Building a Creative-Talent Marketplace from Idea to Revenue in Dubai
The founder behind Thrilla saw a gap in the Dubai entertainment and events market: creative professionals — actors, models, photographers, DJs, and stylists — struggled to find reliable, well-paid work, while clients wasted time vetting talent through fragmented channels. Thrilla engaged Advantrix Labs to turn this insight into a fully functional two-sided marketplace, starting with an MVP to test demand and progressing through three delivery phases that transformed the product into a self-sustaining booking platform with guaranteed payments and a growing user base.
Project Snapshot
Client profile
Thrilla is a Dubai-based start-up entering the creative talent marketplace space. The founder identified a persistent pain point in the UAE entertainment and events industry: freelance creatives lacked a transparent, trustworthy platform to find work and get paid on time, while clients — production houses, agencies, event organisers, and brands — had no centralised way to discover, vet, and book talent. Before engaging Advantrix Labs, Thrilla existed only as a concept with a clear market hypothesis but no product.
Project goal
Design and build a two-sided marketplace from scratch that delivers the following.
- A talent-facing experience where creatives can build professional profiles, showcase portfolios, set their own rates, and receive booking requests from verified clients
- A client-facing experience where businesses can browse and filter talent by profession, expertise, location, availability, and budget, then book and manage engagements in one place
- A structured job-posting workflow with project descriptions, media attachments, date and location settings, and talent application management
- In-app messaging between talent and clients to negotiate, coordinate, and confirm bookings without leaving the platform
- Guaranteed on-time payment processing that protects talent from late or missed payments — the single biggest pain point in the freelance creative industry
Business challenge
Building a marketplace in a new vertical — creative talent in the UAE — presented several challenges.
- Unvalidated concept: The founder had a strong hypothesis but no product or user base. The first priority was to test demand with a functional MVP before committing to a full-scale build
- Two-sided cold-start problem: Marketplaces must attract both supply (talent) and demand (clients) simultaneously. Without enough talent, clients won’t come; without enough clients, talent won’t stay
- Trust and payment reliability: Freelance creatives in the entertainment industry frequently face delayed or withheld payments. Any platform entering this space needed a payment guarantee to earn trust
- Fragmented competitive landscape: Talent discovery in Dubai happened through word of mouth, Instagram, WhatsApp groups, and traditional agencies that charge high commissions. A new platform had to offer a meaningfully better experience to change behaviour
- Regulatory and cultural considerations: Operating a marketplace in the UAE requires attention to local business practices, multilingual support readiness, and compliance with regional payment and data regulations
Solution
Advantrix Labs partnered with Thrilla as the end-to-end product and engineering team, handling UX/UI design, backend architecture, frontend development, and deployment across four delivery phases.
- Full-service design and UX: We designed every screen from scratch — homepage, onboarding flows, talent profiles, client dashboards, job posting, messaging, and settings — creating a cohesive visual identity and intuitive user experience tailored to creative professionals and the clients who hire them
- MVP launch for market validation: The first phase delivered a functional marketplace with talent registration, client sign-up, profile creation, and basic discovery. This allowed the founder to onboard early users, validate demand, and collect feedback before investing in advanced features
- Smart talent discovery and filtering: A searchable talent directory with filters for profession, expertise, location, gender, budget, availability, and professional skills lets clients find the right creative in seconds. Featured and top-rated profiles surface high-quality supply
- Structured job posting and application flow: Clients post jobs with title, description, location, dates, and optional media. Talent browse opportunities and apply, while clients review applications, view profiles, and confirm bookings — all within the platform
- In-app messaging and collaboration: A real-time messaging system enables direct communication between talent and clients. Conversation threads include profile previews, portfolio access, and booking actions, keeping negotiation and coordination in one place
- Guaranteed payment processing: The platform holds client payments in escrow and releases them to talent on schedule, solving the industry’s biggest trust problem and giving talent confidence to accept bookings through the platform
Solution gallery
Product and workflow visuals from the delivered solution.
Business outcomes
By building Thrilla from concept to live product, Advantrix Labs helped the founder validate a new market, acquire paying customers, and establish a growing creative-talent marketplace in the UAE.
- Validated market demand with paying customers: The MVP attracted both talent and clients within weeks of launch, confirming the founder’s hypothesis and justifying continued investment
- First revenue and positive ROI: Clients began booking and paying talent through the platform during the MVP phase, generating first revenue and demonstrating a viable business model before the full product was complete
- Growing talent supply: Creative professionals joined the platform to access verified, well-paid opportunities. The guaranteed payment model became a key differentiator in recruitment
- Reduced booking friction for clients: Centralising discovery, vetting, communication, and payment in one platform replaced the fragmented workflow of Instagram searches, WhatsApp negotiations, and manual bank transfers
- Foundation for scale: The phased architecture and modular codebase give Thrilla a platform that can expand to new creative verticals, new cities, and new revenue models without re-engineering