Table offers seamless chat collaboration between companies and freelancers

The great thing about using chat software to facilitate corporate communication is that it makes every employee — no matter how far away — feel engaged in real-time collaboration. But what if you’re a small team that relies on short-term work or a rotating carousel of freelancers? Slack and the like is great, but it’s a pain to juggle permissions.

Part chat app, part freelance connection tool, Table — available now in private beta — is designed to connect smaller teams with freelance resources and help companies communicate with them on a by-project basis, bypassing permissions and red tape to bring a freelancer into a chat.

“You can use it like Slack with your team, but if you want to break out of that and start a Table to exchange information with another party, you can actually do that,” Table CEO Cristian Petschen told TNW. “But the next level, which really differentiates us, is that it’s actually a network.”

The network that Petschen described is essentially a freelancer system built atop Table — doing the work of sites like Freelancer.com (or late-comer LinkedIn) to help connect contract employees to the companies that need them. Table allows freelancers to create profiles based on their skills, and companies to initiate chats with them depending on their level of interest in commitment. A freelancer can be messaged and ultimately brought to a full Table, which allows for whiteboarding and file sharing.

The company has just opened up its program to a private beta, already accumulating more than 5,000 interested users. In the meantime, the team is currently ironing out bugs and working to bring voice capabilities to the product.

Users can sign up today at the company website.

➤ Table