Pavel Shynkarenko, Founder and CEO of Mellow – Interview Series

Pavel Shynkarenko, Founder and CEO of Mellow, is an experienced entrepreneur and executive leading an international HR-tech platform designed to make working with independent contractors as seamless and compliant as hiring in-house talent. Drawing on a deep background spanning legal services, fintech, and workforce platforms, he previously co-founded and scaled Solar Staff before launching Mellow to address the growing complexity of global contractor engagement. Under his leadership, Mellow has established a global presence with hubs across Europe, North America, and Asia, enabling thousands of companies to collaborate with hundreds of thousands of contractors while reducing legal, tax, and operational risk.

Mellow is a global contractor management and HR platform that provides businesses with a single gateway for compliant onboarding, task management, payments, and intellectual property transfers. The company removes the friction of cross-border hiring by assuming responsibility for contractor classification, taxation, and regulatory compliance, allowing organizations to scale globally without building local infrastructure. At the same time, Mellow supports contractors with reliable, on-time payments, benefits, and simplified international workflows, positioning itself at the intersection of the modern freelance economy and the evolving expectations of a global, Gen Z-driven workforce.

You’ve moved from practicing internet and corporate law to building large-scale contractor-management platforms such as Solar Staff before founding Mellow — what specific experiences across that journey convinced you the market needed a completely new approach to managing global independent talent?

My path to Mellow began in legal practice. I was one of the first internet law specialists in Ukraine in 2005, working closely with technology companies. Across clients, I kept encountering the same problem: companies wanted access to global talent, but the infrastructure made it slow and fragile. Even a single freelancer contract could take weeks to complete.

The turning point came in 2014. A client asked me to help pay a contractor €100. When we calculated the real cost of doing that properly, including taxes and compliance costs, the overhead exceeded the value of the contract itself. That was when it became clear the system was broken.

The market did not need another workflow or task tool. It needed infrastructure that absorbs complexity by default.

We built Solar Staff to address that problem. When the business later split, Mellow was born, taking what we had learned and rebuilding the platform for a global audience.

Since then, we have processed more than $200 million in transactions and supported over 400,000 contractors across 100+ countries. That scale confirmed the problem was a deep structural issue.

How do you interpret the shift in how companies define “employees,” and why is project-based work becoming central to workforce strategies today?

The idea of one employer for life was a product of the industrial era. What we are seeing now is a return to a more natural model, where people exchange specific expertise for defined outcomes.

The data reflects this shift. World Bank estimates place the global online freelance workforce at up to 12 percent of total labor. In the United States, freelance participation accelerated sharply after 2020, and projections suggest it will represent more than half of the workforce within a few years.

Project-based work gives companies access to specialized skills without locking them into rigid structures that no longer match how work actually happens.

Based on Mellow’s data, what major trends are you seeing in global freelance and contractor hiring across industries and regions?

Two patterns stand out. Companies are becoming smaller in headcount but heavier in impact. Fewer roles remain permanent, and those that do tend to be higher value. At the same time, companies are becoming more flexible about how work gets done. Full-time employment is no longer the default when it becomes clear a project-based arrangement is more efficient.

What economic or operational pressures are pushing SMBs and mid-market companies to replace full-time roles with project-based talent?

It largely comes down to cost structure and adaptability. Hiring a full-time employee involves far more than salary. Once benefits and overhead are included, total costs rise significantly.

At the same time, our research shows that recent layoff cycles have pushed many experienced professionals into freelancing. By 2022, nearly half of Fortune 500 companies were already using freelance platforms, according to The Business Research Company. What was once experimental and mostly relied on by startups is now standard practice.

After the layoffs of 2024 and 2025, many companies also learned that large permanent teams can introduce risk as well as stability, and are becoming wiser about discerning between the two.

Mellow recently introduced an AI-driven Talent Acquisition tool for project-based hiring. How does it work, and what core inefficiency does it address that traditional hiring models miss?

We launched AI Scout in beta this year and demonstrated it publicly at our Demo Day in September 2025. Its goal is simple: reduce hiring cycles from weeks to hours.

Most hiring platforms surface candidates a manager has never worked with before. That usually results in long screening cycles and low relevance. Our data showed something different. The strongest contractor is often someone a manager already knows. The next best option is a trusted referral.

AI Scout is built around that insight. A manager describes a task in plain language, and the system generates a professional job posting. That posting is shared through the manager’s existing network, and responses flow into a single dashboard where candidates are ranked by relevance.

The result is faster hiring with better matches.

We also launched Project Radar for contractors, helping them identify suitable projects daily. Together, these tools improve outcomes on both sides of the marketplace.

How do you balance advanced automation with the human and legal complexities of global contractor onboarding, compliance, and payments?

Automation is essential at scale. When you are paying contractors across dozens of jurisdictions, manual review is not viable. Our systems handle compliance rules, contract generation, and tax calculations automatically.

Having said this, human judgment remains critical when context matters. Our support team handles complex questions around taxation, visas, and edge cases. For those situations, we deliberately rely on people, not automation. As we say, we believe in human connections and see technology as an enhancer of them.

What do companies often misunderstand about the role AI can play in contractor sourcing and workforce planning — and where does its value most clearly show up in real-world use?

Many companies assume AI can replace judgment. That is the core misunderstanding.

AI is highly effective when the problem is scale. It can process large volumes of information quickly and apply rules consistently. In contractor sourcing, this removes friction from tasks that would otherwise slow teams down.

What AI cannot do is understand context. It does not know why a project matters, how a team actually collaborates, or which trade-offs are acceptable in a given situation. Those decisions depend on human judgment and accountability.

The real value of AI shows up when it shortens the path from intent to execution. It reduces unnecessary steps and helps teams act faster, but it does not decide what matters. When companies treat AI as an execution layer rather than a decision-maker, hiring quality improves instead of deteriorating.

The strongest systems are built on this division of responsibility. AI enforces structure. Humans retain judgment. That balance allows companies to scale contractor hiring without losing trust or control.

What are the most underestimated financial or regulatory risks companies face when working with freelancers globally, and how does Mellow mitigate them?

The most common risk is misclassification. When a company treats a contractor like an employee but classifies them as independent, it creates serious legal exposure. In the United States, penalties for misclassification can reach $50,000 per case, and similar risks exist in other jurisdictions.

Another overlooked risk is permanent establishment. If contractors begin acting on behalf of a company in another country, such as signing contracts or representing the business operationally, they can inadvertently create a taxable presence. Many companies only discover this risk after regulators intervene.

Intellectual property is also frequently misunderstood. Without properly structured agreements, ownership of work may remain with the contractor, even after payment has been made. This can lead to disputes that surface long after a project has ended.

Mellow mitigates these risks by acting as Contractor of Record. We assume legal and administrative responsibility, ensure agreements comply with local regulations, and manage contracts, invoicing, and payments across jurisdictions. In complex regions, we also assist contractors with tax reporting, reducing exposure for both sides.

As blended teams of full-time staff and contractors become the norm, how should leaders evolve their management and operational approaches?

Leaders need to shift their focus from monitoring activity to defining outcomes. With contractors, success depends on clear deliverables and agreed timelines, not on hours worked or constant oversight.

Operationally, contractors should be treated as part of the working system rather than external add-ons. When they are included in relevant communication and planning, execution improves and friction decreases.

Research from Harvard Business School and BCG shows that 40 percent of companies using online talent platforms report faster market entry and higher productivity when these principles are applied consistently. This shows there’s real value in this emerging priority shift.

What do you expect the relationship between companies and independent talent to look like over the next 5–10 years, and where does Mellow fit into that future?

The distinction between employee and contractor will continue to soften. A middle category is likely to emerge, combining the flexibility of independent work with a clearer framework for protections and compliance.

The future is not a choice between traditional employment and gig work. It is about building systems that allow different forms of work to coexist without legal ambiguity or operational strain.

Mellow is building infrastructure for that reality. By making global contractor work compliant, predictable, and human-centric, we enable companies to adapt without sacrificing trust. After one year, we’re only getting started.

Thank you for the great interview. Readers who wish to learn more should visit Mellow.