Gaffr - On-Demand Crew Marketplace
An Uber-style marketplace for live-events crew. Clients drop a pin and book verified stage hands, AV techs and general crew on demand or up to 14 days ahead; crew set their own rate and keep all of it; Gaffr charges one transparent flat fee.
The Challenge
Crewing agencies sit between venues and freelancers, taking an opaque cut and running short-notice bookings by phone. Industry veteran Matt Roberts wanted a product that could get a verified crew member booked in under a minute, show both sides exactly who earns what, and pay crew the moment a shift ends. That meant a two-sided mobile marketplace with dispatch, live tracking, card holds, payouts, verification and compliance, taken from a blank repo to app-store builds in a single season.
Our Solution
Hampton joined as technical co-founder and built the whole platform: two branded Expo apps (Gaffr for clients, Gaffr Live for crew) sharing one design system, and a Next.js admin that hosts the entire backend as tRPC routers, Stripe webhooks and sixteen scheduled jobs. Dispatch uses PostGIS proximity rings and first-to-accept matching with optimistic concurrency; payments use Stripe pre-authorisation and capture with automatic re-authorisation across 14-day bookings and Stripe Connect payouts to crew; Supabase Realtime and direct FCM/APNs push keep both apps live. Right-to-work, ID and insurance verification, DSAR export, account erasure and HMRC DAC7 reporting were built in from day one.
Key Features
Results & Impact
Project Details
Technologies Used
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