Challenge: find a real expert
Since the dawn of time, when a business needs help, they seek out experts, and since the dawn of time, snake oil salesmen have been prevalent. Looking for a social media expert? Just Google “social media expert” and see the 1.16 million results. Or “social media guru” which reveals 2.26 million results, and “social media maven” with over 600k results.
After step one of Googling any combination of these words, you read a few and likely contact the first ones that showed up (they are first in Google for a reason, right?). They tell you about their 3,000 Twitter followers and 2,000 Facebook friends, and you are sold. You don’t know that you need to ask them for a list of brands they have consulted with, or if their expertise is in setting brands up, building a strategy, or fixing failed strategies. You don’t know that their Klout score is irrelevant to their expertise, but they tell you it is, and you don’t know better than to not be impressed.
It isn’t just social media experts, it’s any type of expert, and in some cases, it can be a costly mistake to choose the wrong expert. One such case is when you need help with your website, particularly coding and copy.
That’s where AnyFu comes in. AnyFu is an on-demand technical expertise platform that allows startups, small businesses, and growing companies to find the exact help they need from a curated and concise list of experts that focus on Ruby on Rails, Java, Conversion Rate Optimization, Copywriting, Flash and even Mathematical Modeling. The list goes on and it is likely that the company will continuing adding experts.
The goal of AnyFu is to save businesses time and money with pain free, one-on-one screen-share work sessions, so that rather than back and forth proofs and the like, direct access to an expert can save everyone time, thus money, plus this type of collaboration reduces miscommunication on both ends as to what you are looking for. Additionally, sometimes a brand’s needs vary from simple to extremely complex, which AnyFu is equipped for – most consultants only take on work that is a long term commitment or a large project.
How do you know you’re getting an expert?
Bottom line: AnyFu looks to be extremely picky and experts are vetted by the company’s co-founders Jason Roberts, who also founded Preezo, and Justin Vincent who founded and developed Pluggio and TweetBoard. AnyFu also manages the signing of NDAs and document exchanges, scheduling (and time zone resolution), collecting and forwarding required tax information (1099s and W-9s), invoicing and payment remittance. In other words, they manage the process for you so that you don’t have to become an expert in hiring an expert!
