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It's like YouTube for documents explains Tarek Koudsi, cofounder of Hashdoc, a repository for professional documents and templates.

Born into an IT oriented family where programming was a household prerequisite, Tarek developed a knack for coding at a very early age. That skill, which was partly imposed on him due to his family’s involvement in IT as he explained to me, combined with his personal experience in management in the IT industry would eventually lead him many years later to cofounding Hashdoc, a productivity platform and a repository for professional documents and templates.

After college, Tarek occupied several positions in the IT field, which included providing back end services to major financial establishment in the Middle East where he was responsible for the first online trader information network in the region, and later overseeing the implementation of an Oracle system for the municipality of Amman. As he delved deeper into software engineering, those endeavors also grew his interest and knowledge in project management.

One recurring issue that plagued him throughout his career was the lack of documentation that his jobs entailed. Either these documents simply did not exist, or they were disorganized and lacked quality. Whether SWOT analysis, schedules, or even things as simple as a thank you letter template, reinventing the wheel every time took its toll on productivity. Searching the web instead for forms and templates also proved a cumbersome task. 

“Finding the right document in the first place is hard enough, and once you do, you can’t help but ask yourself: is the author credible?”

Enter Hashdoc, a productivity platform where professionals can access and share documents and templates. Hashdoc solves both problems mentioned above. Firstly it provides professionals a central repository to access such documents. Secondly, it organizes data in a clear and consistent manner.

Using an algorithm that tags documents automatically, files can be filtered based on their topic, i.e. “resume”, “sales”, or “accounting” to name a few. Files are also grouped by publisher, or in stacks.

Inspired by YouTube playlists, Stacks are documents bundled together that revolve around a particular process or project. A “content strategy” bundle for example would include editorial strategy, content marketing best practices, content channel distribution strategy, SEO, etc.

Hashdoc is currently limited to invitation only members while the team carefully organizes and curates its content. Eventually, the team is hoping to “create a collaborative movement within the community” where users will organize, edit, and update documents.

You can join the invite list by clicking here. In the meantime, you can treat yourself to some snippets of things to come from their blog here.