A new Chicago platform that launched in beta mode this month wants to help your workplace better consolidate and organize online information you use every day.
The tool, named Slinkky, derived from “shared links,” was founded by Michael Williams, a product manager at Chicago tech company Uptake. The free online platform can be accessed in any web browser or through a Google Chrome extension. A Firefox extension is slated to be released later this year.
Similar to Slack, the team-oriented messaging system, companies can create a Slinkky account, which lets them add or remove employees as needed. The platform allows users to organize bookmarks with tags and boards, similar to Pinterest. Williams said Slinkky can be especially useful for teams who share and refer to several online documents on a daily basis.
“Let’s say you have a new version of a document that comes out, you just have to go and update that link once in Slinkky, and then everyone on your team instantly has access to the most recent [version],” Williams said.
Employees spend up to 20 percent of their day trying to locate information they need to do their job, according to a McKinsey study. And the wasted time is estimated to cost businesses about $900 billion every year.
Williams came up with the idea for Slinkky while working at Chicago-based IT company NeoGrid International, which now uses Slinkky in their everyday operations.
“Everyone had 50 bookmarks associated with work on their machines, and it was super confusing,” Williams said. “People were struggling to find the right the link. So, I thought, ‘How can I build something to consolidate this information in one place?’”
Slinkky, which has about 50 users to date, is slated to officially launch within the next six months, Williams said. He has bootstrapped the idea so far, and said there aren’t any plans to launch a fundraising round. For now, he’s focusing on adding more users.
“I want Slinkky to be a product that, even though you use it at work, it’s something that you enjoy using,” he said.
