user base from 65,000 to over 500,000 active users, and we're gonna talk a little bit about how he's done that. So So Yakov, welcome to the show.

Hi, Mark. Thanks. Nice to meet you.

Yeah, absolutely. So you've obviously done a lot through that time and just sort of reading your bio. Tell us sort of the story in your own words. How did you sort of, you know, get interested in sort of B2B technologies and go to where you are today?

Yeah, sure. Thanks. So actually, like my first startup, it was a B2B SaaS service for enterprises. And when it was acquired, I joined Alter VC, which is like Israel-based venture capital firm. And it was during the pandemic and like it was like bad time, you know, but and some startups in our portfolio, they didn't feel themselves well, like travel tech startups, but Some of our startups, they started like even before the pandemic, their growth was like pretty significant. But during the pandemic, they started to skyrocket like Miro or Deal. And we started to investigate why and we found an obvious reason. Like people moved to their places or even to their home countries and they start to work from home and pandemic ended. And they, like, these professionals, they do not want to go back to their offices because, uh, before, like, the social contract between employees and, and companies was like, uh, work more, earn more, spend more, and you will be more happier, right? But during the pandemic, people realize that they do not want to spend their time on, like, uh, they're like commute to offices. They do not want— they want to spend more time with their friends and family, they want to travel more and so on. And after that, a few waves of layoffs happened in the United States and in a few other countries and people lost this feeling that they can trust in companies because many people were fired in like during a short period of time and but they like invested, I don't know, like 10 or more years in these companies. So you realize that like something, uh, is changing. And for us it was, uh, some sort of, uh, tectonic shift, like, uh, what happened with, uh, dot-com bubble, uh, in 2000s. Um, and we like realized that there, there is a new demand of how people like will work, uh, but there is not such like solution for it that will cover their needs. So we decided to launch Inch, uh, to start building it. And, um, yeah, that's what we do. We help professionals to find part-time jobs, and that's what they want. Some of them want to, to do it in addition to their, like, full-time job, uh, but like roughly 30% of them actually want to replace their one full-time job with 3, like 3 to 5 part-time jobs. Uh, and that's what will provide them like the safety, uh, because they will not be, be like binded with one company. Uh, they also can develop their, uh, like skills in some specific areas, uh, to be like better professionals, and they can travel more. That's what all of us want. And on the other side, companies, especially SMBs, they can hire like best professionals for like one-third of their like price and they can like test different hypotheses and many other things. So a lot of things happen, is happening in this field and we are trying to follow it.

Yeah, it's so interesting because this dynamic of, you know, sort of the layoffs sort of both drives people to leave and then start their own business. And also the layoffs drive people to start looking for, well, it's not as secure a place as I thought. Where, where are places that I can apply my expertise that's not dependent on this, you know, one employer? So then they can service the people that let— that were fired and, you know, started their own businesses. So you've got multiple different trends that are sort of facilitating the growth of this platform. So it's a really interesting a way that you've captured something that's happening in the marketplace. And we really see something similar in that more and more companies are embracing the idea of, you know, sort of fractional executives or fractional experts instead of making the big commitment to, you know, one person who's going to, you know, fill a particular role. There's a lot of risk there versus when you, you know, hire someone on a fractional basis. You can sample what it's like to work with them. have them just come in and do the core parts of their job, maybe make less of an impact on your culture, which maybe that wasn't the reason you were hiring them for to begin with. So it's really interesting things and aligns with a lot of things that we see in the marketplace too.

Yeah. And actually I can add much, much more. So for example, like before it, there are like 2 types of work, like, you know, full-time, it doesn't matter remote, not remote, like full-time job, when you onboard a new team member into your, um, uh, I don't know, team and/or office or something else. And another thing is freelance. And with freelance, you just hire people to do some, some small tasks for a very like cheap price. And if, if they will fail, uh, you just like will find another, another, uh, professional who will do it. And like the price was the most important thing. And part-time is, is a short thing. You can't like just put it, uh, like, um, in a freelance box or a full-time box. So same thing. So, uh, let's, uh, in, in our own example, we are using our service like as customers. Um, we decided that like we want to, to launch our, our, um, user acquisition. We didn't know like what kind of, uh, what kind of, um, channel will work for us, right? So like, uh, in a traditional world, what we need to do, we need to hire an SEO, right? SEO. And then, uh, he or she will decide what kind of like channels we will, we will need to implement. Uh, in our case, we, we did it in another way. We, uh, we, we posted a like request. Let's say we are such company, we want to acquire new users. What kind of like channels will work for us and different experts from different fields, they started to answer to discuss it with us and we realized that like probably 2 channels will work like SEO and Facebook or Instagram ads. And so like, and as a next step, we decided that we need to hire the best professionals that we can find. But the problem is like a year and a half ago, we were a small startup with like no-name startup without any publications about us, without like a budget. So we, we were not able to afford to hire people that we want, right? And, and then on the other hand, they do not want to join us because we were a no-name startup. So we, we hired them for part-time. Uh, one of them was from, uh, like European Uber kind of company, and another one was from a, from a bank. And in like 3 months they built for us our acquisition strategy and that's why, that's how we started to grow. And you mentioned that we like in 2024, we grew up like 70x. So that's how we did it.

Yeah. And that's so interesting too because then once you're ready for a full-time, you know, hire, They're coming into something that's working because you've had experts actually help you build it rather than them coming in and it's held together with duct tape and chewing gum and it's not really working that well. It's just sort of you've had the growth, you know, sort of just through, you know, powering through. Whereas when you have experts help you build it, you've got an actual system that can scale that someone can then come in and run it. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's like the metaphor that I like. It's like You know, AWS or Google Cloud or something like that. Before they were invented, companies like needed to rent servers and it was kind of expensive. And small startups, it was like, it was a problem. You were not able to scale like you want. With services like AWS, you can build your infrastructure like you're like Uh, similar to what, what Google or other big tech companies do. So the same thing with hiring professionals. Big companies, they have like recruiters, they have agencies, they have a lot of people within their teams who can do whatever they want. And if you're a small startup, before it was quite hard to, to build the team you want, you need, and for— and have a specific person with a unique expertise in some niche things. Typically, you, as I said, you need to hire an SEO or something like that with very broad expertise, but not like pretty deep. And it was hard to compete. And now it looks like both professionals and companies, they finally have a way of how to work with each other beneficially to both sides.

That's right. That's right. And it's sort of a win-win type scenario because the companies get that expertise and the providers get that flexibility of, as you say, working with multiple companies, which is sort of a growing desire from the workforce. And you and I were chatting before about some of the differences in workforces and how Sort of millennials are different than Gen Z, different than, you know, Gen X and other older organizations. Talk to, you know, you have such a unique perspective. A lot of, you know, the folks listening are, you know, operators or leaders at early-stage companies, and they're trying to find the best talent that they can get, whether it's on a part-time basis or a full-time basis. And so they're trying to adapt, you know, sort of their you know, work environment and business environment to attract the best talent. And you have a unique perspective on what the best talent from these different generations is looking for. Tell us a little bit about your perspective there.

Yeah, sure. So like there are a few angles which I need to cover. So the first thing is like my own father, like, I don't know, 15 years ago, he told me that he will never hire me because like he doesn't like the way of how like I'm changing my jobs every 2-3 years when I was an employee. And it always like, it's always a kind of conflict between different generations and the company because like company typically they are built by older generations, right? And but millennials, for example, ourselves right now, it's the biggest workforce in the world. So you can't like, uh, you, you need to hire some, some millennials. And it's the same thing is happening with Gen Z. So at some point of time in the future, we, we all, all companies will hire Gen Zs, and that, that's what will happen. And we all, we all will have these conflicts. But on the other side, um, Gen Zs, they look at work differently. And this is a global trend, not just like US, UK, or whatever They, uh, they do not want to, um, let's say this trend in the, in the UK, uh, which is happening right now, uh, Gen Zs, they apply to a new job and, uh, they, uh, go to interviews and they pass it and they accept the offer and then they do not show, uh, at office, uh, and that's how they like show their protest against employers. And, and, and like roughly, and in, in the surveys that I read about, it was roughly 50% of Gen Zs participated at least once in such activity. So, and for them, they like what we also know about Gen Zs that they want to be protected and this like, like feeling of that they are safe is one of the most important things to them. And that's why we believe that these part-time jobs, when they can combine their participation in different organizations or different companies or activities, is a way of how we can structure this new social contract between companies and new generation. And like we see based on our data within Inch, that, uh, 2, 2, 2 trends absolutely opposite are happening at the same time. So on the one side, uh, companies prefer to hire for part-time jobs, uh, people with like extended, uh, uh, background. Like more lines in your CV you have, uh, it's, uh, like a better chance that you will be hired for part-time jobs because like it's a remote job and people need to, like, to have some trust with you and so on. So you need to demonstrate your experience. But on the other hand, uh, the most well-prepared to such way of working are Gen Zs. They, they know how to, uh, how to manage their time. They know how to, uh, like, to, to speed up everything you need. They do not have this kind of limitations in terms of time that you need to work from 8 to 5 or something like that. So a lot of things are already prepared to them. And yeah, we believe it's like just the future.

That's really interesting. Yeah, I actually was at a conference recently and one of the presenters that we were chatting kind of backstage and he works at a sort of an entrepreneurship program at a university, at a major university. And he was saying that the, this next generation of Gen Z, almost all of them have at some point had a side hustle. Like they know what it's like to do something else on the side while they're working a regular job. But so many sort of large corporations, at least in America, really discourage that. And, you know, sort of don't, don't value that. But it actually, it builds lots of skills that make them better. at this more traditional job, uh, and, you know, builds expertise that they then bring, uh, to bear at this, uh, traditional job. And he was saying that, you know, sort of the, the future successful corporations will be the ones that figure out how to embrace, uh, this aspect of the new workforce, of the Gen Z workforce, that they have side hustles or have had and value the opportunity to diversify their income streams by not just being dependent on one, you know, one supplier of income because they've seen that companies aren't loyal. And so they don't want to be solely dependent on one company for all their income. And so it's this really interesting, you know, sort of convergence. Are you seeing that companies are getting better at embracing that? How are you seeing companies sort of respond to this change in the workforce?

Yeah, so actually great question. So we see 2 types of companies. The first one, like old-fashioned, and like I have my own understanding of why it's happening. It's just like managers in all companies all the time, they fail, I don't know, their expectations, timelines and all these things. And, uh, now with remote workers, they have a like reason that they can, um, like present. Like, it's, it's hard to, to engage remote workers, and that's a like kind of legal thing. But new kind of companies, like let's say Spotify, uh, really like, like them, uh, their logic is pretty straightforward. They— what they say, um, like we are building the best product in our field. Best products are built by best professionals, but best professionals, they are not children. We do not need to control them. If they want to have some sort of like level of freedom, we will provide it to them. And that's like the, I don't know, growth mindset in terms of management. Uh, but on the other side, it's, it's, it's, as I said, uh, it's a, it's a new reality. You cannot have like, uh, avoid it, right? Because like these Gen Zs, they are growing, uh, in the next few years they will be the main workforce. You need to start adapting right now. And SMBs, they are in the like best position right now because they can like build build their and test their ideas like they're like huge corporations. They can involve best experts from whatever countries they are. They can hire, they can pay, and all these like infrastructural things are already implemented so they can use it.

Yeah, that makes tons of sense. And so this obviously is a super interesting talk, but that we could kind of talk about all day, but I gotta be mindful of your time. But before, you know, we let you go, tell us about Inch specifically. Like, it's a really interesting name, and I know the origin of the name is interesting. Tell us a little bit about that and, you know, sort of make the pitch. Why should, you know, people engage with Inch? What, who's it for, and what's the value they're gonna get from it?

Yeah, sure. So actually, it's like, You know, it's always a kind of game with the naming. With my previous company, we were like, we were sitting in our classroom and we discussed like how we will name our startup and we were fighting and then we decided to, okay, let it be like, let it be Cellplay because tomorrow we will have a competition and so on and we will rename it in the future and it never happened. So like Inch, it's like we started as a networking platform, and that's why we, we— it's, it's kind of acronym for Let's Be in Touch, and it's—

InTouch?

Yeah, intch.org, uh, and it's built for, for, uh, for new ways of, uh, working. Of like, we, we see that this market or the way of how people prefer to work, uh, to find new jobs, it's, it's, it's changing, and we are trying to build a platform that will fit, uh, this like requirements from both sides, uh, especially from professionals who are looking for part-time jobs either for like as an additional, uh, like additionally to their full-time job right now or, uh, to, to replace their full-time job, uh, and for SMBs, uh, where you can post your job in a way, uh, like, uh, why we, we would like to, to do this thing, can you advise us of how can we do this, and so on. And experts, uh, our AI algorithm will, will find relevant, uh, people with relevant expertise and, uh, show them your, your request, and they will respond to you and will try to assist. And if you will like someone, you will be able to hire them through Inch. Yep, this is it.

And so for the people in our audience that are listening that maybe they own a company and they're looking to get access to that expertise that they wouldn't be able to afford on a full-time basis, or they're, you know, an expert and a provider that's looking to diversify sort of their work and what they do, what's the best way to get in touch?

Yeah, so like the best way is just to open a browser and to type intch.org and sign up. But one thing, um, we believe that in, in, in, in the new world, uh, you will do both. You will be a professional who, uh, is willing to, to share their, like, your expertise. And on the other side, if you represent your company, you will hire, uh, these people, uh, to you for your new projects or opportunities. So you, you are kind of in the both, uh, positions at the same time.

Very interesting. Very interesting. Well, Yakov, thank you so much for joining us today. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Thank you for your time as well. And I hope that it's something like important or interesting to you and to your audience.

Talk to you soon. Thank you for joining this episode of the B2B Growth Blueprint podcast. We hope you've gained insights to grow your business. If you If you enjoyed this discussion, please rate, comment, like on your favorite platform, and share to others who will find it useful. Do you know a CEO, founder, or leader at an early-stage B2B services, tech, or SaaS company who would like to be a guest and share their story? Send us a note. Let's schedule a conversation. Thank you, Mark.