Enrico Icardi
Software engineering, product & management, strategy
welance.com · a 15-year studio, now open15-year studio · now open
We don't list freelancers.
We vouch for teams.
welance/directory is a small network of small teams — two, three, five people, occasionally more. They already work together, already use AI, and already say no to scope creep. Every team vetted, every brief vetted, nothing under €10,000.
Built since
2011
to run welance's own client work
Listed teams
31
+ ~120 in the silent network
Team size
1.5–17
people per listing, never one
Open
now
external briefs, live
Why we list teamsWhy teams
One person is one perspective. Shipping needs at least two.
Three reasons the work comes out better when it isn't one person carrying all of it.
01
Cognitive load, split
A pair reviews each other's code, copy, and decisions. Two tastes, two blind spots, two memories. Fewer of the bugs you only notice in month three.
02
Different, complementary
SEO next to speed. Brand next to infra. Marketing next to the code. Teams are picked so skills overlap ~15% and complement everywhere else.
03
AI in every pair of hands
Every member uses AI daily, each in their own way — and they’re good at it. Fluency multiplied across a team is what turns weeks of work into days. (More on how, next.)
How teams actually use AIUsing AI
Digital Experiences shaped by AI-powered humans & machines
Each member leans on a different model, at a different stage, for a different reason — and knows exactly where it helps and where it lies. Not everyone is full-time; the team works out who lives in your brief and who just checks in.
Strategist
Framing & research
AI for synthesis and sourcing; the judgement that matters stays human.
~2 days / wk
Designer
Directions & systems
Dozens of AI directions before lunch, then ninety percent killed by hand.
~3 days / wk
Engineer
Building & reviewing
Pairs with AI in the editor — every line still read by a second human.
Full-time, in sprints
Editor
Words & polish
Drafts with AI, rewrites until it sounds like a person, not a prompt.
~1 day / wk
Project manager
Scope · pace · comms
Keeps notes, risks and decisions current with AI. Light-touch by design.
~1 day / wk
Performance marketer
Launch · SEO · growth
AI drafts keyword sets, campaigns and ad variants by the dozen; a human keeps them honest, on-brand and aimed at real goals — then reads what the numbers actually say.
Ramps up at launch
How it works · brief to revealHow it works
30-minute speed dating for projects and teams.
A scored brief makes the introduction. Two plausible teams. €10 each only when both choose the call.
- 01
A brief gets posted
ClientYou write what you're trying to build, what done looks like, and roughly what it's worth. We read every one by hand. Nothing under €10,000 goes up — below that a team can't focus and you can't learn anything.
Costs nothing to post - 02
Teams pitch — blind
TeamsVetted teams that fit the work put in a short pitch. Names and faces stay hidden on both sides, so the read is on the work and the approach, not the logo. Pitching is free — vetting is what keeps it to teams who mean it.
Free to pitch - 03
One 30-minute handshake call
Both sidesYour blind 30-minute handshake is booked — €10 + €10. Join here; attendance settles the call automatically when available. Launch price through 31 Dec 2026 · €30 afterwards
One side attended and the other did not. Both accepted charges stay captured; the attendee's €10 is now credit for their next handshake, and the no-show is flagged. - 04
The work happens
DirectlyAttendance confirmed on both sides — the fee settled, identities are lifted above. You work with the team directly — no account manager, no markup on their time, no platform sitting in the middle of the relationship. The lead stays your single point of contact, a de-facto PM on the team's side. We're a directory; once you've met, you've met.
0% commission on the project you sign.
The €10,000 lineThe €10,000 line
The smallest brief we’ll publish is €10,000.
Not because our teams are expensive. Because below that number a team can't meaningfully focus — and you can't meaningfully learn anything. At €10k, four skilled people each give you about one focused week of their finite, real, actual life. That's a useful unit. Less is a favour, not a brief.
€10,000, translated
Hours of a senior W-EU expert≈ 70–100 hrs
Hours of a Southern-EU mid≈ 140–200 hrs
Weeks of a 4-person team≈ 1 focused week each
As a productOne MVP, tightly scoped
For teams · why list with usFor teams
Already a crew — or forming one? List with the directory.
We’ve run welance as an agency for fifteen years. The directory is the extra mile — more clients, more teams, more work digitised — and we’d rather bring good people along than keep it to ourselves.
A team can be
You + the people you trustFriends and peers whose skills complement yours — you already know the work is better with them in it.
A small or tiny studioCross-functional shops and indie agencies that ship as one unit.
A pod inside a bigger agencyA smaller group within a larger org, listing as its own crew.
01
Real demand, already
Clients come to us and we’re already placing work — list, and you sit next to briefs that are live now.
02
Keep your pipeline
No exclusivity, no cut. Keep every client and habit you already have.
03
Private until it’s mutual
Your name and client list stay hidden until both sides accept a reveal.
04
One voice to the client
Whoever sits first on your roster is the lead — the client’s single point of contact and the PM-side voice of the team. Order the roster, and the org chart is done.
We list teams, never a lone name. Flying solo? Pair up and come in — and be in more than one crew: more teams, more shots at the right brief.
Add your team →Since 2011 · who's behind itSince 2011
Fifteen years of our own work, before a word of marketing.
Not a new platform with a launch budget — the public face of a network that's been quietly running client work since 2011.
We built welance in 2011 because the work we cared about didn't fit either box on offer — a lone freelancer was one point of failure, an agency was overhead and a layer of people between you and whoever does the thing. So we worked as small teams instead, and kept doing it quietly for our own clients for fifteen years. The network grew to roughly a hundred and twenty people who've chosen each other over and over.
We never set out to be a marketplace, and still aren't one — clients come to us organically and teams are already being assigned. The directory is simply us reaching further, now that AI has made the in-between unit viable for everyone. It also marks fifteen years of the collective, and a second company in Italy alongside the German one — a genuinely EU organisation on paper, a worldwide one in practice.
Philipp Hentschel
Community building, project management
Founders · custodians
Enrico Icardi and Philipp Hentschel started welance in 2011 and still keep this directory running — the vetting, the rules, and the reply when something goes wrong.
Where we stand in it →Where we stand · welance runs this directoryWhere we stand
We run the directory. Our teams also use it.
You would work that out inside a minute, so we would rather say it first — and say what it does not buy us.
welance operates this directory. welance’s autonomous teams also list on it and pitch on briefs, like any other team: the same blind pitch, the same fees, the same reveal on a mutual match. They are never ranked higher, never featured, never tagged “recommended”.
They cannot be scored more kindly either, because the score does not come from us. It comes from an open ruleset in a public repository — welance/perfect-brief — where a model only judges rule by rule and code does every piece of arithmetic. Change a rule and you change it for everyone, in public, with a version number attached.
The directory is fifteen years of our own network opening up, so of course our teams are in it. What we gave up is the ability to quietly favour them.
Questions, answeredFAQ
The same answers we'd give you out loud.
The vetting, the no-solo rule, exclusivity, and how the open directory works.
Yes. Every team on the directory is people we've worked with or vetted in person — two to nine who've already chosen to work together. We add them slowly, in small batches. There are no auto-generated profiles and no open sign-up flooding the list.
Not as a listing. We list teams, never a lone name: the whole point is the second mind. If you work solo, join anyway — tell us what you do, and we'll help you pair up into a team, or invite you into one that's missing your skill.
It's not exclusive. Listing with the directory doesn't lock a team in or take a cut of their other work. We're a directory, not an employer or an agency holding your pipeline.
Yes. We've matched teams to briefs by hand since 2011 — that part's been on the whole time. What's open now is the public directory: self-serve, scored briefs, listed teams, live pitches. Post a brief or list your team and you're in the same room we've been working from for fifteen years.
Still wondering something? Join the directory →