Hopwork is now… Malt
by Vincent Huguet, ceo and co-founder of Malt (formerly Hopwork) — Ce post est aussi disponible en français.
Today is a big day for us. We are happy to announce that Hopwork becomes Malt.
When Jean-Baptiste, Hugo and I started this journey 4 years ago, our ambition was to make it easier and better for freelancers and companies to work together, but we honestly could not imagine where we would be a few years later. At the time we picked a name — Hopwork — the three of us had no marketing budget whatsoever and we were set on finding a name that would best describe what our service was about.
Today we are a team of 52 between Paris, Lyon and Madrid. We have built a community of 60,000 freelancers. We serve more than 30,000 customers. We have become the leading freelancer platform in France. French startups in France were the early adopters of our service. Now more traditional small and medium businesses have joined them, but also 50% of France’s ‘CAC 40’ (highest market caps) corporations, who enjoy the corporate services we have developed for them.
In four years we have developed a model that is radically different from what other marketplaces offer. Most of the other marketplaces offer tasks or services on demand, rather than talents on demand, which leads to ever lower prices and more and more inefficient offshoring. We are human-centered, not task-centered. We believe freelancers who share your geography and who you truly interact with will do a better job. Our model has proved very successful in France: it is popular with freelancers and companies alike. Now our ambition is to export that model to other countries and we are starting our expansion officially today in Spain with a 6 people team based in Madrid.
Why change ?
There are 4 main reasons why we decided to change before going international:
- Hopwork was a good name, but not a great one. Most of the time we had to spell it. In France, people don’t pronounce the “h”, so obviously they don’t know how to spell “Hopwork”. In Spain where we were testing the market, pronouncing and spelling it felt even less natural.
- We didn’t really like the idea of job “hopping” that evokes insecurity and fickleness. Our platform is not about small gigs or tasks and precariousness. Quite the reverse!
- The word “work” made our service quite explicit, but it evokes 9-to-5 jobs. Moreover, the world of startups is now filled with brands that have the word “work” in them, including one of the US platform that was already present in the freelancers market when we launched and that decided to rebrand itself with a name similar to ours…
- Last but not least, being in an entrepreneurial venture is about taking risks, raising the bar and going through an emotional roller-coaster, but never about settling down. We wanted to build a brand that was closer to what we really are now, as a team and a community and as a service. We’ve grown up and we want everyone else to see the change.
Malt
We assembled a team of 6 + 4 freelancers of our community to work on the new branding. When we found “Malt” we all liked it right away. No one could forget the name. We gave ourselves some time to think about it. And we made up our minds to keep it.
Malt was a name that made sense for many reasons. It fit our initial brief, was short and easy to memorize. It sounded good in all languages. Also Malt even includes the letters “LT”, which was the name of the freelancers cooperative created by JB and Hugo before they co-founded Hopwork. So it gave a sense of continuity. Also we loved the idea of brewing that the word Malt calls to mind. What are we if not a platform for brewing talents (freelancers and customers) so they can do great things together?
Malt also conjures up the figure of the Malter, whose job is to make cereals germinate so beer or whisky (or ovomaltine !) can be made. At Malt we believe in craftsmanship. We believe Taylorism cannot and should not apply to the craft of our freelancers. The creativity and know-how of our developers, designers, product managers… (and all the others) is of the highest value to our customers. And our own “Malters” will form a new breed of craftsmen and craftswomen who will carry these values and take pride in a job well done.
With a new name comes a new identity. As we are launching Malt, we are also introducing a new logo. Our design team worked on this logo with this same idea of reflecting who we are. A key component of the logo is “the brew”, a visual element that suggests brewing talents together, empowering them to do better work, and connecting them with clients.
Malt: Work closer
What else is different? We’ve changed some design elements on our site and our home page that needed refreshing. As for the rest we stay true to our core promise! We will provide the same service, with the same team. We will continue to offer the same dedicated support to our customers and freelancers, with the same love and care. And our purpose remains the same: make work better.
Maltly yours,
Vincent
PS: if you want to stick our new ‘Brew’ logo on your car or your computer, just ask us to send you a bunch of stickers. We’ll be happy to oblige…
PS2: if you have questions or want to know more about Malt, drop us a line at team@malt.com
PS3: our hopwork urls will still be working, don’t worry if you have shared your profile, a quotation… !
