Bold, like Medium for companies, opens its platform to the public and launches a Slack bot

Calling itself your company’s town square, Bold opened its IO publishing platform to the public Thursday and announced that the platform will be accompanied by a Slack bot.

The Slack bot can be used to organize Bold posts, create private posts, and deliver notifications when posts or comments are published.

Bold was created by Ben Lee and David Byttow, founder of the app Secret.

Byttow and Lee built their publishing platform to be like Medium.com, but for internal company use. Like Medium, Bold presents text in a simple, minimalist way so that good ideas can spread quickly.

To make writing posts easier, Bold offers four different template styles at launch: What am I working on, Meeting notes, Ideas or suggestions, and Retrospective.

Bold also uses a series of bots, or what Bold calls “assistants.”

To help you focus, there’s an ambient assistant that plays a variety of sounds, like a beach bonfire, crowded cafe, or a library, castle, or forest.

There’s also a Hemingway assistant that tracks grammatical errors and counts your use of complex words and adverbs.

A Trello board shared with IO users offers insight into a potential roadmap for the future. Profile cards for users, pinned posts, and an iOS app are among ideas being considered by the company, which was created earlier this year.