Shrlock
Make running an HR practice feel like one workspace.
A platform for independent HR consultants. I cofounded Shrlock in 2024 after years at Bambee designing HR software for small businesses, and led product, design, and brand from research through MVP launch.
What Bambee showed me.
Years at Bambee designing HR software for small businesses gave me a clear view of where the market was. Tens of thousands of small companies that couldn't afford in-house HR. Independent HR consultants who ran their practices around the margins of full-time roles. No product built for the way the work was done.
In 2024 the gap widened. As businesses pushed toward efficiency, internal HR teams shrank and the layoff wave moved experienced professionals into consulting. SMB demand kept growing. The consultants stepping up to meet it were still working out of someone else's tools.
The name landed early in the build. Wordplay on Sherlock.
Eighty conversations with the people we built for.
We talked to 80 working HR consultants. The picture was consistent.
The over-tooled cohort was paying around $1,500 a month for four to six SaaS subscriptions and using a fraction of any of them. The under-tooled cohort was running entire practices on spreadsheets, email, and memory. Both groups juggled every client's HR stack on top of their own. Every consultant lost meaningful billable time to call-and-text chaos that never made it to an invoice.
The thesis was clear. One platform, built for how an HR consultant runs a book of clients, would let an experienced consultant take on twice the clients without working twice the hours, and lower the barrier for the next wave stepping into the market.
One workspace per client.
The center of gravity is the client workspace. Each engagement gets its own environment with the consultant's communications, documents, time entries, and compliance context scoped to that client. A cross-client dashboard sits on top so the whole book is visible at a glance.
Six modules ride on the workspace. Client management, staff profiles, projects and tasks, scheduling, time tracking, and billing and invoices. The integrations layer connects each client's existing payroll, HRIS, and recruiting tools (Gusto, BambooHR, Paycom, Rippling, Deel) so the consultant stops switching platforms to do basic work.
What shipped.
Shrlock launched in 2024. The product now serves hundreds of HR consultants. Mikki Forbes invoiced a client $900 more in her first month from billable hours she had previously been losing. Chris Walker reports the platform saves him thirty minutes per invoice, four hours a month of time he was writing off. The pre-seed round closed at $200K against the early traction.