Amit Oestreicher is the Founder and CEO of g-nie, a SaaS platform for flexible workforce management. He is also the Founder and CEO of Xtras, Israel’s largest on-demand workforce platform. With over 10 years of experience as a solopreneur, Amit has built and scaled both software platforms using his skills in product design and development, marketing, and sales. He is an expert and leader in the on-demand staffing and gig economy space and a member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization Israel Chapter.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- What is Xtras, and how does it help companies with workforce management?
- Amit Oestreicher shares his idea for Xtras and how he pivoted after losing clients
- Amit’s innovative approach to on-demand work
- Xtra’s hiring and onboarding process
- Mistakes Amit made when establishing a pricing model
- The genesis of g-nie and its ideal clients
- How Amit developed and refined his workforce management platforms
- Rebuilding businesses following the Hamas-led attack on Israel
In this episode…
The staffing and recruitment industry experienced significant losses during the pandemic, with agencies unable to fill crucial roles for companies. However, this calamity facilitated new opportunities for industry growth as staffing agencies began leveraging technology to recruit flexible, global talent. Learn how an Israeli businessman developed innovative software to fulfill widespread workforce demands.
After losing clients during the pandemic, software entrepreneur Amit Oestreicher observed workers’ increasing demands to dictate their work styles. In response, he built workforce management platforms allowing businesses to employ global candidates for on-demand positions. With comprehensive software solutions customized for company and talent needs, candidates gain job security by working for multiple employers, and businesses can fill full-time and part-time positions. When you diversify your talent base to accommodate flexibility, you can cultivate an empathetic culture for increased retention.
In today’s episode of the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Amit Oestreicher, the Founder and CEO of g-nie and Xtras, to talk about workforce management software. Amit shares his pricing model and hiring process, how he pivoted after losing clients, and how he rebuilt his businesses after the Hamas-led attack.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Dr. Jeremy Weisz on LinkedIn
- Inspired Insider Podcast
- Rise25
- Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO)
- EO Israel
- Amit Oestreicher on LinkedIn
- g-nie
- Xtras
- “[Top Israel Leader Series] Engineering the Autonomous Revolution with Rabbi Mois Navon of Mobileye” on the Inspired Insider Podcast“
- “[Israel Business Series] The Unstoppable Startup: Mastering Israel’s Secret Rules of Chutzpah with Uri Adoni” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
Sponsor for this episode…
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The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.
Podcast production has a lot of moving parts and is a big commitment on our end; we only want to work with people who are committed to their business and to cultivating amazing relationships.
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Episode Transcript
Intro 0:03
Welcome to the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast where we feature top founders and entrepreneurs and their journey. Now let’s get started with the show.
Jeremy Weisz 0:13
Dr. Jeremy Weiss here, founder of inspiredinsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today is no different. I have a meet here. He’s the founder of Xtra and g-nie, which is g-nie.io. And before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out since this is part of the Israel business leaders series. I had Uriah Dhoni, he’s the author of unstoppable startup. He spent 20 years in high tech 12 years at Jerusalem Venture Partners. And he has a book which is mastering the unstoppable startup mastering Israel secret rules of Pittsburgh. Okay, that was a really good one. I don’t know if you’ve, you’ve heard of that one a Amit, but it’s a good book. Mois Navon of Mobileye, he talks about Mobileye, in their journey to be acquired by Intel, for $15.3 billion. But what struck me about that journey is that, you know, it has a lot of ups and downs, and he had to go back to his family points in the journey to say, we can’t do extracurriculars, we can’t eat out anymore. We can’t do the niceties because we’re in the lean times right now, at Mobileye. And so, just the entrepreneur journey is a crazy one. So check those out and on inspiredinsider.com and this episode is brought to you by Rise25 at Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream 100 relationships and in how do we do that, we actually do that by helping you run your podcast or an easy button for a company to launch or on a podcast we do the accountability, the strategy and the full execution of it. And I mean, you know, we call ourselves the magic elves that are running in the background to make it look easy for the host and the company to create great content and build great relationships. For me. The number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking for ways to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way over the past decade to profile the people in companies I most admire and share with the world, what they’re working on. So if you thought all podcasting, you should, if you have questions, go to Rise25.com. And I’m excited to introduce Amit Oestreicher. And he’s the founder and CEO of g-nie and Xtras. There’s two platforms that are transforming the on demand workforce industry in Israel and, and beyond Israel, with over 10 years of experience as a founder. He’s built and scaled both platforms from scratch. And g-nie, which we’ll talk about is a SaaS platform for flexible workforce management and solves some of Labour’s markets biggest pains for businesses of all sizes and industries, then extras is Israel’s largest on demand workforce platform as more than 20,000 active users creating the future of work for workers and employers. And, you know, he’s used some of the innovative technology. And they provide that for businesses, with on site workers on demand in a matter of hours. And it can be for a day could be four weeks, it could be ongoing. And what’s interesting about your company, unlike some of the gig economy is you actually take you know, full responsibility and employ these people, even though they can kind of work in various various things. I know from g-nie, there’s recruiting, scheduling, managing all that on site. And so we’ll talk about that. But you are an expert in on demand, staffing and gig economy. So thanks for joining me.
Amit Oestreicher 3:48
Thank you very much for the opportunity to talk.
Jeremy Weisz 3:51
I know I mentioned Xtras, and g-nie but if you could just take a second and tell people about Xtras in what you do what it does for competence.
Amit Oestreicher 4:05
Well, Xtras is the biggest workforce management platform, we help businesses solve the manpower crisis, even for a day, if they want to work for a day for your gig, or for building a team for a longer term that can you know, fluctuate between seasonality and the number of workers depending on project size and things like that. And as you said, we take full responsibility over the whole process, from the recruitment stage into the interviews, the scheduling, and we manage them and employ them for the businesses that use our services.
Jeremy Weisz 4:41
Where did you get the idea for this? Because it’s pretty remarkable to have you know that many you build this from scratch. Yeah, where did you get the idea?
Amit Oestreicher 4:52
I was working most of my life in the events industry or was working in venue halls. I was what was what an event producer And in 2013 10 years ago, I was I needed staff for my event, I was known searching everywhere when I was young people, my friends worked for me, you know, I was calling my friends, hey, I need a way to they can work and they grew up, they had families, they had more than mortgage, and they don’t want it to work in that kind of businesses anymore. So I was missing, like 10s Dozens of people for sure, for the weekend. And I knew that if I had a pool of workers, I would, you know, send the word out. And someone would say, yes, I want to take that job. But I didn’t have that, you know, kind of pool of people. And I asked myself, Why don’t I have a button that when I push it, all my workers will come. And then I decided to develop that button. And then then X was was, you know, created? What kind of companies use extras. So when we launched in 2015, we started with the events industry in which was very easy for him because I understood the need and the pain. And I had clients all over Israel, that really France that wanted to use the services, and then we expanded into the hotels industry. So we were mainly in hospitality. And during COVID, everything was shut down in like two days. And instead of like staring at the wall and saying, okay, to businesses that I understood that there’s a vacuum because just as the platform that’s connecting between demand and supply between businesses that need workers and workers that are looking for jobs. So then we expanded quickly into agriculture, we went into operational, we moved into factories, laboratories, we moved into, you know, we we did a lot of business development during that year. And then it became absorbed, it’s working not only in gigs in in few hour gigs, but in longer term of short term project and jobs.
Jeremy Weisz 7:00
It’s a stressful industry in general, right, people, sometimes last minute peep staff, staff cancel, or whatever I could see with COVID to you’re in the hospitality industry, right? That’s probably why you have no hair. I mean, this, you know, but you the way you pivoted right, and you had to pivot quickly talk about I mean, you say it kind of casually now, but at the time, overnight, you lose your clients. Right? So what were you thinking? And what did you do to keep your head on to actually move
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