Building a product for a problem we'd experienced ourselves

NEXTFREE helped freelancers and contractors share their availability for new work with recruiters.

The idea for NEXTFREE came from a problem my co-founder and I had experienced ourselves.

As freelancers, finding the next project often started long before the current one had finished. Keeping recruiters up to date with our availability meant repeating the same conversations over and over again, and it felt like there had to be a better way.

So we built one.

NEXTFREE gave freelancers a simple way to publish when they’d next be available for work, making it easier for recruiters to find people at the right time.

Over the following six years, thousands of freelancers joined the platform. Building a product for a community we were part of meant we were constantly learning, testing ideas and refining the experience based on real feedback.

One small design decision has stuck with me ever since.

We used to email members shortly before the date they’d said they would next be available, asking them to update it if their plans had changed. If the date was still correct, they didn’t need to do anything.

The problem was that “no change” and “no response” looked exactly the same.

Curious how experiences like this have shaped my approach?

Many of the principles that guide how I build products were shaped by experiences like this, where seemingly simple decisions often reveal unexpected complexity.