Human Cloud Podcast – Why We Built Hive 25

Key Takeaways

In the podcast we discuss,

Freelance is the status quo in broadcast, the tools just haven’t kept up In production and live events, freelancers aren’t a flexible add-on. They’re how the work gets done. The sector has always operated this way. Hive 25 is a platform built with that reality at its core, not bolted on afterwards.

The booking problem nobody solved – Most workforce platforms focus on onboarding people and paying them. Nobody fixed the chaos in the middle, the availability checks, the booking requests, the long email chains. That’s exactly what Hive 25 was built for.

Built by people who’ve done the job – Hive 25 didn’t come from a product team looking for a market. It came from 15 years running a broadcast staffing agency, managing real freelancers for real productions. The software exists because we needed it ourselves.

Software With A Service (SWAS) A login isn’t enough. The complexity of managing contingent workers, compliance, classification, employment law, requires expertise, not just automation. Hive pairs the platform with people who actually know the industry.

Our Aim To provide a modern solution to a modern way of working.

Tom Pammenter, CEO of Hive 25, joined The Human Cloud Podcast to talk vertical SaaS, the SWAS model, and why the broadcast industry’s biggest workflow problem has been hiding in plain sight.

The Human Cloud Podcast is one of the world’s leading voices on the future of work, hosted by Matthew Mottola — entrepreneur, former Microsoft executive, and author of The Human Cloud. The show sits in the top 10% of podcasts globally and has featured guests from NASA, McKinsey and Microsoft, exploring where flexible talent and technology are heading.

Jack Spencer spent a decade at the intersection of recruitment technology and the future of work, joining YunoJuno as an early employee and helping scale it from scrappy startup to a multinational, multi-million pound organisation. He now works with companies navigating the shift to flexible workforce models, advising on operational and strategic capability across the talent tech ecosystem.

Hive 25 is a B2B freelancer management platform built for the media and live production sector. If you’re managing a freelance workforce and living in spreadsheets and email chains, get in touch.

Human Cloud

FAQ's

What does Human Cloud do?

The human cloud is a decentralized, digital ecosystem of online platforms (e.g., Upwork, Uber) that connects businesses with on-demand, remote, or freelance talent for specific, project-based work. It acts as a “virtual, on-demand workforce” that enables companies to quickly scale up, reduce costs, and access specialized skills globally.