Show HN: Real-time freelancer marketplace with per-second billing (gigs.quest)
Problem: Traditional freelancing platforms are slow. You post a job, wait for proposals, interview candidates, negotiate rates, then finally start work. For quick tasks, this is overkill.
Solution: Create a room, describe what you need, and qualified talent joins live within 5-12 minutes. Collaborate via HD video and screen sharing. Pay per second ($0.02/sec = $72/hr). All sessions recorded.
Why this works: • For startups: Get immediate help without hiring overhead • For freelancers: Monetize expertise without bidding/proposals • Trust: All sessions recorded, transparent earnings, Stripe-backed payments
Real use cases from beta: • Debugging production outage (saved 3 hours vs hiring process) • Quick design mockup review (12 min session, $14 cost) • Architecture consultation for new feature (45 min, $54)
Tech details: • Pre-authorization holds that scale (start at $5, double at 80% usage) • LiveKit for video infrastructure • Convex for real-time database • Stripe Connect for instant payouts
Challenges I'm working on: 1. Quality control (how to prevent low-quality participants?) 2. Discovery (how do freelancers find rooms?) 3. Pricing (is $72/hr the right rate?)
I'd love feedback from both sides of the marketplace. What am I missing?
Live at: https://gigs.quest
9 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 23.3 ms ] threadQuality is a tough problem, and I don’t think anyone has managed to solve it. Someone can ace an interview and still be a crappy employee. I think this could sort itself out with time and reputation building, so maybe don’t worry about it.
For finding rooms, it seems like freelancers should be able to describe what they are looking for, and then you match that to a room’s description/ purpose. AI could potentially be beneficial here, as the matching should be fuzzy.
* pay only a platform fee
The entrepreneur chat session should start with an LLM to analyze the task, asks questions and writes an information dense summary as well as an extended one. (rather than the usual truncation) If applicable it should also ask if information from previous jobs should be pulled in. The freelancer will scroll over the open tasks, view the extended description and asks the LLM for further specifics. (to be included in a new short/long description)
The LLM may also send push notifications if your settings, history and profile suggest you are uniquely qualified for the job.
The front page should be a work space with 3 tabs. The default tab is for the tasks currently open. Programmers should not be bothered with endless docs and tons of clicking around, they should type the url and immediately see what they are suppose to do. All other things come second.
Second tab is for posting jobs.
3rd tab is for people who some how ended up on the page not knowing why they are there.
What I like to do is not bother people with registration until it is required. You can spend as much time as you like typing a task description, if you don't actually submit it there is no need to pay or register. They need to write down what is on their mind, it is terrible to bother them with other things.
Good luck!