For any business, from a startup to a large company, mundane, yet time-intensive tasks like transcribing video or removing spam comments from blogs, can be a waste of employee time. TechCrunch50 startup CrowdFlower CrowdFlower provides Labor as a Service (LaaS) by letting clients access an always-on, scalable workforce. Unlike traditional methods of outsourcing and hiring, CrowdFlower’s web offering lets businesses instantly access thousands of workers without picking up the phone. Here's how it works. If a company has a transcribing task, the administrator can fill out a task form on CrowdFlower. Once all the fields are filled out, CrowdFlowers will price the task based on the amount of time it takes to perform the assignment per unit. The startup will break the task into units that can be performed by a single person and price the task accordingly. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco