Peter Johnston: Kalo

Peter Johnston, 28
Company: Kalo
Web: www.kalohq.com

The world of work is changing, with the internet opening up more and more opportunities for flexible and remote working and giving companies the opportunity to access talent from anywhere in the world without the need for anyone to relocate.

With this changing landscape comes certain challenges: organisations that use a large network of freelancers can waste significant time and money and risk legal action.

Kalo (formerly Lystable) is the brainchild of young entrepreneur Peter Johnston which looks to capitalise on these challenges with an automated onboarding, management and payment service that handles admin, standardises practice and helps its clients stay compliant.

A design lead at Google, Johnston relied heavily on freelancers and found that much of his time was spent coordinating with little time left for design. Frustrated by these “painful” processes, he set out to solve the problem.

Organisations such as Airbnb, The Economist, Expedia, Pop Sugar, Group Nine Media, New York Daily News, Google and MTV are just some of the major names that use Kalo to arrange contracts, assign tasks, share performance information and pay their freelancers. The platform integrates with a huge array of existing tools including Docusign, Slack, Xero and quickbooks to name a few.

Today, Kalo has 45 employees across its London and San Francisco offices and has raised more than £19m to date from big name backers in the form of Paypal founder Peter Thiel and Affirm’s Max Levchin.

As the world of work continues to change, Kalo is in prime position to help organisations adapt to its new demands with innovative and intelligent tools.