Third Summit Acquires Freelancer Platform Blis

Acquisition boosts the launch of Third Summit’s own talent marketplace, launching spring 2020

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–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.”

Alteon Community, as well as its content management arm (Alteon Cloud) and payment processor (Alteon Pay), are scheduled to launch in spring 2020. For more, visit alteon.io.

About Third Summit Corporation: Third Summit is assembling a collective of agile companies that offer full-stack, enterprise-level digital media and advertising solutions to the mid-tier marketplace. Third Summit helps independent creators, small agencies, developing brands and corporate in-house teams attain workflows and technology that would otherwise be inaccessible, competing with multinational agencies while retaining the agility of a startup. For more, visit thirdsummit.com.

About Blis: Blis is an on-demand staffing platform for businesses to connect with the world’s top creative and technical professionals to fill their immediate project needs anywhere in the world. They solve the creative and technical staffing problem for Fortune 500 companies as well as small-to-medium-sized businesses (such as advertising content, corporate lives streams, film/TV production and independent projects). Blis allows companies to manage the unpredictability that comes with fast-paced productions by quickly matching teams with vetted, qualified, highly skilled professionals who can execute their vision. The company is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. For more, visit blis.io.

Contacts

Michael Fraiman, michael.fraiman@thirdsummit.com