58 START-UP ALLEY Nodal UK
NODAL UK
COUNTRY: UK STARTED: 2017
so we’re looking at buying recruiters to allows us access to entire databases of people, to extend our market share.” Nodal was initially financed through Hibbs-Brockway’s own personal wealth, but it has since received early stage investment from ABH management to help with its expansion. The platform has also made significant inroads into other industries, such as construction, where the challenges of skills verification and late payment are also pressing. Specialist recruitment agency Minstrell has signed up to the platform in a £250m deal, and will use its vendor management tools to manage the 20,000 contractors on its books. Nodal is also working closely with architectural design firm Foster & Partners, creative studio Access VFX and award-winning VFX company, Union VFX. Nodal is currently focused on the UK, and plans to grow in territories where its chief clients have offices. WE’RE AIMING TO DECENTRALISE THE GIG ECONOMY TO PROVIDE MORE SECURITY TO PEOPLE WHO WORK
Founded two years ago by former stockbroker and self-taught computer programmer, Oliver Hibbs-Brockway, Nodal is a marketplace for freelance talent working in the creative industries. The platform claims to address the particular challenges faced by film and TV production industries, where independent production companies and post houses exist on a skeleton staff and scale up and down, depending on demand. Nodal claims to help production folk and heads of department find the right people with the right skills as well as handling the on-boarding, timesheets, invoicing and payments. For freelancers who sign up to the service, the platform is another means of finding new projects and one that guarantees weekly payments – a bold move that addresses the industry- wide issue of late payments. According to Hibbs-Brockway the platform’s first enabler is trust. Paying freelancers weekly regardless of cashflow, he argues, is no different to the way Uber operates, where you can book a car for a £50 trip even if you only have £5 in your account. “Uber will still pay the driver – but you can’t book another car until you pay that debt.” Nodal’s second enabler is a customised blockchain, which it uses to verify the skills and experience of freelancers as each job they work on is recorded on an indelible ledger, along with recommendations and references. “The verification and recommendation process puts the employer’s mind to rest – they get to know how senior they are, or what exactly they contributed to, in their showreel,” he says. All payments coming in and out of the system are made in fiat currency – Maya artists will not be paid in bitcoin or tokens – but the terms of those payments are recorded through blockchain’s system of automated smart contracts. Other parts of the recruitment process are also automated in this way including timesheets which can be instantly recognised against invoices.
The overall vision, he says, is to build a trust economy that changes the way people work and interact with each other. ”We’re aiming to decentralise the current gig economy to provide more security to people who work and book their income in a modular way.” The platform, which launched last month, plans to charge the client 8% of the daily rate of the freelancer. While the firm is keeping freelancer sign-ups under wraps, it is planning a strong social media and OOH advertising campaign and has hired PR firm MC Saatchi on a £500,000 annual retainer. Hibbs-Brockway has also splashed out on staff, hiring some key industry figures in the post industry, including former Rushes MD Joce Capper, who has joined the start-up as its head of community; and The Mill’s former talent director Garreth Gaydon. Other hires to Nodal’s 40-strong team include former BBC procurement staff, UX and UI experts, systems architects and business analysts. While many start-ups would baulk at these overheads and the size of the operation Hibbs-Brockway appears unfazed, adding that the next stage in the roadmap is M&A activity. “We started small, but it’s become a big undertaking because VFX and the creative industries is a big market – it’s worth over $30bn,
GIG ECONOMY Nodal is a platform that helps creative freelancers get paid while helping companies find skilled workers
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