Why are we taking down our freelancer marketplace
First of all, what is Maven Access
Maven Access is a Marketing Tech (MarTech) Startup. We aim to simplify content creation with a freelancer platform and AI tools. It’s all about creating the future workplace. We envision everyone works on anything they love, with anyone they like at anytime they want.
Our core value: time-saving. We started Maven Access as we want to save time for the workforce. That will never be changed nor pivoted, despite our products have changed a couple of times.
We do it by reducing the friction of workflows between parties. That is where our freelancers, content collaboration tools, and NLP prediction model come in.
Why did we exist?
We believe in 2 things by heart in our business.
- Freelancing and remote working is the future of work.
- Content marketing is the future of marketing.
“Maven (n.) One who is experienced or knowledgeable.”
The inspiration of the name “Maven” was from the book “the tipping point” by the author, Malcolm Gladwell on how small things can make a big difference. We aspire to make a big influence in the world with a small impact each time. We embrace the concept of the connector, maven, and salesperson mentioned in the book.
We believe creators are the domain knowledge experts — Mavens. They will never be replaced. Whereas a good product along with good content carries the “salesperson” effect already. Technology is the best “connector” now to bring us together.
Bottom line — we aspire to become an organization that helps people to sell, market, and work more effectively.
So… what happened with the marketplace?
Hey, Airbnb has launched 3 times before they hit the grand slam! We’ve discovered a way that wasn’t optimal for us — a good sign!
We started out as a freelancer platform focusing on all the content writers such as copywriters, translators etc. in Asia cities. We connect SMEs and Small agencies to find and work with the local freelance talents directly.
The bright side of it:
We managed to acquire talents that are super experienced in their respective domains. Close to 80% of our freelance talents are from the industry: being either a journalist or a PR practitioner. They know their stuff, they know their fields. Our projects come from different industries. From co-working space, e-Commerce companies, F&B companies, and fashion startups. On the B2B side, we’ve served investment institutions, professional conferences, publications and more.
Now to the not-so-bright side of it:
Most of our clients are from Hong Kong, with some from the UK, Brazil, and Singapore. They don’t quite adopt the model of “marketplace”. Meaning most of the time, most companies would rather go through us through the offline medium, either phone, texts. On the other hand, due to our freelancers’ identity by day, a lot of them chose to stay anonymous and let us handle the communications.
We once again became a traditional agency with many inefficiencies at work.
But there goes a learning part!
Our lessons learned
First lesson
We learned that our marketplace product isn’t a perfect solution. There are many ways to perfect it and tweak it to suit the use case.
The second lesson
A more valuable one. Is the workflow of our clients. How to better create a product for them. Finding a freelancer for them isn’t the end. Many of our current clients may not have a strategy in place at first. And they don’t have the right way to manage all the people, content projects and content assets.
To solve this, we have launching our new product Maven CORE. The original marketplace feature will integrate into the system. All content and information will stay safe and is well kept in our internal system as well.
Company users can now create content projects on Maven CORE. For each project, you get to collaborate with a set of involved stakeholders. And only relevant people can view and access the project content and assets. You get to create and edit content on the spot; checking all previous versions as references without even switching a tab. Approval process and project management are so much easier.
Benefits of merging the marketplace into Maven CORE
1. Better security
Previously, as an open platform, many users have raised concerns regarding security and privacy. With an enhanced back-end infrastructure, we protect your personal and project information even better now. Collaborators can only view the content and assets within the project and nothing more. For managers perspective, it’s much easier to control the access right level.
2. Onboard the right people to each project.
In each project, you could invite your collaborators to it. No matter your in-house team, vendors, agencies or freelancers. If they belong to your network or your vendor’s network, just a click will drag them to the project.
3. You still get to find freelancers, but just much easier.
If you need help out of your network’s expertise, hiring freelancer is just one click away. This is how you can access our original marketplace freelancers — by system’s network. But this time, with a much easier communication flow. And the freelancer will be masked yet with our verified badge after the vetting process.
4. Tracking tasks and assignment
We often set milestones for a project. Such as “having research done by xxx”, “completing draft 1”, “adding graphics” etc. You can now set them for each project and track the progress. You can even assign a specific task to a person, regardless of the in-house team or vendor.
What’s next
For company users
If you’re interested in trying Maven CORE or ping me anytime. Are you looking for consultation on content marketing? Or need a curated freelance team to handle content projects? Please fill your brief at Access Link.
For the current freelancer member
Don’t worry at all, your information will be kept safely with us internally and will be integrated into our system.
Most importantly, the default setting will be masked identity, which is equivalent to “Anonymous profile” in the current marketplace set up. Brands will only be able to see your relevant work, portfolio, experience inside Maven CORE as well as our team will curate for them.
For new freelancers
Please sign up your profile here. After submitting the form, our team will be in touch with you and vet your profile accordingly before going into the system.
Most importantly! We appreciate all our users, customers’ support and we will continue on improving our products. This could not be done with us alone. We look forward to hearing all the feedbacks, product comments, feature suggestions from you all. Catch me on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Stay awesome!
Edwin
Founder
Maven Access
This article was originally posted here on Maven Access.
