Mark Smith
Upmarqt is a platform for founders to build their team within minutes. We quickly and accurately match startups with qualified specialists and boutique agencies.
Tell us about yourself?
I’m Olga Ten, the Founder of Upmarqt. I started my entrepreneurial journey in early 2022 after 12 years of corporate. During the pandemic I did a lot of thinking about what my real strengths and talents were.
At work I was recognised as an overachiever and so I thought that if I did something that I was truly passionate about, I could really make a difference.
I’m excited by new ideas and the dynamism of startups and my zone of genius is seeing talent in people and creating great connections.
Combining my passion with my corporate background in business launch I felt like I had an idea that could fill a gap in the market. That is where the idea of Upmarqt came from.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Good things happen when you decide to step outside of your comfort zone. So do it with confidence and know that everything will turn out well. All things will fall into place and you will be alright. You don’t need to know how. Opportunities will come out of nowhere. You just need to be open to them.
What problem does your business solve?
Upmarqt saves founders months of time and and money. Every founder knows how difficult it is to find the right talent for your budget and startup stage. We work with early stage founders who want to find fantastic talent fast.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
I see how exhausted founders are, trying to spin a hundred plates at the same time and are struggling to find the right people for their startup. It can be really difficult. Founders spend up to 40% of their time on HR related activies. We try to make things easier for them.
We help them build a great team and at the same time provide training sessions on how to effectively hire and manage a team so that they get the most out of it.
We also offer competence training sessions by our select experts, such as marketing for founders, how to hire a developer, how to create a pitch deck. We offer all this free of charge to help founders succeed and to give them more headspace to work on their vision.
What is your magic sauce?
At Upmarqt, our founders are not presented with a rolodex of specialists but rather only with the right ones for their startup. We understand that finding the right person for your startup.
Our secret sauce is that we accurately match founders with high quality specialists and boutique agencies within minutes. We stay with our founders from startup to scale, understanding the difference in requirements depending on the industry, scale and other needs of every startup.
And we continue to support every founder through training sessions so that he or she can make the right decisions when it comes to team building and is able to get the most out of their team.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
In 5 years, I want to have matched hundreds of thousands of businesses with their ideal specialists. I want to have saved months and millions for these founders. At the same time I want to enable more specialists do what they love rather than focussing on sales and visibility.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
The biggest challenge for me is the fact that as a founder you don’t have the support of corporate resources, where you could just go and ask a colleague. But you are effectively on your own and more often than not you have no idea how you are progressing.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
We are currently in Beta with Upmarqt and are looking for founders who need high quality talent in areas such as development, marketing, project management, fundraising, pitch deck creation, startup mentorship, copywriting and more.
And who are open to give feedback on their experience. Join us here: https://upmarqt.com and we’ll make sure you will find the right talent for your startup. Also you will be able to join our exclusive the training sessions by our experts for founders.
