Software with a Service: Tom Of Hive 25 on why the Best Workforce Tech Comes with Humans Behind It

Pure SaaS had its moment. In a world where anyone can vibe code a front end over a weekend, the software is becoming commodity. What becomes scarce — and valuable — is domain expertise, real customer relationships, and knowing which problems actually matter. Tom Pammenter spent 15 years supplying freelancers in UK broadcast and production. He built Hive 25 to fix the chaotic middle that every FMS ignores — the booking engine where availability and suitability are the foundation, not an afterthought. We're building Human Cloud to aggregate the company side — so businesses discover the right niche specialist like Hive 25 in minutes instead of evaluating hundreds of generic platforms. In this episode, Tom Pammenter shares: Why "Software with a Service" (SWAS) is replacing pure SaaS — buyers want humans and expertise behind the login, not just a platform How Hive 25 replaced a broadcaster's 6-person bookings team with one person and a purpose-built platform The FMS evolution from beautiful idea to heavy workflow — and why niche specialists are winning over generalists Why broadcast has been freelance-first for decades — and it's a preview of where every industry is headed How the booking workflow between onboarding and payment is where the real chaos (and real value) lives Plus Jack Spencer joins with a decade of FMS evolution context. Tom Pammenter is the Founder of Hive 25, a freelance management platform purpose-built for production and broadcast. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is proudly sponsored by: GreenLight.ai, the modern EOR for the modern workforce. Meet GreenLight.ai at https://app.humancloud.com/profile/greenlight-ai About Human Cloud: We help companies find and deploy the right flexible talent solutions in minutes instead of months. We automate discovery, compliance, and orchestration across 1,000+ workforce platforms — so business teams move fast, procurement teams stay in control, and rogue contractor spend turns into a strategic advantage.