HBS Managing the Future of Work Fiverr's Micha Kaufman on the post-AI gig economy
Dec 3, 2025
Micha Kaufman, Co-founder and CEO of Fiverr, shares insights on the evolving gig economy as influenced by AI. He highlights how AI is revolutionizing talent matching and organizational design while cautioning about its limitations. Kaufman discusses the rise of freelance work post-COVID and the emergence of new roles such as data labeling. He also emphasizes the importance of adapting to AI advancements to avoid displacement, envisions a future where AI enhances human talent, and shares practical leadership lessons in navigating change.
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AI+Human Talent As Core Offering
- Generative AI is being paired with expert freelancers across hundreds of skilled categories on Fiverr.
- Micha Kaufman says this combination lets businesses complete mission-critical projects faster and cheaper.
Pace And Ubiquity Make This Shift Unique
- The current AI wave differs from past tech shifts chiefly by its speed and free broad availability.
- Kaufman compares today's phase to early steam-engine experiments, emphasizing exploration not finished products.
LLMs Deliver Much But Not The Finish
- Large language models produce statistically average outputs and have clear limitations for finishing complex work.
- Kaufman argues humans still add nonlinear creativity, judgment, and taste beyond what models deliver.