Loaded questions are part-and-parcel of pitch meetings, and Approver developer Jeffrey McManus started his presentation with one, asking the audience if they were satisfied with the current way of sharing and approving documents (read: as email attachments). Not surprisingly, few hands shot up. Mr. McManus thinks he has a better way. “It’s a simple solution to help people collaborate,” he said of Approver. The web-based system lets users create documents on the fly or upload those in a variety of supported formats. Appropriate parties are then contacted, at which point they can also add comments. “It’s an incredibly simple way of getting a file in front of people,” Mr. McManus said. Visitors can try the service by uploading a single document. Paid users ($6 per month or $40 per year) can store as many as 50 documents on the company’s servers, and Mr. McManus says the Approver features privacy controls to prevent one user from looking at everyone else’s documents. “At the end of the day, it’s better than email,” he explained. In fact, Approver users have the option of eschewing email altogether. The site offers RSS feeds and just introduced a desktop widget for Mac OS X. So much for CEOs taking the “I never saw that document” defense.

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