There's no trusted space for creators and founders to connect and build together

For founders, finding talented people to work on your startup is challenging.

After spending an average of 3-6 months to raise a seed round, startups use 90% of that funding to hire a team. Still, finding good people is hard. It usually requires access to closed networks and spending ~3 months to close a full-time hire.

Meanwhile, more top creators want flexible, interesting work.

High-quality designers and builders have more time for side projects and freelance careers. They’re looking to work on startups in problem spaces they care about and offer upside potential.

Huddle connects the world's top startup builders with founders

We’re a community-driven platform for founders and builders to connect and build the world’s best companies.

Huddle makes it seamless by:

1. Matching the two based on project industry, timeline and budget
2. Handling payment processing, contracts, etc.
3. Facilitating sweat equity as a form of payment for work done
4. Creating a space for freelance team and founder collaboration

Huddle is a social network for the creator economy

1. Founders pitch the Huddle community on what they’re building and need help with (pitch deck, mobile app, new brand, etc). 
2. We match the creator team for you. No wasted time scrolling freelance marketplaces and interviewing expensive agencies. 
3. Flexible pricing and contracts for fast-moving companies – pay with cash or equity. 
4. Start building and shipping with your team in a dedicated Huddle chat group

What's next

We’re building the Independent Creator HQ where they can manage their payouts, take on new projects and visualize their creative capital investments. 

Coming Sept 2021

Huddle's enabled $343k in creator-founder transactions in 2021

GMV increased by 90% Q4 2020 to Q1 2021 and more than doubled Q1-Q2 2021. Huddle's been averaging 25% MoM growth in 2021 and has positive unit economics.

Huddle launched in Sept 2020 on a simple premise of helping founders spin up super creator teams. Since then 300+ creators have applied to join and 175 founders have applied to get a team.

All traction to-date has been with $0 marketing spent, primarily through viral WOM, a mention in Fortune Magazine and a write-up by Product Hunt.

2021 so far, by the numbers**:

* Positive unit economics means that every Huddle is profitable. The cost of a Huddle will not exceed the price paid by the founder.

** Numbers are current as of July 1, 2021.

Huddle serves entrepreneurial humans

Our creators are a diverse network of top makers and builders with the core skills startups need – design, product, engineering, marketing. With remote and flexible work on the rise, creators join Huddle to run their independent businesses and find work with upside potential (ownership).

Early-stage founders love Huddle because it’s solving a critical pain-point: getting an experienced team to help them build. Since launch we’ve spun up 16 teams for startups, many of which had such success they came back for a second or third team.

We make money when our community of creators make money

We charge a ~25% Service Fee on top of the creator’s rate. 

The fee accounts for access to the curated community, team matching and handling creator payments and contracts. It applies to both cash and sweat equity transactions.

Since we have a slice of every sweat equity deal, Huddle also owns a stake in an index of startups coming through the platform (which means, as an investor, you will too).

The startup and freelance markets are exploding

More people than ever want to be in charge of what they work on and where they work from.

In a recent survey, 53% of Gen Z expect to run their own company and 47% did side hustles this year. Huddle is the place where entrepreneurial talent gathers to build things.

With our current traction and business model, we predict that Huddle will be able to reach $20M in cash transactions by 2023.

Our community-first platform is focused on top talent and early-stage founders

Unlike other freelancer marketplaces like Fiverr or Upwork, Huddle creates a much more curated experience for both founders and top creators. We maintain this by focusing on:

1. Creator ownership: Our sweat equity payment model scalably attracts the top creators and makes them more affordable.
2. A high bar: Huddle’s creators are vetted by experts in the community and join via referral.
3. Community: We’re building an engaged community of creators with more built-in autonomy and collaboration than competitors.

Democratizing access to upside

Huddle makes it easier than ever for founders to get their idea off the ground and for creators to become angel investors.

By removing hurdles for creators to help early startups for ownership, Huddle enables a new category of companies to be built and a new population of equity-holders.

Huddle has raised $1M to-date

Huddle’s been through two rounds of funding from partners including Outlander, Miami Angels, and Backend Capital and strategic creator-angel hybrids.

We are raising up to $1.07M here on Republic at the same deal terms we gave our most recent round of investors.

We’ll use the funding to bring on key hires for our platform and build technology and UX for freelancers and customers.

As an investor in Huddle, you get:

1. A scalable business with positive unit economics from Day 1
2. Percentage ownership in Huddle’s take of sweat equity projects

** Numbers are current as of July 1, 2021.

Founder-creators who have helped startups get to market together since 2016

	Steph spent her career building alongside founders at studios and leading design & product at fast-growing tech companies. She was Head of Product at Mapfit, acq. by Foursquare. Most recently, she was product design manager for self-driving UX at Cruise. She believes creatives are innately entrepreneurial and vice versa.
	Mike's supported the launch of 35+ startups since 2014 as a product strategy consultant, agency executive, angel investor & employee #1 at SuperPhone. Before that Mike had a successful career in technology investment research at Oppenheimer. He believes the next decade of work will be community-powered.