

FreshBooks Allows Freelancers to Network and Collaborate - 3pt14159
http://mashable.com/2009/05/07/freshbooks-saan/

======
tdavis
This is actually pretty sweet. When I was freelancing there were times when I
was presented with pieces of a project that I didn't feel like doing, wasn't
efficient enough at to warrant it, or didn't quite feel qualified to do. I
thought, "How nice it would be to be able to just pawn this off on a capable
fellow freelancer and have them bill me." But I didn't really personally know
any better than me and I wasn't about to trust it to something like Elance --
it was my name at risk, after all.

I don't know if this is meant to be a thing you do manually, e.g. you already
know other freelancers, but if it is a discovery process I hope it supports
ratings and reviews from other freelancers and stuff so people can be vetted.
There are lots of other features that would be cool, but I won't comment on it
as I'm not sure what has and hasn't been implemented/planned already.

~~~
sunir
The new features announced today are about working with freelances. The new
features don't help you find new freelancers, but FreshBooks has been doing
some things to make that easier. First, our forum has a gig board
(<http://community.freshbooks.com/forums/viewforum.php?id=23>) where customers
frequently hook up. Second, we tend to fly around the country have have
dinners to introduce customers to each other.

\-- Sunir, Chief Handshaker, FreshBooks

~~~
tdavis
Okay, so I guess I'm saying it _should_ be easier ;)

You have places like Elance where people can find freelancers / contractors to
do work for them and you have places like LinkedIn for finding employees, but
there doesn't seem to be anywhere to find fellow freelancing folks to trade /
refer work with. You're already letting them bill each other, so why not help
them find each other in the first place? I think a lot of independent folks
could be a lot more successful if they had even a small network of fellow
freelancers they know they can trust to do good work in areas where they
aren't experts.

~~~
scorpioxy
Offtopic, but why don't you try to do that here?

------
3pt14159
I work for FreshBooks as Market Intelligence Manager (a data analyst role).
This is our latest product dev/marketing push.

I linked to the mashable article because I think it does a pretty good job at
describing this release. I would love to hear any feedback you guys have to
offer.

Our CEO (Mike McDerment) highly respects the opinion of the posters here, so
any comments will go right to the top. Thanks a bunch guys! -Zach Aysan

