If you’ve ever worked as a freelancer, you know the last thing you want to do — after lining up gigs, submitting your work, and reworking your project (when that last person on the client side decides he or she wants something entirely different) — is to handle all the administrative stuff. Think invoicing. Expenses. Other paperwork.
That’s why a year-old, New York-startup called AND CO is creating a system that does it for you, using both software and live chat support. (Every freelancer gets a personal “chief operator” during working hours.)
AND CO was born at Prehype, a four-year-old design and incubation boutique that produces new ideas for corporate customers. Among other companies to come from its team are the subscription business BarkBox and the office cleaning and management startup Managed by Q.
Prehype founder Henrik Werdelin is a BarkBox founder. Managed by Q cofounder Saman Rahmanian is also a partner at PreHype. Meanwhile, Leif Abraham, a former creative director who joined Prehype in 2014 and was an early employee at BarkBox, is the cofounder and CEO of AND CO. (Abraham says his cofounder, Martin Strutz, also a longtime digital creative, was “like an entrepreneur-in-residence” at Prehype.)
AND CO, which charges a flat $60 a month, focuses largely on freelancers with project workflow, like designers, writers, and developers.
It’s also fairly limited in what it can do — for now.