:quality(75)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/bloomberglinea/QDD5WI5BYVCKFAERKMCPTDQFZE.png "Rock Content matches creators with enterprise clients, making the whole project management cycle a little easier.")
Miami — Rock Content today announced the close of a $30 million Series B round. Rock Content offers a marketplace for creators: think content writers, digital marketers and designers, and also offers consulting to enterprise customers who have digital marketing needs, of which they have more than 2,500.
Unlike other freelance marketplaces such as UpWork, Rock Content matches enterprise clients with freelancers and oversees the projects, while UpWork just lets everyone fend for themselves. Rock Content has more than 80,000 creatives on its platform.
“They [clients] come to us not because they are looking for a cheap alternative, they want us to find the right people for them,” said Diego Gomes, Rock Content’s co-founder and CEO.
:quality(75)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/bloomberglinea/4OLZRPVDUVDTRNFHUXJTUJ4OQY.jpg "Diego Gomes, Rock Content co-founder and CEO")
The company counts FedEx, DHL, and Oracle as some of its clients, which would explain how they’ve been able to be profitable for “most of our journey,” said Gomes.
The round was led by existing investor Unbox Capital, with the participation of Provence Capital, and joined by new players including the BTG High Growth Opportunity Fund, and Crescera Capital.
Rock Content was founded in Brazil in 2013 and has raised a total of $40 million, not that much for a company with 500 employees, but Gomes credits this to their ability to be extremely capital efficient since they were “born” in LatAm.
The company, started by former bloggers, first expanded to Mexico and then to the U.S. and Canada, and one of their competitive advantages to other North American freelance marketplaces is that they can offer content in various languages.
“What we noticed is that the largest customers wanted to work with one content vendor, but in multiple languages. The CMO’s, when they come to us, usually complain about the challenges of managing global marketing programs,” Gomes told Bloomberg Línea.
While the company still services many clients in Mexico and Brazil, now about 60% of its revenues come from the U.S. and Canada.
“Rock Content has the ability to operate in a wide range of markets, and within different cultures. This ability, in combination with its unique product innovation capability, places them in a privileged position to lead content marketing strategies for brands around the world,” said Unbox Capital’s Founder Patricia Moraes.
Because the founders worked at digital marketing agencies and blogged as a side gig, they understand both the freelancers and the corporate clients very well. In fact, Gomes said that most of their freelancers have full time jobs, and “blog about things they are passionate about,” which was his case, too. He did say, however, that they do have some full-time freelancers on the platform and the top talent can make about $100,000 per year.
“I started blogging when I was a bachelor in college, and I was really interested in learning about startups and covering startups back in 2007, and a few years later, we understood that brands need to become publishers,” said Gomes. “So, we decided to start building a marketplace for creative communities,” he added.
In addition to its fast growth, Gomes said the company doubled its revenues in 2020. In 2019 the company made two acquisitions, one of Brazilian iClips, a software company for agency project management and the other of ScribbleLive, a North American company.
