This Week’s Best In Beta
Which startup is going to be the next big thing? Investors, bloggers, job seekers, and inspiring entrepreneurs everywhere are dying to know. Hundreds of startups enter private beta each month, and that’s far too many for any one person to keep up with. Fret not! Each week, I share some of the hottest new startups in this column, Best In Beta. Let’s discover the next big thing together!
It’s still pretty early to make this call, but, if I had to pick a most likely startup to become the next Google, I’d have to go with Slack.
It’s hard to put your finger on their popularity, but there seems to be no slowing their rise. Team communication, file sharing, storage, channels. It all just works.
So, is it really a stretch to think that before long we’ll be composing documents and doing a number of Googley things in Slack instead? A shift wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
At the moment though, there’s a simple function that I’ve been missing, big time: editing. I don’t check my work on Slack with anywhere near the same care that I do elsewhere. And I hate this.
Even though I’ve been in the professional blogging game for some time now, I still prefer to compose documents using an old school word processing program. I find the editing tools more familiar, more reliable. I check and recheck my emails using Gmail. But with Slack, the story is entirely different. And this is a huge problem as I find myself using Slack more and more and using the mobile app with increasing frequency as well.
Nurtz to the rescue. Nurtz is a “proofreading concierge” in Slack. Without leaving your Slack window, Nurtz hooks you up with a real live human editor to proofread your work at the rate of two cents per word.
No matter what kind of text you have, a Nurtz editor will give your work a read and edit on the fly. The ease of Slack (and the Internet in general) leans toward informality – which is dangerous since Slack is used so heavily for business communication. Nurtz can spare team members a lot of grief by tidying up sloppy language and preventing workers from giving the boss a bad impression.
You set spending limits, so your Nurtz editor doesn’t run wild correcting work that you don’t need checked. All of your correspondence remains private. Nurtz makes sure you keep the same writing standards within Slack that you would outside.
If you’re worried about your professionalism sliding in Slack (like me) and need your text checked for you, type your fingers on over to nurtz.com.
Photo Credits
Nurtz | wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock
