Small client asks, turned into paid work
Software Development
Brand
Strategy
Website Design
Zephy turns a client's smallest requests into confirmed, paid tasks, with as little friction as possible. We built it for ourselves, then built it properly: a fully bespoke product, top to bottom and branded end to end.
Where it started
Zephy began as our own problem. After we wrapped a flat-rate project, the small asks kept coming: a quick edit here, a follow-up there. We wanted to stay responsive, but those tasks were awkward to price, annoying to administer, and easy to leave unpaid.
We were quietly underserving the clients we cared about most. So we set out to turn any small request into a confirmed, paid task, with as little friction as possible. The client asks, the scope and price are confirmed, payment clears, the work happens, and the money lands.
Four builds to get it right
We didn't get the tool right on the first try. We got it right on the fourth. The first version wired Webflow forms to Zapier automations: a useful proof, but fragile and painful to maintain.
We moved it into Airtable, alongside our project management, which sharpened the process but bent a billing product to fit a database. A no-code rebuild in Bubble came next, workable for a while, then increasingly costly and hard to manage at scale.
Each version taught us what the product actually needed to do. Once we understood it, we stopped renting other people's tools and built our own.
Built bespoke, top to bottom
This is the first product we've built entirely from scratch, with no CMS or no-code platform underneath. Just a data model shaped around how the business really runs, and a stack we own end to end:
- A custom FastAPI backend on PostgreSQL, with Redis and Celery running jobs, reminders and invoicing
- Multi-tenant Stripe, so every freelancer connects their own account and gets paid directly
- A Next.js app, a marketing site, and a Chrome extension that turns an email into a task without leaving Gmail
- Integrations for Xero, Slack and outbound webhooks, plus branded transactional email
- Priority-based pricing, tax handling, receipts and payouts, modelled in the schema itself
One system, every surface
Alongside the build, we ran a full branding exercise. Zephy takes its name from zephyr, a light wind, carried by an airship that lifts the small stuff off your plate. We tested palettes until one felt unmistakably warm and calm, then turned it into a design system: marigold, royal indigo and warm cream, drawn from a single set of tokens.
That system renders consistently across every surface, the marketing site, the app, the Chrome extension and the emails clients receive. In an age where AI makes generic design cheap, this is how we differentiate: cohesive, brand-forward systems that make a product feel like itself everywhere you meet it.
White-label from day one
Most platforms treat white-labeling as an enterprise upgrade. In Zephy it's the default. Every workspace can run on its own subdomain, with its own logo, colours and email domain, from the very first task.
The freelancer's clients only ever see the freelancer's brand. Zephy stays completely invisible, doing the work in the background while someone else's business takes the credit.
The numbers
Still early, still in beta, and already proving the model.
- $100Ks
- processed through the platform so far
- +40%
- more revenue, as clients pay for faster turnarounds
- Days
- to get paid, not the usual thirty-plus
- One fee
- no tiers and no per-seat pricing, a single flat rate
A product with its own runway
Zephy now runs as its own company, a sibling to Paper Crane under our Aviary banner, the model we use to grow ventures that can stand on their own. It's live in paid beta, with a first group of freelancers using it in production, getting paid faster and earning more for work they were already doing.
It's the clearest example yet of how we work: taking a real problem all the way from idea to incorporated software, brand and design system included.
Lift the small stuff
From an internal fix to a fully bespoke product, Zephy is Paper Crane building software the way we build everything else: carefully, cohesively, and entirely our own.
