Eighteen years ago, my journey as a freelancer and consultant began. Over those years, I worked for various organizations, in different roles and teams. What has always fascinated me is how crucial the right match is: not just in skills, but especially in context, trust, and mutual understanding.

Over the past eight years, a second perspective emerged. In addition to my work as a freelancer, I increasingly found myself on the other side of the table: as a hiring (interim) manager responsible for finding and deploying freelance professionals within projects. Since 2016, I have also been the owner of an interim agency with a closed network of interim professionals (freelancers). This combination of roles gave me a unique, yet concerning overall view of the market.

A market that feels awkward

During evaluations with clients of my mediation agency, the same signals repeatedly emerged. Organizations indicated that it was becoming increasingly difficult to find the right freelancers simply because good people are spread all over the market. At the same time, dissatisfaction with traditional intermediaries grew: little transparency, lack of clarity about added value, and especially high, sometimes inexplicable costs.

What clients did want was to work with people from a warm and trusted network. Professionals with whom someone has already worked and whom someone says: “This really fits with you.” That sometimes happened but in an unstructured way and a bit by chance. The reward for such an introduction? A bottle of wine, a promise for later, or a potential counter-introduction. In practice, not much came out of it.

Trust works, but doesn't scale

My own mediation agency deliberately works only with a fixed and trusted network, supplemented with candidates who come in through introductions. That ensures quality and trust but also has a clear limitation: scalability.

And then the penny dropped.

Every freelancer, and every organization often already has a warm network. Only, that network is not optimally utilized. What if we could activate those networks? With ease, transparency, and a fair reward for everyone who contributes to a successful match?

From insight to idea

That insight formed the starting point of Eleanor. We didn’t want to build yet another platform, or job board, revolving around anonymous profiles, bulk matching, and opaque fee structures. We wanted an alternative that genuinely addresses the current pain points in the market:

• impersonal

• non-transparent

• and unfair pricing

The core question became: how do we make activating trusted networks simple, scalable, and fair?

Building together, testing together

In the months that followed, we extensively worked on ideation, together with market experts, recruitment specialists, legal and technical advisors. The concept took shape, and we subsequently tested it via an MVP/pilot.

Important for us: we didn’t do this behind closed doors. Throughout the entire process, we stayed in conversation with freelancers and clients, through surveys and by having independent market research conducted by a research agency. The outcomes were clear: the need was there. Even stronger, the pilot took off.

That was the moment we decided to go all-in with Eleanor.

From MVP to full-fledged product

With a team of product owners, front- & back-end developers, and data science specialists, we set out to develop the MVP into a full-fledged product. A platform that digitalizes, optimizes, and makes the entire freelance recruitment process transparent - from job description to matching, contracting, and payment.

Today, I can proudly say: the product is here!

I am immensely grateful to all partners and advisors who have contributed to this first version of Eleanor. I am especially proud of the collaboration with Rabobank, which has been involved as a partner from the beginning in this journey. For the Eleanor concept also lends itself well to other services our users may need, such as financing or insurance.

The next phase

Now a new phase begins: building the company around the product, with a strong focus on the commercial organization.

We look forward to getting in touch with organizations that already work with freelancers or are considering doing so. For them, we have reimagined the entire freelance recruitment process: more personal, fully compliant with the latest laws and regulations, more transparent, and at fair rates.

Eleanor was born from experience, frustration, and trust in how it can be better. We believe that good people know good people. And if you employ that principle cleverly, fairly, and scalable, everyone gets more opportunities.

That is what Eleanor stands for.