The better way
to manage freelance projects.
Connect, collaborate and create projects with fractional experts, freelance executors, creative consultants, and specialists agency founders. Let us handle the rest.
We're backed by the
Trusted by
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Everything you need to start and grow your fractional career.
Our mission is to build a space which empowers freelancers, fractional professionals, and small digital agency owners to progress their careers, grow their businesses, collaborate, and earn more. Rafiki X is in private beta. We're currently testing and iterating internally. Soon we'll be testing with a handful of Rafiki community members.
Access international projects, create your own pop-up agencies, & earn more.
By taking a 'talent-first' approach to our ecosystem, we're focussed on building the best possible platform for freelancers. We're making it easier to sub contract your own pop-up teams in a fast, flexible way, so you can close larger clients, while our project-management-tool helps reduce the risk of scope creep or delayed payments.
Connect, collaborate, and create with exceptionally passionate talent.
We believe freelancing should be done in teams. We want you to close larger, ongoing clients while collaborating with complementary freelancers. We're curating a diverse, exclusive community of freelancers, consultants, agency founders, and fractional specialists. Collaborate, or get help from them - that's what they're there for!
Late payments? Risky projects? Not anymore.
We've been there. Burnt by a client. Cashflow disaster. De-risk your projects with automated invoicing and continuous sign-off. Get paid quickly, more frequently, while keeping your clients happy at every (baby) step of the way.
Your career, your clients, your fractional team, sorted.
Leverage Rafiki’s talent tool to filter, find, and collaborate with skill-specific talent in Africa. Get hands-on support with projects, proposals, or expert advice, or become one of Rafiki's experts in residence.
Hire one, or build your own pop-up team of fractional specialists. We’ll take care of payments across multiple resources with one easy payment.
Collaborate
Looking for help with a project? Need to create a pop-up team for a larger client? Perhaps you’ve got your own team already, but need help subcontracting and project managing your team? We’ll help you connect, collaborate, and create winning proposals to close larger clients.
Earn More
Time is money, and we’ll help you win back your time through smart invoicing, project management, and by driving demand into our platform. Rafiki doesn’t cut into your earnings, so you’ll also earn whatever you and your client decide your project fee is.
Risk Less
Heard of scope creep? Sure you have. It’s the bane of any freelancer’s life. Delayed payments and cash-flow problems? For sure! Our unique project management tooling de-risks your freelance projects, allowing you, and your clients, to move faster with continuous sign-off and payment structures.
Service demand and collaborate with specialists in:
Work with the right talent, at the right place, at the right time.
We're helping top startups and SMBs manage their flexible workforce in an easy, safeguarded, and managed way. Leverage fractional experts, freelance executors, creative consultants, and specialists agency founders with software-specific industry expertise.
A highly curated community of independent talent.
Access and manage software or industry specific skills directly. Get your whole project team from top, specialist talent.
We're not another open talent marketplace. We're highly curated, and do everything we can to help you identity needs, validate your resource assumptions, and manage your freelance needs.
Everything, and everyone, you need to build and grow your business.
We've focussed our community on specific skills and softwares required for every step of your business growth. From experts in user interviews, creative strategist, brand building and product designers, to developers and marketing specialists. We'll help you figure out what freelance talent you need, when, where, and how.
Simple payments and safeguarded scopes.
We're focussed on creating the best-in-class project management processes for your contingent workforce and freelance projects. One payment into the platform covers multiple freelance payments, unlocked at outcomes based milestones.
Project-management-as-a-service.
Leverage Rafiki’s internal team to help you validate your resource assumptions, identify the ideal freelancer or pop-up team, help create your project and milestones, and manage your freelancers from start to finish.
High Value
Our approach to talent blends specialist expertise with hands-on consultancy.
Get access to highly-skilled resources quickly, and on a flexible basis.
Cost Effective
There's no need to commit to long-term, full-time hires anymore. Keep your internal team lean, and leverage cost-effective talent as and when your core team requires.
Risk Less
Derisk your contingent workforce or freelance projects through milestone-based, micro-payments, unlocked at every step of the way. Cash flow is king, and we'll help keep your seat at the throne.
Access independent specialists in:
Get Early Access
We’re in private beta, working closely with a handful of agency owners, founders, and freelancers to refine Rafiki X.
FAQs
Everything you need to know about using Rafiki to build your freelance business, grow your agency, or find the right fractional talent to grow your company.
Rafiki X is a SaaS enabled marketplace for freelance and fractional project management. We're focussed making it easy and super effective to manage freelance, consultant, or independent agency contracts on an ongoing basis. By derisking the relationship between clients and freelance projects through smart invoicing and project management, we make it easy for both talent and founders to manage projects and independent workforces.
We're very focussed on derisking the relationship between independent talent and founders, startups, and SMBs. Our approach to invoicing, subcontracting, sourcing, vetting, placement, and project management as a service addresses this. We've got a highly curated talent marketplace, but can also be used as a standalone SaaS for your freelance career or contingent workforce.
We're making payments across multiple resources easy, with a single payment into our platform, paid out to freelancers as and when agreed on during project-specific agreements. Our platform uses a milestone-based payments approach. At Rafiki, we trust Stripe for our payment processing. That means you're using the best security tools and practices out there to keep things safe and sound.
Milestone projects break down big tasks into smaller, manageable phases with specific due dates, deliverables, and micro-payments. We've found this approach perfect for a safeguarded approach to projects and ensuring continuous sign-off and alignment, especially for fractional relationships.
Each milestone gets funded separately, and work begins only after the payment is deposited. Here’s the process:
- Payment Deposit: The client deposits the payment at the start of each milestone.
- Secure Holding: Payments are securely held by Stripe until the client approves the deliverables.
- Release of Funds: Once approved, the funds are released to the contractor.
- Subsequent Milestones: For the next milestone, the client needs to deposit the payment before work can continue.
Rafiki X is for freelancers, consultants, fractional professionals, small & independent agency owners, founders, startups, and SMBs. Our specialist focus is on ensuring we have the best utility for freelance and fractional talent building their careers, and for anyone leveraging this talent for ongoing work, on a highly customisable basis.