Crew 2.0 - The future of creative work

The platform looks clean and promising. Just submitted my application. Let's see how it works.

Does Crew just provide referrals for designers & developers? (i.e. what about strategists, information architects, UXers, copywriters, editors, etc?)

Oooo-wee! Phew. We've been working hard for the last months on our biggest update to Crew since we started as a Mailchimp newsletter 3 years ago (http://blog.crew.co/from-a-mailc...). As former independent designers and developers, we made Crew to help creative professionals who know to deliver good work, find a consistent level of good projects to work on. Crew was designed from the start to solve problems we all faced as freelancers: How can I find consistent, high quality work? How can I manage projects better to be happy and have happy clients? How can I do more of the work I love while reducing the time I spend on admin work like legal, accounting, and marketing? How can I make sure people get quality results they’re proud of? Budgeting issues, project delays, poor communication, late payments are just some of the things that tend to creep into a creative project. When things like this happen, you can’t think about making the best product possible. Everyone moves into defensive mode: a death sentence for creative work. We wanted to make a simpler way for everyone to focus more on the creative work than on the ‘other’ stuff that so often gets in the way. In the last 3 years we've made a lot of progress toward this. - We count some of the most talented designers and developers as members. - We vet every project and member before acceptance into Crew. - We turn away more than half the business we get because it’s not the right fit. - We figured out a way to estimate projects instantly. - We found a way to automatically curate projects for quality. - And developed a product that helps reduce a lot of the guesswork in a creative project. With this formula, over $30 million in contracts have been posted on Crew and we’ve doubled twice in the last year. There are currently 1,940 custom apps, websites, and other forms of creative work being made on Crew right now by members that have done work for Uber, Dropbox, Product Hunt, and Square. And we’ve been grateful to already have been a part of turning some incredible ideas into reality: A student building a way for traveling parents to never miss a bedtime story. http://stories.crew.co/archive/c... A father reinventing the home intercom system. http://stories.crew.co/archive/n... A 71-year-old teacher putting a decade and a half’s worth of classroom knowledge in our pockets. http://stories.crew.co/archive/i... Products on Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/@mik... Though we’re happy about this progress, we still didn’t feel our product was up to par. So today we're sharing the latest things we've done to hopefully make creative work even more enjoyable: 1. Real-time everything. No more email. No more forms. Real-time chat with our Happiness team, real-time chat with the collaborators on your project. Since launching real-time chat, the time it’s taken to start a project has plummeted from 48 hours to less than fifteen minutes. 2. Introducing Crewbot (again). She’s been there for years but hasn't been that smart. If you start a project today, you’ll be greeted by our friendly Crewbot, who’ll ask a few questions about your project. She’ll then introduce you to one of our (human) Happiness team members, who’ll take you from there. 3. Access to a Happiness Concierge during your entire project. From the minute you submit your project, to the minute you deploy it for the world to see, you’ll be guided along by your very own Happiness Concierge and have real-time access to your Happiness Concierge right from your project page. 4. Search. Looking for an old message? The Crew FAQ? Your project agreement? Specs? Drafts? A wireframe, perchance? Quickly locate any project detail, no matter how old or obscure. Even if you don't have a project right now, I’d love if you took our new work for a spin. Would love to know if there’s anything you think we could be doing better :) Thanks again for taking the time out of your busy day to check us out. Until we make again, Mikael & Crew team (https://crew.co)

If you want something similar, especially for a long term project, you should also check out Squads (https://bit.ly/kitze-squads) :)

Big congrats on the update to all Crew team! We're in the midst of a 'similar' update at https://en.yeeply.com and it's really inspiring to read your achievements!

Acquired by Dribbble: https://medium.com/@mikaelcho/we...