PubLoft is Turning Into Marketplace and We Need Your Help
PubLoft is at a pivotal point, and I need your help to get over the hump
TLDR — PubLoft is trying a new marketplace model and is looking for customers to try it out. If you don’t have a “go to” for freelancers, yet, i’d love to chat for 15 minutes.
In 2019, we like to just paint the positives online. Showing our best selves. I’m a culprit of this too. It probably looks like we are killing it online. At least that’s how i’m making it seem. In reality, startup land is a roller coaster.
The honest truth
PubLoft stormed into 2019 with $25,000 MRR. In early 2019, we applied for Jason Calacanis’s LAUNCH Accelerator, and got in a few weeks later. As this was happening, we were dealing with our first customer churn since PubLoft 2.0 started. We lost three customers right before the accelerator started, and we ended up at $16,000 on day one of the accelerator.
I sold my heart out, as I tend to do, and got it back up to $23,000 MRR within one month, but after our biggest/anchor customer outgrew us + a few smaller customers couldn’t afford us anymore, we were back down to $13,000 MRR. This all has happened as we’ve been in the LAUNCH Accelerator pitching investors every week. In short, it’s been a wild ride.
Being in LAUNCH helped us realize that we were building an agency without knowing it. It wasn’t a managed marketplace. It was a straight up agency and I was lying to myself. And I have a sense that Jason and the LAUNCH Team accepted us to their program as a bet on the team, hoping we would have this realization and figure out a new model that scales properly. Well, we’ve been looking for a new model for the last three weeks or so. A model that still works for freelancers. Because it still sucks to be new on the block as a freelancer, even in 2019.
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After cycling through building tools for freelancers, a paid community for freelancers, and even talking about communities for young ambitious people, we stopped brainstorming ideas and went back to the reason we even keep working on PubLoft.
The reason we started PubLoft was because we believe in a better future of work. We see a future where people like their jobs, can work from anywhere, and where people are generally happier and more connected. I also believe that the future of work is freelance when a company figures out how to make it easier to get into and stick with. So with that in mind, what would be the biggest way to remove friction from being freelancer?
Their #1 problem was finding work. Before, we were charging high and finding premium freelancers to pay $150-$200/post to fulfill the customer requirements. This model is high touch from PubLoft’s internal team, and this doesn’t scale too well, which means we aren’t giving people a chance to get into freelance for a living. We wouldn’t have solved the problem we set out to solve, so something had to change. Here are our thoughts.
We are thinking of becoming something like a marketplace
Our idea is to turn PubLoft into a better marketplace(ish) where you can work with writers, editors, researchers, etc. who are skilled at their craft and want to make a freelance career out of it.
You tell us your budget and needs, we’ll tell you the freelancers that work within your budget, and within 24 hours we can place a freelancer in your slack or internal communication tool. They are like a part of your team, and when you need other freelancers, we can add them to your team seamlessly. We handle the payments and if your freelancer isn’t performing, we match you with a new one at the same rate.
Now, for my ask. We are at a pivotal point in PubLoft’s life and if there was ever a time you wanted to help out a friend, now is that time. I have one simple ask.
