Build teams with CollabFinder
I always like to write about the various obstacles that Start-ups have to overcome but one of my favourite issues (and most hated) is finding the right team. Loads of people out there have great ideas but how many of them actually get them off the ground? You might want to build a web app or produce a film but you are only as good as the people around you. Of course it is possible to have multiple skillsets but there are only so many hours in the day. Collaboration is a wonderful thing and there are lots of skilled people out there looking to work on new things.
I have personally failed with a couple of ventures in the past and I found that I always lacked a solid team around me. Wearing a lot of hats is part of the start-up lifestyle but it is difficult to do things alone. If you have a load of cash then of course you can hire a developer or go through an agency but this is a temporary solution. You want people in-house who share your vision, take risks with you and are "partners" as a pose to employees or sub-contractors.
Finding people to join you is tough but CollabFinder is a great solution for this problem. It is an online collaboration platform that helps projects and start-ups to grow by connecting skilled people.
Using the platform you can search for:
Developers
Designers
Artists
Writers
Scientists
Musicians
Film-makers
Product Managers
Engineers
CollabFinder is a young start-up but the team already has some great case studies and success stories under their belt. The City of New York used CollabFinder for the NYC BigApps 2013 competition which was supported by Mayor Bloomberg. There are 664 people and projects in this group and this is just one example.
CollabFinder are hosting groups for communities such as Nesta, Flickr, Ebay, UCLA and UC Berkley amongst others. It is free for individuals to sign up, collaborate and create projects whilst companies and universities pay for a group subscription. This premium feature allows organizations of all shapes and sizes to get their physical networks online so that their members can benefit from the platform. It is a great platform for events, meetups and co-working spaces too and is a lot cheaper than building a bespoke platform.
As a website it is super clean and the user interface is so straightforward that a blind 86 year old tortoise could use it. There are already more than 4000 skilled users on the platform and this number is growing very quickly. There are 497 projects to join so if you are looking to get your hands dirty working on the next big thing then this is your chance.
CollabFinder is run by Sahadeva Hammari, Gil Hildebrand and Simon Lawrence in NYC and they have all created this platform because they needed it themselves. This goes to show that if you have a big problem it pays off to create your own solution. It gets the "useful" badge from me on Simplib. What do you think it should get?
