Originally from Georgia, Abuladze came to the UK to study politics at university. He studied the subject as he had a pure interest in the matter, but after graduating, his career has taken a different path.

“I started doing this because of a first-hand experience. I mean, that's how most startups start, because people experience something themselves,” Abuladze explained.

At university, he saw this big problem play out. Many students pick courses due to their interests with no idea what career they would like to pursue later down the line. There’s also this paradox for recent graduates, where even entry level jobs require experience, but to gain experience, you need a job.

Abuladze explained: “I saw that people, especially university students and the younger generation, had very unique talents that they could monetise and put to use. They could do something very valuable for others. Unfortunately, there are not too many platforms that allow people to do that.

“There are platforms that look at things very professionally. They charge too much, they are very hard to get into. So, there was that problem of utilising the skills of younger people.”

After leaving university, Abuladze was lucky enough to get a job as a Sales Manager at an accounting firm. In this role, he interacted a lot with SMEs, and recalled seeing how these businesses were struggling to complete tasks due to inefficiency and charging too much. Maxximus understands both sides of the equation, and how hard it can be to get a reliable professional in a short timeframe.

“At Maxximus, what we do with the help of AI, we connect people together, and we utilise AI and make it convenient, efficient, and personalised. It can find any professional that customer seeks,  and AI can craft the offer for them, estimate the price, estimate the time, and connect them with the right person.”

The mission

Maxximus is a two-sided marketplace with a two-sided mission. While there are marketplaces out there, Maxximus ensures service providers can be customers, and vice versa, something any marketplace has not attempted to do thus far.

Discussing the mission behind founding Maxximus, he said: “My mission is for anyone to be able to go and go and contribute to others what they're best at, because everyone is best at something …

“Our mission is to not only automate the full service booking for professions, our mission is also to create jobs. People are intrinsically very creative, and when you give people the platform to create new jobs, they can monetise their skills in new ways never imagined.”

“We are doing everything for free for service providers, and that’s very deliberate. I really wanted to make a productive environment for service providers to compete, but fairly compete with each other. So I really wanted to give the opportunity to myself and my generation to really monetise their skills,” Abuladze described.

How it works

Marketplaces operate the same way they always have. However, the world has changed, technology has developed, and Maxximus wants to be the modern answer. One key differentiator is that the site is attempting to provide all services, aiming to replace multiple marketplace apps with just the one. Whether for cleaning, or a therapist, or any other service you may need, it will all be on the one platform.

Entering the website, you are greeted with a chatbot style interface. In your own terms, as a customer, you can describe what your issue is, or can just write some keywords. This is because the hardest part of the problem is finding the first step or identifying a problem.

“Maxximus will be able craft an offer for you in seconds. AI will be able to find you the best, personalised professional, depending on your needs. We not only help you find the professional, but we stay with you until the professional comes and does the work. On the other hand, if it's an online order, we have built in a chat, video call, and audio call, so in case, if you need a therapist, you'll be able to connect with therapists in seconds and then do a live chat or conversation or a video call on Maxximus, so you won't have to leave the platform.”

The experience

Whilst the platform has only just launched, the challenges like with any startup, have been aplenty.

“A challenge from the start was getting the right team,” he explained. “the right team is not only competence and doing some great work, it’s also about being closely aligned with the idea and the plan we have.”

Discussing this further, Abuladze discussed how he spent months recruiting and finding people to work at the company. After all the hard work, he is “sure that we've done a great job, because every person at Maxximus is immensely, very motivated with what they're doing.”

Another issue Abuladze discussed was about going into regulated fields in the UK, where the business is beginning its journey. “We've had to work with three different solicitor firms in three different regulated areas, and we still do work with them to make sure that what we are doing is fully legal. That was a bit challenging too, because many people are just hosting doctors and different professionals, but not many people are facilitating the connection and actually kind of having everything in one platform. So that also comes with kind of legal challenges that we had to overcome.

The third challenge has been scepticism towards the platform from investors. “Two-sided marketplaces are a very underestimated field, from the investor side and from the general public side. There’s many marketplaces, but not many successful marketplaces, and that's because it's incredibly, incredibly hard to scale.”

Speaking with Abuladze before launching, he explained: “We have overcome that with the current traction we have. We have over 220 businesses right now with us already, and we have not even launched yet. That is purely because they align with us on the idea, and on what we're planning. We have also 500 freelancers. So we're also for businesses and for freelancers, as well for individual, self employed people.”

When asked about highlights, he answered honestly and in a way a lot of startup founders can relate to. He said: “To be very honest with you, it’s very hard. Startups in general are hard. I can talk for days about the question you've asked, about overcoming difficulties, because that's all there is until you get something going.”

Milestones for the year ahead

A big milestone for Maxximus will be expanding. After launching at the start of December 2025, the company is operating solely in London. However, it plans to expand to every corner of the UK, hopefully, as soon as possible.

“After doing that and showing our product in the UK, only after that, then the next milestone would be to go and expand outside, in the Europe region primarily.

“I think Europe in general, and startups in Europe, are really not appreciated enough. Everyone is saying the US is the place to start your company and everything. But there’s amazing startups in the UK and Europe.”

Maxximus is currently live, and ready for customers and service providers to use.

For more startup news, check out the other articles on the website, and subscribe to the magazine for free. Listen to The Cereal Entrepreneur podcast for more interviews with entrepreneurs and big-hitters in the startup ecosystem.