
Scale (YC S16) is an API for human labor - stvnchn
http://themacro.com/articles/2016/07/scale/
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ayw
Hey everyone! I'm Alex, co-founder at Scale. Our goal with Scale is to empower
the next generation of human-driven products.

If you have any uses cases in your company or just as a developer, please
email me at alex@scaleapi.com and I'm happy to chat.

I'm also here to answer any questions you have :)

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anandkulkarni
I love this product. We're big believers in what you guys are building, and
the need is real.

As someone who once struggled extensively to use AMT, I think the need here is
genuine and I'm glad to see someone doing it right.

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ayw
Thanks Anand! We truly appreciate all your support and advice :)

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lemnop
How is Scale different from using the Fancy Hands API?
[https://www.fancyhands.com/developer](https://www.fancyhands.com/developer)

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ayw
For one, as a company, we're fully focused on our API (whereas Fancy Hands is
primarily focused on the consumer assistant product). That means they're less
willing and agile to help developers, learn about their use cases, or support
them as they scale.

Another large differentiator is FancyHands has often been too expensive to
scale with companies as they grow, and aren't focused on building the tooling
necessary to make large-scale operations possible.

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bowmessage
How do you deal with human error?

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ayw
Human error is an issue that we're always tackling. First, we're hiring a
really high quality team so we're minimizing error from the start. Beyond
that, we have a review system in place for the human responses, to ensure that
the results are accurate.

This is something that we're always looking to improve and are always building
tooling to solve.

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ph0rque
Oh, I thought you meant manual labor like digging a ditch in my yard.

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ayw
Not yet ;)

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williamgdjones
I think this idea is really on point. But honestly I felt a little bit freaked
out with the tagline 'API for Human Labour', might just be the luddite in me
though.

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FabioFleitas
Quick note - the link to your website is broken in the article

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stvnchn
Good catch! Just fixed it.

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plusepsilon
Looks really good.

How is this different from Crowdflower?
[https://www.crowdflower.com](https://www.crowdflower.com)

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ayw
Thanks!

For now, there are a couple main differences: * High quality team members we
personally vet (vs. the crowdsource model) * Significantly simpler API * We
build all the tooling for our team members ensuring they complete things
efficiently. * Realtime responses, even for low volume

