A marked answer on your shortlist in 48 hours.
Your shortlist goes out as a slate in your firm's brand. One tap marks each finalist Meet or Pass, the chase runs itself, and a 90-stroke tally counts your guarantee down. We build it by hand and run it.
$2,500 Slate Build + $690/mo founding. Answered in 48 hours or the setup fee comes back. Live 14 days after your call.
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Finalist 01 · estimator, 9 years
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Finalist 02 · estimator, 6 years
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Finalist 03 · senior estimator, 14 years
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Finalist 04 · estimator, 11 years
The fee is fixed the day you sign it. The back half is where it goes.
On a flat fee, every extra hour and every stalled week comes out of your margin — and a fall-off inside your guarantee means running the whole search a second time for one fee. Pick your volume and read the arithmetic.
recoverable a year, against $8,280 — at this volume the Desk plan at $290/mo is the honest answer.
recoverable a year, against $8,280 — and the owner stops re-formatting documents at 9 p.m.
recoverable a year, against $8,280 — one fall-off avoided pays for the year on its own.
The arithmetic: 3.5 hours of back-half admin per search at $75 an hour; a 55% fill rate; 8% of placements falling off inside the guarantee, each one costing the $6,000 fee you then have to earn twice; and 4.5 days per search of waiting, on a client who answers in six days today instead of inside 48 hours. Those are our assumptions, not your figures — put yours in and the shape does not change.
Three marks, and then the tally.
Shortslate starts where your work already is: the moment the finalists are chosen. It does not touch your sourcing, your screening or your ATS.
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Lay the slate
One page per finalist in your firm's brand, video intro beside the brief, laid in courses like roofing slate. Built by hand at setup, so the styling cannot drift between rounds and nobody rebuilds a document again.
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Mark it
Your client taps Meet or Pass on each finalist. One link, no login, works on a phone. The chase runs itself until every finalist is marked, so nobody writes a reply-watch task again — and you get an answer inside 48 hours.
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Cut the tally
Candidate windows are collected before any slot is offered, so an interview is never booked outside them. Then offer, start, and the 90-stroke tally: check-ins with both sides on day 7, 30, 60 and 90, and a flag the moment either goes quiet.
Finalist 02 · paralegal, 6 years
Tap a mark. Your client never signs in, never downloads a PDF, and never replies to an email thread to tell you. Marked Meet. The interview request goes out inside the windows this candidate already gave us, and the chase on this finalist stops. Marked Pass. The finalist is closed out, the candidate hears back the same day, and you see the reason on the slate.
There is an API behind all of it, so a Mercury coworker can run the desk: post a slate, read the marks, chase, and raise the day-30 flag without a person in the loop.
The build is done by hand. Here is everything in it.
- Shortslate Firm licence$10,680/yr White-label slates, the 48-hour decision loop, availability-first scheduling, offer and start tracking, the 90-stroke tally, and the API. Unlimited recruiters.
- The Slate Build, by hand$2,500 Your brand on the slate, your finalist and brief templates, the intake format that gets an answer in one pass, your guarantee terms encoded as the tally, and your client contact list imported. Your side of it is one 60-minute call and three files.
- The Brief Standard$500 The one-page finalist brief and the intake questions that make a client able to answer without asking you for three more things first.
- Guarantee Watch, loaded at build$2,280/yr Every placement still inside its guarantee window on the day you go live is watched from that day — not just the ones you make afterwards.
- The Second-Invoice Sequence$400 The day-30 and cleared-guarantee messages, written for your firm. Those are the two best moments to invoice and to ask for the next search, and both of them pass unnoticed today.
- Founding price locked$2,400/yr $690 instead of $890, for as long as you stay subscribed.
- API key and a Mercury starter recipeincluded So an AI coworker can run the desk later, whenever you want that.
- Total value, year one$16,360 Your price in year one, founding: $10,780 — $2,500 once, then $690 a month.
Per firm. Never per seat.
You hire and lose recruiters; the price should not move when you do.
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Desk
$1,000 setup, then $290/mo
- One recruiter, three live searches
- White-label slates and the 48-hour loop
- The 90-stroke tally
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Firm — founding
$2,500 Slate Build, then $690/mo · list $890
- Unlimited recruiters and live searches
- Everything in the build above, bonuses included
- Availability-first scheduling and offer tracking
- API access
- Annual: ten months instead of twelve, setup waived
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Firm + Coworker
$2,500 setup, then $1,990/mo
- Everything in Firm
- A Mercury coworker with its own inbox, running Shortslate through the API
- It posts the slate, chases, schedules and raises the flags
Already happy with how you build a shortlist? Guarantee Watch on its own is $190/mo: the day-7, 30, 60 and 90 check-ins and the flag, and nothing else.
Two guarantees, and the conditions in full.
We cannot promise that a client hires, or that a candidate stays. We can promise what Shortslate itself does: your slate gets answered, and a placement going quiet gets flagged.
One stroke a day for the length of your own replacement guarantee. The warm strokes are the check-ins — day 7, 30, 60 and 90 — put to the candidate and to the client. When the ninetieth stroke is cut, the guarantee has cleared: that is the day to invoice what is left and ask for the next search.
A marked answer on each of your first three slates within 48 hours, or your setup fee comes back.
Not "we will try to chase". If the first three slates you send are not marked inside two days, the $2,500 is returned and you keep the templates we built.
Conditions, in full: the shortlist goes out through Shortslate; the client contact is named at kickoff; every finalist on the slate has a video intro attached.
If a placement falls off inside your guarantee window and our checks never raised a flag, you get three months free.
You hear about it from us first, and a quiet week is never a surprise.
Conditions, in full: both sides' contacts are loaded at start, and the check-ins are not switched off.
Ten builds fit before December. That is the whole cohort.
Ten founding firms. Every Slate Build is a brand and template build done by hand, and ten is what fits before the go-live date.
One firm per metro, per specialty. Two competing firms would be putting the same finalists on the same client's desk. This is a constraint of the product, not a sales device.
Friday 20 November 2026. After that the cohort is closed and the next one is priced at list.
Monday 14 December 2026 — built, tested and running before January's hiring season starts.
What firms ask first.
Is this an ATS? Do I have to move anything?
No. Shortslate begins after the finalists are chosen, which is exactly where your ATS stops being useful. Paste or upload the finalists, or wire the API later. Nothing moves.
My clients will not log into another tool.
They never do. The slate is a link, it opens on a phone, and marking a finalist is one tap. There is no account and no password anywhere in your client's path.
What do I actually have to do to go live?
One 60-minute call, your logo and colours, one recent brief, and a list of client contacts. We build the rest by hand. Fourteen days from that call your first slate goes out.
Who records the video intros?
The candidate does, from a link, on their phone, in 60 to 90 seconds. It sits beside the brief. A slate without intros still goes out — the decision guarantee just does not cover it.
We already pay for a scheduler.
Keep it. Shortslate collects the candidate's windows before any time is offered and hands the slot to whatever you book with. Its job is to make sure nothing is offered outside a window.
What happens to my client and candidate data?
It stays yours. We never contact your clients or candidates, and nothing is shared with another firm — which is also why we take only one firm per metro per specialty.
What if it does not work?
Then one of the two guarantees pays out: the setup fee back on the first, three months free on the second. Both conditions are printed above, in full, before you pay anything.
Who runs it once it is live?
We do. TurnKey builds, hosts and maintains it, and you get a person rather than a ticket queue. Shortslate is being built now and goes live for founding firms on 14 December 2026.
Ten firms. Live 14 December 2026.
Tell us what your desk looks like and we will write before anyone else hears. Founding firms lock $690 a month and keep it for as long as they stay.
The $500 reservation is credited in full to your $2,500 Slate Build and is refundable until we deliver — including if we do not build it. Nothing is charged on the early-access list.
You're on the list. We'll write before anyone else hears.