#StartupsEverywhere Profile: Tomás Uribe, Co-Founder & CEO, Mavity
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
Providing Low-Cost Remote Design and Audiovisual Teams
Mavity offers businesses a unique chance to find and hire a dream team of creative professionals at a fraction of the traditional cost and time. We talked to Co-Founder and CEO Tomás Uribe about his Colombian background, his experience within the U.S. immigration system, and the impact of having an international workforce.
Tell us about your background. What led you to founding Mavity?
I'm originally from Colombia and moved to New York about 10 years ago. In Colombia, I studied classical composition and worked in various industries as a musician, including advertising and film. I even released two albums and produced other artists. Throughout these experiences, I became increasingly interested in technology.
To pursue this interest, I moved to New York and pursued a master's degree in media technology from Parsons School of Design at The New School. Through Parsons, I became involved in the music tech ecosystem, including platforms like Songza and Spotify. I worked back then with my current co-founder and CTO, Kristian Diaz, and a team to create a music app that would help users discover different music scenes based on their location.
From there, I worked at a variety of places, including at the United Nations and as Head of Marketing at a Brooklyn-based startup. But in all of these positions, I continued to work with the creator economy and creative industries. My background as a musician, which I mentioned previously, meant I had historically worked for myself and I wanted to get back to that. Thus, I began planning to start my own company. After several iterations, Mavity was born. It's been a long journey, but I'm proud of where we are today and am excited to continue building our platform to support creators and businesses alike.
What does Mavity do?
Mavity is a collaboration tool that connects businesses with distributed creative teams. We provide tools to optimize collaboration, communication, project management, and asset delivery. Primarily, Mavity is a platform that helps startups and small businesses with their marketing needs. We understand that these smaller teams often require a lot of marketing collateral, but they may not have the resources to hire a full-fledged agency. On the other hand, traditional talent marketplaces like Fiverr and Upwork offer little to no curation, making the process of finding the right people for the job challenging and time-consuming. This is where Mavity comes in. We offer a curated marketplace that bridges the gap between these two extremes, providing startups with the ideal team members for their creative project needs.
Our primary use case is for startups and small businesses that need to create assets such as pitch decks, marketing materials, and customer testimonials. Customers submit their project information through our platform, and we suggest the best team members for their project based on their previous experience, portfolio, and credentialing. Additionally, we offer a project manager as a service feature to help integrate communication through Slack and other platforms, making it easier to manage the project. Overall, we provide an organization structure that helps startups navigate messy middle tier creative challenges.
What was your experience like immigrating to the U.S.? What should policymakers understand about the system and how it impacts entrepreneurship?
For me, attending a university was the best option to legally immigrate to the country and build a network from scratch. My sister studied at Ohio State University and through a connection with one of her professors, she was able to get sponsored for an H1-B visa through the university. This opened my eyes to the possibilities of building a network through connections with professors. When I arrived in January 2013, I immediately started working with the international students office at The New School. As an international student, I could only work 20 hours a week while enrolled at the university. One of the biggest challenges for international students is the difficulty in finding work opportunities in the U.S., which is not the case in countries like Australia for example, where they have more permissive work rules while studying. In my last semester at school, I started a program called "Interpreneurship," which was inspired by the high percentage of international students at The New School. The program aimed to help students identify their entrepreneurial ideas and potentially get into an accelerator or incubator.
From a policy standpoint, one of the biggest challenges for non-STEM students, like I was, is that we are only eligible for Optional Practical Training (OPT) for one year, whereas STEM students are eligible for longer durations. Entrepreneurs, including tech entrepreneurs, who want to build a business can come from a lot of different backgrounds and fields. Overall, I think it is important to provide more opportunities for international students to work while they are studying in the U.S. and find their entrepreneurial path after graduating. This would not only benefit the students but also greatly contribute to the economy.
You employ both full-time and freelance workers in the U.S., as well as internationally. What has been your experience navigating the various domestic and international employment structures? What should policymakers be aware of?
Legal and tax compliance are some of the main pain points, both for freelancers and startups. It can be challenging for startups to navigate tax compliance if they want to hire someone overseas. There are specific digital platforms that can help navigate this process, however, when hiring one-off freelancers, you don't necessarily need or want to set up a full contractor flow in a compliance platform. And then hiring them as an employee using the employer of record mechanism is incredibly expensive and not practical.
As a startup, we've been focusing on understanding the regulations in different countries, especially in South America. We're starting with Colombia, Mexico, and Argentina, and it’s definitely a challenge. In Colombia, for example, there's no 1099 for freelancers, and there are different income brackets by which you can report income from outside the country. Thankfully there is no liability to us there to ensure freelancers are reporting income and, legally, we cannot force freelancers to report their taxable income. However, it's in our best interest to provide them with tools to do so, so we try to make it as easy for our freelancers as possible. We're also trying to stay up-to-date with complex anti-money laundering regulations for doing cross-border payouts. As a startup, we have to abide by these regulations if we want to do cross-border payouts, which enable us to structure the company the way we do. Overall, navigating these legal and tax compliance structures quickly becomes a central piece of operating a startup, and we're constantly working to stay informed and compliant.
Are there any local, state, or federal startup issues that you think should receive more attention from policymakers?
I've realized that universities can be a great support system for startups. I remember a few years ago, certain universities in New York had incubation programs that sponsored H-1B visas for companies without being subject to the standard cap that H-1B visas have. It was an excellent mechanism to help navigate the different rules and policies that exist. However, it's important to have knowledge and visibility of these mechanisms and rules in order to make the most of them.
Being an international entrepreneur comes with its own set of challenges, like understanding U.S. tax, accounting, retirement fund, and pension fund structures. It can be overwhelming, especially when there are so many acronyms and rules to keep track of. One area I think that's often overlooked is estate planning. It's essential to position oneself correctly to mitigate the potential tax implications of an exit from your startup, especially if one has stakeholders, investors, co-founders, and employees to think about. I believe it's crucial to make information accessible to entrepreneurs and simplify existing policies to help founders navigate them better. As entrepreneurs, we need to be able to leverage available resources and find ways to use them to our advantage.
What are your goals for Mavity moving forward?
When I’m not handling client tasks or the day-to-day challenges that come with building a startup, I am constantly thinking about the short and long-term growth of our company. Currently, we are expanding our team and will soon have 17 members with the addition of another person next month. Our main focus is on establishing a solid foundation for sustainable growth as well as releasing new AI-tools for our more than 15,000 creatives. We are also in the process of finalizing our fundraising round, which has raised a total of $2 million. Looking ahead, our goal is to achieve the milestones we have set for the next 12 months. That's the plan for now, and we're excited to see where it takes us.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
Engine works to ensure that policymakers look for insight from the startup ecosystem when they are considering programs and legislation that affect entrepreneurs. Together, our voice is louder and more effective. Many of our lawmakers do not have first-hand experience with the country's thriving startup ecosystem, so it’s our job to amplify that perspective. To nominate a person, company, or organization to be featured in our #StartupsEverywhere series, email advocacy@engine.is.
