

Ask YC: How to hire a good virtual assistant for a startup? - deltapoint

I am looking to hire a virtual assistant or work with an outsourcing company like brickworkindia.com or getfriday.com. Does anybody have any particular suggestions? On either the best company to work with or the best manner to work with a virtual assistant? Thanks.
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Cmccann7
I've used several virtual assistants from oDesk in the past 3 months for time
sensitive tasks and couldn't have been happier.

With oDesk the quality of VA is a lot more variable so I would make sure to
check out their ratings and past reviews.

Also a quick hack I used is hire 10 VA's for 1 hours each to do a small
project or piece of a larger project. Review their work and pick the one who
did it the best with the least self direction.

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deltapoint
Good idea... I am definitely planning on microtesting the different
possibilities...

Do you think oDesk and the like is suitable for larger projects or would going
with an agency?

Also, did you do anything on your end to ensure that you could get the best
work out of them?

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raffi
I tried getfriday.com for a week and then let them go. I used my VA primarily
for research tasks.

One task I tried: find me a plain-text format wordlist of technology jargon.
Specifically, I want a flat text file with each word on its own line. She
billed several hours and provided me with websites I initially found on a
google search.

When I started with getfriday.com, my access to their customer interface
wasn't working. I tried calling their toll-free support number and received a
"beep" rather than a greeting from a business. When I wrote in to cancel my
account, the VA manager contacted me and I let him know about these issues. He
was very attentive on the phone, but ultimately... I closed my account.

To their credit, getfriday.com let me close my account with zero hassle and
they didn't charge me for the trial period.

YMMV.

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dotBen
I think it very much depends on what you want them to do... However I have
friends who have contracted with great success VA-type work to people who live
locally (San Francisco in this instance but it could be anywhere you happen to
live/work).

They're still 'virtual' in that they work from home - but the benefit is they
are on the same timezone, understand local requests ( _"book me a table at
that fish restaurant on the embarcadero"_ ) and can easily deal with the
logistics of processing receipts/paperwork etc (better delivered locally than
sent abroad or have to be scanned in).

I think the VA's tend to be stay-at-home mom types, etc and are found through
contact network.

It's probably more expensive than paying someone in Vietnam $2/hr but allows
them to be 'customer facing' if needs be.

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mahipal
What kinds of things could a VA do for a startup?

EDIT: After Googling around to answer my own question, I'm still not sure
about start-up specific tasks. But you might find the results of this survey
useful:

[http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/12/06/the-
personal...](http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/12/06/the-personal-
outsourcing-olympics-bangalore-butler-or-american-assistant/)

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mkull
HR, scheduling, to name a couple

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timesvr
you can try TimeSvr out (timesvr.com). We're fast, cheap,efficient and 24/7.
Different packages to choose from for different needs, a quick google should
give you an idea of our service.

TimeSvr - Save Time Get Things Done

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jaredhansen
www.solvate.com. Like odesk/elance, but curated so as not to suck. I'm not
affiliated with them but I'm a very happy (so far) customer, since April '10
on a variety of projects. Good luck.

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iamdave
Check my profile for email. This is practically what I do for a living.

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jonsen
Shouldn't you know then, that @ is not shift+2 on all keyboards ;-)

