How Upwork Talent Helped an Investment Company Launch Two AI Businesses

Kinetic Investments is an investment company that invests in startups in the gaming, entertainment, and finance space with approximately 120 websites and 14 businesses in its portfolio. A core pillar of the Kinetic Investments business model is to invest in people, because people are what drives business profitability.

Startup businesses often face the challenge of scaling effectively with limited resources. Part of Kinetic Investments’ business strategy is to provide entrepreneurs with the business and creative mentoring they need to succeed. Another part of its strategy is to help startups find the resources they need to build their teams.

To support business growth while driving cost savings, Kinetic Investments and its portfolio companies leverage a mix of full-time workers and skilled independent talent.

“We work with many talented freelancers who have skills we don’t necessarily need full-time, but rather on a part-time basis,” said David Merry, Partner and Co-Founder at Kinetic investments. “This approach without a doubt has a significant impact on our business, as our other option would be to outsource to agencies, which is far more expensive and time-consuming.”

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to see widespread adoption, two of Kinetic Investments’ portfolio businesses launched AI ventures of their own. Both businesses engaged independent professionals to help take the initial ideas from concept to reality.

Recognizing the need for dedicated AI resources

The demand for AI is increasing across businesses of all sizes and industries, but few reliable, dedicated AI resources are available to learn about the space. Available resources include complex scientific papers and simplistic content on small blogs or forums. General news websites only feature AI content as one category of many.

‍Intent, one of Kinetic Investments’ portfolio companies, recognized the appetite for a centralized, trusted AI news source. Given Intent’s specialty as a digital media and publishing company, the team developed and launched DailyAI.com, a news and media website dedicated specifically to sharing reliable, digestible AI news.

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Similar to the lack of news sources focused exclusively on AI, because generative AI is relatively new and rapidly evolving, learning about the space as a beginner can be daunting. To address this challenge, Kinetic Investments’ portfolio company Intelliquence built a mobile app called ImpactAI, which will be available in the Apple App Store in November 2023. ImpactAI is focused on making platforms like ChatGPT seamless and user-friendly for beginners. The app does this by asking users questions and extracting information about their needs. ImpactAI then seamlessly crafts this information into professionally designed prompts in the background and delivers targeted answers directly to users.

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Engaging skilled freelancers to support new AI businesses

The Kinetic Investments team and their portfolio businesses have successfully engaged independent professionals on Upwork since 2015. Through Upwork, the team can access talent across more than 10,000 skills and a wide range of specialties, including software development, design, content creation, data analysis, and more.

“Upwork is an essential part of every company in our portfolio. It's second nature now to ask whether a role or skills gap is going to be filled by a full-time employee or an independent professional from Upwork,” said Merry.

Intent’s news website, DailyAI.com, is powered by independent professionals, including four to five writers at any given time, editors, and a social media manager. “DailyAI.com is pretty much an Upwork-run business,” shared Merry. “The website is growing gradually as any site does at the beginning. But we feel this is the start of a powerhouse.”

For the ImpactAI mobile app, Intelliquence hired a development agency on Upwork to build the app and a prompt engineer to identify different categories, top questions, and other relevant information for the app. The team is also looking into engaging independent talent for app store optimization and other ImpactAI needs.

Accessing motivated talent across all experience levels

When the ImpactAI team first started looking for prompt engineering talent, they initially engaged two professionals on Upwork for short-term, paid trials. One individual had more writing and prompt engineering experience, while the other had less experience but submitted an engaging proposal and cover letter that stood out from the others.

During the trial period, the less experienced freelancer developed higher quality prompts and generated more creative ideas. The ImpactAI team chose to extend the engagement beyond the initial trial.

“Our company and our portfolio businesses have used Upwork to find workers in just about every field,” explained Merry. “Through the platform, we have the flexibility to find talent from beginners, who are just getting started, to veterans with $1 million in billings. We can also access and engage motivated talent more cost-effectively. This access to talent has changed the dynamics of our business and positively impacted our success.”

The two ventures have also seen crossover with Upwork talent, as the prompt engineer hired for ImpactAI now leverages their AI expertise to write content for DailyAI.com.

“In my experience, it isn’t uncommon for skilled freelancers to cross over to different projects or companies [within our portfolio],” said Merry. “Once we find qualified talent, we naturally want to work with them elsewhere.”

Maximizing ROI with access to global talent

By embracing independent talent rather than exclusively relying on full-time workers, the Kinetic Investments team can connect with talent from around the world, fill skills gaps quickly—at an average of three to four times faster than traditional hiring processes—and reduce operational costs. The team also engages skilled data analysts from Upwork to build tools and monitoring systems to improve ROI for both Kinetic Investments and its portfolio companies.

Whether launching new AI businesses or supporting other initiatives across Kinetic investments’ portfolio, Merry shared that “Upwork is a fundamental part of everything we build.”