Ask HN: Thoughts on current freelance/fractional work platforms

Many of these abound but these are the problems I found that make them untrustworthy or unsavory to use (both as company and as freelancer):

- they don't focus on experienced talent which makes finding proven talent on these platforms a needle in haystack problem (upwork)

- the platform tries to be the middleman and take a cut of true freelancer rate (toptal)

- they'll make you jump through multiple screening hoops in their pursuit of top 1%/3% bs marketing (toptal + others)

You either spending a ton of time finding people and projects and sifting through low quality talent + low paid work or the platform will take a cut.

I keep thinking there must be room for a niche (small overall size) marketplace that focuses on proven (experienced) talent only as evident from their past companies/roles and does not try to dip into earnings.

What do you think?