Gary Swart

Gary Swart is an Venture Partner at Polaris Partners. He is best known for being the former CEO of oDesk.

Education and Career

Swart received his bachelor's degree in Business Administration from the University of Maryland, College Park. He began his career in sales, leading corporate sales at Pure Software and Rational Software. From 2003-2004, he was a business unit executive for small and medium business sales for the Americas at IBM’s Rational Software Product Group. In 2004, he became VP of Worldwide Sales at Intellibank, where he was responsible for leading the sales organization.

Swart joined oDesk as Chief Executive Officer in September 2005. Under his leadership, oDesk grew to more than 10 million registered freelancers working for 3 million businesses around the world. In 2014 oDesk merged with Elance to become the World's largest online workplace.

Also under Swart’s leadership, oDesk implemented staffing for the company internally that heavily incorporated freelancers working on oDesk’s own platform -- for every internal employee in the company’s headquarters, there were approximately three “full-time equivalent” team members working for oDesk in their online workplace.

In June 2014, Swart joined Polaris Ventures as the first venture partner focused on technology on the West Coast.

Speaking and Contributed Writing

Swart is a mentor to entrepreneurs and students, and frequently speaks to these groups about the challenges growing businesses face. In 2012 alone, Swart gave more than 30 talks to universities, incubators and other organizations fostering entrepreneurship.

As the CEO of oDesk, Swart was also a thought leader in the future of work, how best to hire and manage teams, and the rise of the “freelance economy.” He has spoken at the Inc. Leadership Conference, The Economist’s Ideas Economy panel, South by Southwest, TechCrunch 50, GigaOM Net:Work, and at Harvard Business School which teaches a case study on oDesk.

His commentary has appeared in a variety of publications including LinkedIn, Forbes, TechCrunch, and The Washington Post. He has also appeared on numerous TV and radio shows, including CNBC, BBC, Bloomberg Television, NPR, and the Fox Business Network.