
Justin Kan Launches Exec (YC W12) For Real-Time Mobile Jobs - pg
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/02/29/justin-kan-launches-exec-for-real-time-mobile-jobs/
======
mikeryan
Strangely 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 now you need managers and quality
control and customer support. I'm assume execs are only getting paid about $15
an hour. That means A. Quality of Execs would be an issue. B. You only have
about $10 of every hour left towards margin. Margin in straight services is
nasty and this one is thin and in this case unless you have an extremely
efficient staff your margin tends to go down as you grow - not up.

~~~
patio11
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 < 5%
of orders at a fully-loaded cost of $12 per incident.

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.

~~~
mikeryan
_Your managers are algorithms. - We know that this model in broad strokes
works because Rentacoder, ODesk, 99Designs, Airbnb, etc etc all work_

I'm sorry I don't buy this, I may be misreading how Exec works but it looks
like Exec's are _employees_ \- not _freelancers_. I don't know how this would
work any other way you couldn't guarantee staffing levels and "real time
service" for your customers if they were independents like Task Rabbit. Not to
mention Rentacoder, Odesk and 99designs all usually have some aspect of
geographic arbitrage which brings down their prices. The major difference in
this model is that Exec becomes entirely responsible for QC - unlike each of
the other's you mention where if a person (or place) is crap that "vendor"
gets downvoted out of the game. Here the only people who lose karma is Exec
itself.

This brings a whole world of pain and management which none of the
crowdsourced models address - payroll taxes, labor codes HR - scheduling.
You're definitely not managing with algorithms. I have a good friend who runs
a Doggy Day Care in SF who hires a lot of folks in this price range. He has a
hard time getting 15 people who can _walk dogs_ with a decent level of
service.

~~~
patio11
You guarantee request quality of service, not staffing levels, by using a per-
request queue. Beginning with the person most likely to say yes desirably,
send out SMSes saying "Exec! New job for you. If you want details reply in
next 2 minutes.". If they reply, opportunistically lock job for 5 min while
they read. If not, move onto next potential exec. Tune parameters as required
until 90% of customers get called within 10 minutes.

I totally get that your friend deals with the problems of flakey and
unreliable people who are habitually not up to the task of working... but she
doesn't deal with them like they were IP packets, does she? If she did, she
wouldn't really be in the dog walking business anymore, but she'd also have
potentially quite good reliability systemwide based on a network of high-
failure components.

~~~
mikeryan
There seems to be a disconnect on the points we're arguing here. Task
scheduling and routing is (almost) the easy part or at least a pretty solvable
equation - there's a whole range of operations and queue theory texts that can
make a quick go of managing that.

I'm more concerned with the human element. HR overhead, people making sure
tasks are getting done well and in a timely manner. " _but she doesn't deal
with them like they were IP packets, does she?_ " - No she (he actually ;-)
can't they're people.

~~~
barry-cotter
"I'm more concerned with the human element. HR overhead, people making sure
tasks are getting done well and in a timely manner. _"but she doesn't deal
with them like they were IP packets, does she?"_ \- No she (he actually ;-)
can't they're people."

That's the point of Exec and of every we-can-disintermediate-this-or-make-it-
massively-easier-by-using-IT-and-CS startup. They can treat people like IP
packets. At some stage they'll have practically open hiring and most people
will wash out fairly quickly but the ones who either excel or consistently
fail to fuck up will just keep on getting tasks from Exec, the others won't.

------
abstractbill
Exec 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!

~~~
bhousel
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?

~~~
abstractbill
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.

[1] <http://blog.zerocater.com/and-there-was-food-for-all>

------
pg
The beta users for Exec were YC alumni living in SF, and they have great
things to say about it.

~~~
leahculver
I was a beta user for Exec.

I used the website to order a task ahead of time - delivering a burrito to my
boyfriend on Valentine's Day! The coolest part was being able to watch the
delivery happen in real-time on my iPhone (super cool).

It was an adjustment for me to think of an everyday task that I could
outsource. In general, I think that if people can make the mental switch, Exec
will be a game changer.

~~~
dmvaldman
randomly noticed. happy 1000th day birthday on HN!

~~~
TruthElixirX
Please don't do this. It does not contribute to the discussion.

------
twakefield
I was excited to try this out and was very impressed with the quality and
speed of the service.

Back when I was working at Big Co Inc., the shared admin assistants were an
incredibly valuable resource to leverage your time. Unfortunately, it's not a
feasible option to hire one at a startup. Exec changes that.

It's a great option for times when you need something NOW but can't or don't
want to stop what you are otherwise doing. Examples: taking a mac to the
genius bar, getting printer ink, getting batteries.

Also relevant is this cdixon blog post about how the internet is changing what
a "job" is. [1]

[1] [http://cdixon.org/2012/02/26/the-internet-is-reshaping-
our-e...](http://cdixon.org/2012/02/26/the-internet-is-reshaping-our-economy-
from-one-of-huge-corporations-with-lots-of-jobs-to-huge-platforms-with-lots-
of-income-streams/)

------
freshfey
I 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?)

~~~
justin
So, here's the skinny:

I spent most of Monday at Justin.tv / TwitchTV. At TwitchTV I mostly work on
strategy and management issues. My cofounder Emmett Shear runs the company as
CEO along with a great management team including our COO Kevin Lin, who runs
all the partnerships and operations, and CRO Jonathan Simpson-Bint, who is the
founder of IGN, and runs all biz dev. Operationally the team is excellent, the
company is growing well (almost 60 people now between two offices) and my
services aren't really required for operational issues. Monday night I work on
Exec stuff as well.

Tuesday is YC day. Since we're going through YC for Exec, I'm down in Mountain
View anyways. I hold office hours during the afternoon most weeks, and then
attend the dinner with everyone else.

Wednesday -> Sunday I'm working on Exec full time, but occasionally do calls
for JTV/TTV. I also stop by the JTV office a few times a week just to hang.

Socialcam is being run by our other cofounder on JTV, Michael Seibel, along
with two engineers formerly from JTV. It is fully spun off as a corporate
entity now. We still have a great relationship and they are part of the JTV
family, but I don't have an active role. They are off to the races though and
on the way to be extremely successful.

UPDATE:

Re-read this and it makes it sound like I work an insane amount. I don't want
to make it seem like I'm Jack Dorsey-ing it. I take time on weekends and
nights to relax and have a social life. I think working at a sustainable pace
is important. Luckily (for me), I enjoy working at so many things because they
give me a chance to exercise / learn different skills (strategy and growth at
JTV, programming and pitching at Exec, talking about business ideas at YC).

~~~
mlinsey
The multitasking founder is an interesting emerging trend - Jack Dorsey being
the most prominent example, and Steve Jobs before him. If an effective founder
is the rarest commodity, and their role at mid-to-large startups can be
reduced to its most essential elements, it makes a lot of economic sense.

~~~
staunch
It's probably an anti-pattern. The only great example, Steve Jobs, took the
CEO title at Pixar but my sense is that he played more of a Chairman's role
there, he only really did the full CEO thing at Apple.

Even Jobs had to neglect huge portions of Apple itself to focus on developing
new products like the iPhone.

One reason it probably can't really work very well:
<http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html>

~~~
freshfey
I think Jack Dorsey (and now Justin Kan) are pretty good examples, too. Why
are you excluding those two?

~~~
staunch
Because neither has proven that it can work yet.

I can think of multiple counter-examples as well. People who are trying to run
multiple organizations and doing rather poorly (as judged by results). I
wouldn't want to single them out publicly though. Besides, it's rather
difficult to judge the cause and effect for things like this.

~~~
justin
I agree that it is hard to focus on multiple things. Certainly I am not
"running" Justin.tv/TwitchTV by any means: my cofounder Emmett Shear is in
every sense of it. I don't think I could have a day to day operational role at
two companies. At JTV/TTV I focus on providing value by advising those people
who are in operational roles.

------
swombat
This sounds pretty damn cool. It's like a more humane, more generous
implementation of the vision of Mechanical Turk.

When is it coming to London? I'll sign up.

~~~
justin
Soon I hope. London is on the short list of places to expand to!

~~~
swombat
Can I sign up as a beta tester somewhere?

~~~
justin
Hm, we should probably add that feature. When we go to London we will
definitely post here again.

------
GraffitiTim
I've tried using Exec and it worked flawlessly.

------
ephermata
I'd love to see livestreaming from Exec workers. That would help "human
telepresence" tasks like these:

[http://www.taskrabbit.com/tasks/attend-a-talk-at-uw-and-
writ...](http://www.taskrabbit.com/tasks/attend-a-talk-at-uw-and-write-a-trip-
report-28-february-2012-3-30-4-30)

[http://www.taskrabbit.com/tasks/please-help-me-shop-for-
furn...](http://www.taskrabbit.com/tasks/please-help-me-shop-for-furniture-
using-qik-for-four-hours-on-monday-28-november-2011--3)

[http://www.taskrabbit.com/tasks/help-me-attend-a-
conference-...](http://www.taskrabbit.com/tasks/help-me-attend-a-conference-
via-skype-on-2-november-2011-8-30am-6-15pm)

------
joseakle
I would love to have an Exec for tasks inside my company. The money would be
drawn from a company´s bank account. Sort of like internal bounties perhaps.
Maybe even complementing salaries, I don´t know. Thoughts?

~~~
justin
Please email me at justin@iamexec.com. We can make it happen!

------
revorad
I'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?

~~~
justin
One of my biggest problems using marketplaces is the cognitive overhead of
figuring out the often complex process how I'm supposed to use the site.

With Exec, I wanted to make something that was super simple and just works.
Most of our challenge is actually figuring out how to inform users of what
they can get done, because for most people outsourcing their errands is a new
behavior to learn.

We haven't created any features that weren't based on iterating to solve a
real user problem that was being experienced during our trial. Our minimum
viable product really was "minimum" -- everything including the the map /
location tracking, iphone app for the Execs, etc came out of that process. The
first version of Exec was literally single text area.

We have done a ton of work on the backend to make sure that Execs pick up and
do your jobs excellently -- a lot of that is transparent to the user. Lots of
thought has gone into making that work well.

If by "basic" you meant the site's design, then I fully admit that. We used
Twitter Bootstrap, which is awesome. I'm not a great designer, but hopefully
we can bring someone on soon that is excellent :) (Shameless plug, Exec is
hiring a designer and senior engineer for our core team. Come help us build
the future of work: <https://iamexec.com/hiring>)

~~~
revorad
Thanks Justin. You're probably already tired with comparisons to Zaarly and
Taskrabbit, but it looks to me like you are focusing on building a really high
quality version of the same idea. Talk about focus!

------
dwynings
Having found Exec in the AppStore, I noticed that they have 11 other apps for
specific restaurants ... is Exec a pivot from another idea?

~~~
justin
Daniel and Amir had a company that focused on restaurant apps that turned into
the company that is Exec.

------
DrewHintz
Kan 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.

~~~
jamiequint
Really? I've never heard of anyone I know getting a sub-1-hour response time
on TaskRabbit from request to starting a job, much less 10 minutes.

------
rokhayakebe
I would like to know how they determined the price point. IMO, with such a
name, they should be targeting higher end customers. People willing to shell
out $50+ or $100+ for a specific task..... Or $15000 a la Transporteur

------
revorad
Is there a marketplace like this for quick programming tasks?

~~~
scooter53080
I've often wished for a similar marketplace, but more for consulting, than
actual programming. When starting out with a new language or new technology
(particularly unpopular ones, that don't have good online resources) it would
be worth paying an "expert" for an hour or two of their time to ask questions.

~~~
revorad
Minutebox is trying to do something like that but their focus is not on
programming at the moment.

------
ajju
Realtime access to offline services via simple interfaces is awesome. I love
Exec's UI because it exemplifies this.

------
deepkut
This market sounds horizontal, but it sounds like they're managing it well.
Excited to see how this pans out.

------
siruva07
Justin, What's involved in the interview process? What are the different
stages?

~~~
justin
We do a bunch of screens, including an in-person interview. We also background
check all our Execs.

------
mhp
When will we see this in NYC (or other markets)?

~~~
justin
soon, I hope! we want to make sure it is excellent in the Bay Area before
expanding.

------
Aarvay
Twitter Bootstrap + Subtlepatterns \m/

~~~
justin
<3 both of them. Bootstrap made me 2x productive at front end stuff.

