Blis, freelance platform, has been acquired by Third Summit

Third Summit Corporation is announcing the acquisition of Blis, a digital platform where companies can find and hire freelance content creators, with the ultimate goal of integrating the startup into the overarching Third Summit ecosystem.

Founded by a veteran Silicon Valley duo, Blis has earned acclaim and a loyal user base as a go-to tool for brands and large enterprises to staff up video projects with speed and confidence.

Third Summit’s mission is to reduce the friction currently bogging down brands, studios, agencies and the estimated 4.1 million production freelancers currently working in the U.S. Its flagship platform, Alteon, uses cutting-edge technology to match clients with creators, while providing a single cloud-based media storage and payment solution for both parties. Growing a robust grassroots community of creatives lies at the heart of that mission, and is in keeping with the goals set out by the team at Blis.

Third Summit will maintain and strengthen the startup in the run-up to spring 2020, after which the company will launch Alteon Community—its new, fully integrated talent marketplace—and migrate over existing Blis users and enterprise clients.

“Fundamentally, our companies’ business models and philosophies are very much aligned,” said Matt Cimaglia, co-founder and CEO of Third Summit. “Talking with the founders of Blis, we agreed that the future of work means empowering gig workers to thrive in a world where too many solutions feel like ad hoc afterthoughts. We want to help create jobs and reduce the stress for everyone working in the creative industry, which still relies on many analog processes today.”

Blis, a California-based startup, was co-founded by Damian McKenna—who spent more than 20 years in technology, including leadership roles at Google and Facebook—and Jean-Paul Bonjour, who brings 18 years of leadership experience in engineering and product at Apple. Both founders will join Third Summit from their vantage point in Silicon Valley.

“Third Summit is the absolute perfect partner for us,” McKenna said. “Combining Blis’s intuitive, mobile-focused freelance marketplace solutions for both creative freelancers and enterprises with Third Summit’s full suite of innovative solutions—its marketplace, payments processor and cloud content manager—will bring tremendous value to both our freelancers and our clients.”

SOURCE Third Summit and Blis