Work with freelancers in your Slack workspace using Gratify
TLDR; I joined Gratify to lead growth and partnerships. We’re hosting a live walkthrough/Q&A on December 8th. You can RSVP for the event here.
I’ve been doing most of my work in Slack for the past few years, and I can say the software has fundamentally changed how I work for the better. I was fortunate to be a part of the Howdy team, one of the first Slack Fund companies. I’ve been excited to see the app directory grow to include lots of neat Slack-focused software since the platform launched in 2015.
In August, with entrepreneurial goals in mind, I resigned from my position at Howdy and decided to spend the rest of the year focusing on Slack. Friendly folks from the Bot Developer Hangout led me to meet James, who was looking for a partner. After talking to him and seeing the product in action, I decided to help him bring Gratify to market. I’m excited to be working on this service and can’t wait to see how it evolves.
Gratify is one of the most useful services for startups and small businesses that I’ve seen. This app, coupled with Slack’s powerful tools, gives organizations an opportunity to work with real freelancers with minimal friction and context-switching. Frictionless, on-demand access to domain experts from within your workspace sure seems like the future of work to me!
Work with real experts to get things done
Gratify enables anyone to bring real freelancers to accomplish tasks in their Slack workplace. We’ve done the work of vetting high-quality freelance designers, developers, writers and other experts who are waiting for tasks to accomplish…and we’ve created a channel by which you can quickly work with people to take care of nearly anything you need done!
Gratify uses a conversational interface combined with Slack’s nifty UI extensions (built with Botkit) to enable this service in your Slack workplace. You describe your task to our app, and with a few keystrokes, your task is broadcasted to our network of vetted freelancers.
Tasks entered into Gratify’s system are sent to our available experts, who will bid on your task if interested. Once a rate has been determined, Gratify brings the expert into a private channel on your workspace so you can communicate in real-time to finalize the work. You can also use Slack’s integrated tools, such as Calls and Posts, to get the work details sorted out together.
When the work is done, you can initiate payment securely via Stripe. Gratify collects a $2 fee from the client when the task is completed, and 5% of the billable amount from the freelancer — all fees included.
The greatest thing we offer is friendly support to help get your tasks done. Sometimes this means contacting people directly when no match was made, usually by helping them better describe their task for our experts. Sometimes it means helping people through the process via live takeover of the bot! Thanks to dashbot, our operators can jump in when we see friction.
We’re committed to building a friendly, inclusive community that results in positive work outcomes, and we take the responsibility seriously. In 2018, we’ll be introducing our code of conduct and blog posts from our community members about their experiences and tips for freelancing online.
Why did we choose Slack?
Slack was a natural choice for Gratify simply because our team was already using this system for work. James wrote extensively about this in his essay “Why We Built Gratify on Slack”. Check it out!
Slack provides a unique set of tools for freelancers and clients to work together without much context-switching. Tools such as Posts, Calls, Screenhero, and the deep Google Drive integrations give clients and freelancers almost everything they need to work together. In the future, we expect clients and freelancers will be using a variety of apps together in shared channels. We’re excited to see what the Slack Platform will enable.
So what could a freelancer do for you today?
Gratify enables a near-frictionless way to hire freelancers from within Slack. Authoring a blog post or creating promotional graphics are things you can easily use Gratify to mark off your to-do list. You save time by immediately broadcasting to our network and connecting to available experts from within your workspace, with little opportunity cost for huge productivity gains.
If you’re working in Slack, I think it’s a no-brainer.
I can say this: our startup employs Gratify experts with great effect. I am currently working with an incredible project manager in Argentina (hey Federico!) to define our onboarding workflow. As a bootstrapped company, we don’t have the resources to hire full or even part-time employees, but we have more work than we can handle, so getting these tasks done on-demand helps us keep an eye on our budget and spend cash on valuable deliverables.
We’re hosting a live walkthrough and Q&A
Join the Gratify team on Friday, December 8th at 2pm CST/ 12pm PST for a live demo of how the service works and get early access to our new referral program! When users sign up with your referral link and create tasks, you get 25% of their Gratify fees FOREVER. Seriously.
If you have any questions about Gratify, or just want to say hello, send me an email or find me on Twitter @esoelzer. Thanks for reading!
