Founded in 2018, Mavely has grown from three people in a garage to a platform that supports 120,000+ influencers, 550 million influencer-driven purchase paths, and over $1 billion in gross merchandise value. Originally built on Firebase, an application development platform from Google Cloud, Mavely quickly required more robust, scalable infrastructure to support its growing user base.

"A lot of the people we support at Mavely rely on their influencer gig to pay their mortgages," O’Brien explains. "Our platform makes that easier, but they only get paid if we're up and running at all times." That's why the team prioritized reliability and uptime when evaluating cloud providers, along with the ability to host VMs (virtual machines) and autoscale resources to handle peaks and valleys in demand.

Google Cloud stood out for going beyond table stakes to provide a seamless user experience for developers and influencers, with built-in security features and data transparency. The platform also focuses on supporting startups throughout every stage of growth, which gave Mavely the space and opportunity to experiment and scale.

"Our strategy has been to hire really good engineers, but in order for that to work, they need a really strong, clean development environment," O’Brien says. "Google Cloud allows us to operate quicker and with better reliability."

However, to truly empower creators and influencers, Mavely also wanted to provide in-depth insights at every stage of the customer journey. Given that Mavely processes hundreds of millions of data points at every stage of the customer life cycle, the team needed infrastructure that could process data in real time to deliver immediate insights.

"What Google did for search advertising, Mavely is trying to do for creator advertising," O'Brien explains. "The data and interconnected points along the Mavely journey — from the link an influencer creates to the clicks it gets to the sales completed through that link — it all helps our users understand where they’re succeeding and how they can improve their business."

"Crocs is one of Mavely's top-selling brands. With BigQuery, we can show Crocs which types of influencers are promoting its products and who is buying them," O'Brien explains. "Brands can use these insights to optimize their social marketing strategies."

Mavely also uses Cloud SQL to manage application data and ensure high availability, scalability, and performance, and Cloud Storage to securely manage its large quantities of image, video, and user data. Meanwhile, Memorystore for Redis provides fast in-memory data caching to enable quick user experiences, even during peak traffic. Compute Engine underpins this infrastructure to handle traffic surges and ensure platform stability during promotional events and periods of high demand, while Cloud Load Balancing distributes traffic appropriately to further support Mavely's 99.999% uptime.

"Google Cloud enables us to provide the uptime and reliability that creators need to run their businesses," O'Brien says. "By building Mavely on the Google Cloud ecosystem, I can sleep at night knowing our infrastructure will never get in the way of our users earning their livelihood."

By combining this robust infrastructure with a focus on supporting Everyday Influencers®, Mavely has created a holistic solution that goes beyond simple brand-creator connections. It equips influencers with the scalable tools and insights they need to monetize their audiences, empowering a new cohort of digital entrepreneurs.