I've tried using Exec and it worked flawlessly.
Justin Kan Launches Exec (YC W12) For Real-Time Mobile Jobs
11–20 of 76 posts
Re: Justin Kan Launches Exec (YC W12) For Real-Time Mobile Jobs
#12Exec is awesome. We (ZeroCater) give all our employees Exec accounts and a weekly budget they can use to outsource random tasks outside of our core competencies. Congrats Justin and Co!
That sounds very interesting. May I ask, how are your employees using this in practice? What kinds of tasks they are outsourcing, and how much is that weekly budget?
Re: Justin Kan Launches Exec (YC W12) For Real-Time Mobile Jobs
#13I have a lot of respect for Justin Kan, so this might come off a little weird, but: How the hell does he split his time between two time-intense companies and start a new startup at the same time? Am I missing something here? Edit: three companies, but I guess he isn't in Socialcam's core team (or is he?)
Plus he's a part-time partner at YC http://ycombinator.posterous.com/welcome-sam-garry-emmett-an... . I'd love to have this question answered. Edit: Apparently, he just changed his role at Justin.TV to an advisor. So I think most of his time is spent on Exec, while on the side advising YC companies, Justin.TV/Twitch.TV, and Socialcam. But still definitely a lot for one person to manage.
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Re: Justin Kan Launches Exec (YC W12) For Real-Time Mobile Jobs
#14Kan mentions that Exec is real-time compared to other existing services, such as TaskRabbit. I've used TaskRabbit several times and found TaskRabbit to be plenty fast enough, probably similar to the real-time described in the article.
Re: Justin Kan Launches Exec (YC W12) For Real-Time Mobile Jobs
#15I'm blown by how basic the site looks right now. This attitude of launching something which probably doesn't even do much yet is really hard for me to digest. Also, Justin's comment on keeping features to a minimum is interesting. Everyone always talks about it, but few manage to pull it off because you need the right features. Justin, can you comment on how you chose your feature set?
[The site looks basic right now]. This [probably doesn't even do much yet].
The former doesn't imply the latter.
Re: Justin Kan Launches Exec (YC W12) For Real-Time Mobile Jobs
#16I'm blown by how basic the site looks right now. This attitude of launching something which probably doesn't even do much yet is really hard for me to digest. Also, Justin's comment on keeping features to a minimum is interesting. Everyone always talks about it, but few manage to pull it off because you need the right features. Justin, can you comment on how you chose your feature set?
In the case of Exec, one simple feature (submitting a task) lets you accomplish a huge number of different things.
Re: Justin Kan Launches Exec (YC W12) For Real-Time Mobile Jobs
#17Strangely enough my biggest concern is how well this will scale. EDIT: I'm not sure why I'm getting down boated. I'm pretty serious. I have no idea the average task duration but assume its an hour then every "exec" can only do about 7-8 a day (assume some non billable time). If they get 10,000 customers and say each need one task every 2 weeks. Thats 5000 tasks and would require a staff of 125 execs. With 125 execs n…
This is the kind of thing which scales pretty well -- there are lots of unemployed/underemployed people in most markets.
I think the difference vs. taskrabbit is that it being realtime requires the task-runners/execs to be higher quality and more committed, so it might not work as well in a market with 0% unemployment where everyone has a 9-5 job. I don't think that's a major risk for the next decade or two.
They can obviously raise pricing. At some point, people will pay based on the money they save, and runners might get really efficient at certain kinds of missions. If, for instance, a common mission is "pick up my car from the bar the next morning", the requestor might think it is a 2 hour task (bus or taxi, ...); maybe a task-runner has an efficient solution involving a folding bicycle, or two people. Worth $100 to me, costs 30 minutes of someone else's time who is happy with $25/hr, win/win at $50.
Re: Justin Kan Launches Exec (YC W12) For Real-Time Mobile Jobs
#18Exec is awesome. We (ZeroCater) give all our employees Exec accounts and a weekly budget they can use to outsource random tasks outside of our core competencies. Congrats Justin and Co!
This is a great idea. Certainly your employees cost more than $25/hr.
Re: Justin Kan Launches Exec (YC W12) For Real-Time Mobile Jobs
#19Exec is awesome. We (ZeroCater) give all our employees Exec accounts and a weekly budget they can use to outsource random tasks outside of our core competencies. Congrats Justin and Co!
That sounds very interesting. May I ask, how are your employees using this in practice? What kinds of tasks they are outsourcing, and how much is that weekly budget?
Just recently we had a big party [1]. We definitely outsourced a lot of the logistics and organization of that in various Exec tasks. More day-to-day, it's very random.
I think we give each ZeroCater employee something like 5 hours worth of Exec time per month. It's well worth it.
Re: Justin Kan Launches Exec (YC W12) For Real-Time Mobile Jobs
#20Strangely enough my biggest concern is how well this will scale. EDIT: I'm not sure why I'm getting down boated. I'm pretty serious. I have no idea the average task duration but assume its an hour then every "exec" can only do about 7-8 a day (assume some non billable time). If they get 10,000 customers and say each need one task every 2 weeks. Thats 5000 tasks and would require a staff of 125 execs. With 125 execs n…
Your managers are algorithms.
Your onboarding costs you $20 for each Exec you sign up - in this economy, your acquisition cost for them is likely near zero because WOM and free PR will give you more opportunities than you can handle.
You bootstrap CS with either the founders or one of your close friends, building systems to support the common cases (e.g. "Exec flaked on me") and using T1 support as a system-level T2. Your margins are asymptotically the same as selling iPhone apps at $15 each ($10 minus pocket change either way), but you'll have many customer LTVs in the hundreds. Eventually, you'll have a proper CS team in place like e.g. Airbnb and the'll involve themselves in We know that this model in broad strokes works because Rentacoder, ODesk, 99Designs, Airbnb, etc etc all work. The major gamble is that there exists sufficient market demand among the upper middle class for semi-interchangeable gophers. It doesn't strike me as obviously a billion dollar business but then again I thought "Young ladies will happily pay money to stay the night at private residences" sounded categorically insane the first time I heard it and we already know how that story turns out.
P.S. Numbers here come from "Big dumb megacorp with a traditional CS department assumes an American FTE talking on he phone costs $12." There's all sort of ways you can cheat that assumption, beginning with not being a big dumb megacorp.