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Start-Ups Take on Special Tasks for Small Business

December 19, 2012 by Leave a Comment

This season, dozens of start-ups are competing to take on your holiday headaches. Here are four time-gobbling situations and the young companies vying to eliminate them:

CHALLENGE Your to-do list is crammed with tiny tasks. How can you delegate them cheaply?

ONE SOLUTION For $5 you could drink a large latte and work through the night. Or you could hire a minion at Fiverr, which bills itself as “the world’s largest marketplace for small services.” Starting at $5 apiece, tasks include designing business cards and letterheads, sending out handwritten cards, editing newsletters, making short commercial videos and throwing darts at a picture of your rival.

“Pretty much anything you imagine can be found on Fiverr,” said the company’s chief executive, Micha Kaufman, who set out in 2010 with Shai Wininger to build what Mr. Kaufman calls “an eBay for services.”

“It’s giving people the tools to do business with the entire world,” he added.

Fiverr, with headquarters in Tel Aviv and offices in New York and Amsterdam, has more than a million active buyers and sellers across 200 countries, Mr. Kaufman said. He would not disclose revenue or the number of sales his site has brokered so far. Fiverr has raised $20 million in financing and has 60 full-time staff members. The company collects a 20 percent commission on each sale.

THE COMPETITION Fiverr’s success has inspired an army of imitators, including Gig Me 5, Gigbucks, TenBux and Zeerk. Building and selling Fiverr copycat sites has also become a cottage industry for online software developers. Asked whether he took this as a compliment, Mr. Kaufman replied dryly, “One of my friends said, ‘It may be flattering, but it’s a very annoying way to flatter you.’ ”

***

CHALLENGE You are overwhelmed by errands and other location-specific jobs that cannot be farmed out to the other side of the planet. You need an affordable gofer: competent, trustworthy, local.

ONE SOLUTION TaskRabbit is an on-demand service for handling quick jobs: assembling Ikea furniture, packing boxes, wrapping gifts, mailing invitations or even carrying awkward objects like Christmas trees. The company sends requests to a network of “rabbits” — errand-runners screened through video interviews and background checks — who bid for the work. Last month, 80 of them were hired to wait on Black Friday lines.

Leah Busque got the idea for TaskRabbit one night in 2008, when she was heading out to dinner and realized she had no food in the house for Kobe, her yellow Labrador. Envisioning an online service for dispatching errand-runners, she quit her job as an I.B.M. software engineer to build it. A year later, she won a slot in Facebook’s now defunct incubator program. Shortly thereafter she moved her company, then called RunMyErrand, to San Francisco from Boston.

Now TaskRabbit has 60 employees at its headquarters, along with more than 4,000 freelancers wrangling tasks for customers in the Bay Area as well as in Austin, Tex.; Boston; Chicago; Los Angeles; New York; Portland, Ore.; and San Antonio.

TaskRabbit has raised almost $40 million in financing, and revenue nearly quintupled this year, Ms. Busque said. She would not disclose sales figures but said the company typically charges users 18 percent on top of its freelancers’ fees. Small businesses, she said, are her fastest-growing group of customers.

THE COMPETITION: Agent Anything, Exec., Fancy Hands, PAForADay and Zaarly.

*** CHALLENGE You want to delegate complex, highly specialized tasks, but it’s hard to find people whose expertise matches your needs.

ONE SOLUTION SkillPages connects skilled workers with those who want to hire them. The site showcases an array of specialists — beekeepers, tree surgeons, witches, clog dancers — along with professionals with more conventional business skills, like payroll administrators, social media marketers and typists.

Iain Mac Donald decided to start SkillPages after seeking a tree cutter online to do work in his yard. “This guy arrives with a huge truck, and he could have taken down a forest,” Mr. Mac Donald said. “He was going to charge me $3,000. It just wasn’t right.”

Mr. Mac Donald figured there had to be a way to help make better matches. To that end, SkillPages identifies specialists whom users’ families and friends may already know through social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Users can also view work samples online and contact members directly.

Based in Ireland, SkillPages went live in 2011 and opened an office in Palo Alto, Calif., this year. The company’s 35 employees handle traffic from more than nine million users worldwide, 1.5 million of them in North America. The company has received $18.5 million in financing, said Mr. Mac Donald, the chief executive, declining to disclose sales figures.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/business/smallbusiness/start-ups-take-on-special-tasks-for-small-business.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With: , ,

Square Feet | The 30-Minute Interview: T. J. Gottesdiener

June 4, 2011 by Leave a Comment

During his three decades at SOM, Mr. Gottesdiener has been involved in several major projects, including One World Trade Center, 7 World Trade Center, the Time Warner Center and the Lever House renovation.

Q You’ve been called the most famous architect few have heard of. Any comment?

A My comment is thank you — that’s a compliment. That’s a real testament to the way Skidmore works, which is about all of us working together and not one person being the most important part of the project. It’s all about the buildings.

Look, throughout the course of history at this firm there have been famous names — you might go to Gordon Bunshaft or Bruce Graham, and people know the name David Childs. Frankly, a lot of the name recognition you see has been created, whether by clients or by marketing.

Q Having said that, do you have a favorite architect?

A I would probably say Le Corbusier. There was something about his innovation and his plasticity about design. Although a lot of his urban projects that many people know about — Towers in the Park — are probably real disasters, there were other projects that were quite fascinating.

Q Let’s move on to one of SOM’s biggest projects, One World Trade Center. What’s your role there?

A SOM is the architect for Tower One, and we’re leading all of that design and effort. My role is managing that process.

Q So where do we stand in the process?

A We’re about 65 floors. They’re setting steel at the rate of a floor per week. We’re about the height of 7 World Trade Center, which is over 700 feet, and things are really falling into place.

Q Were you concerned by the numerous delays?

A People have commented that it’s taken a long time, and my comment is, I don’t think so. Look where we are now. We’ve had so many obstacles because of the conditions of the site: A lot of it was below the grade; it’s over active PATH tracks; we’re holding back the Hudson River, basically on reclaimed land. This is probably the most complicated building I’ve ever done.

Q And there have been more complications. Last month, the Port Authority vetoed the idea of having 2,000 glass panels installed at the base, in part because of technical problems.

A As it was manufactured, the glass at the base of One World Trade Center simply did not perform as we were promised, so we are in the process of redesigning it. Things like this happen occasionally, and that is why we have developed such a thorough process.

Q How did all the safety issues affect the building’s design?

A Well, I hope for you and everybody else who’s at the building, there’s no effect. But for us as designers there was a big impact.

When the towers came down after 9/11, we had to rethink the building codes, and 7 World Trade Center was the first one that implemented a lot of the ideas before the code had even been enacted. A lot of nuances and major things have changed in designing high-rise buildings.

Q Some of the new codes came at the suggestion of SOM, right?

A Many of our people were involved with the city in rewriting the codes. We have, for example, all kinds of redundancies in building systems. Fire protection has cross-connections, so if there’s one sprinkler that is out of service, the other one will cover it. We’ve increased stair widths to allow firefighters to climb upstairs while people exit. There are little things, like phosphorescent tape in the egress stairs.

It was done at 7 World Trade Center. They were almost experiments, because the code had not yet been enacted.

Q Is the rebuilding at ground zero a career-definer?

A I definitely would think that this is one of the greatest achievements that I’ve been able to work on. But I said that about the Time Warner Center and I said that about Tokyo Midtown.

Q Let’s talk about some other projects in New York.

A The John Jay College of Criminal Justice expansion project is close to being finished. We are doing a rather low building that will essentially become their campus. And we’re starting the first phase of the Moynihan Station redevelopment.

Q Is the firm doing anything to celebrate its 75th year this year?

A No. We thought about it, and talked about it. But the one thing we thought most about was what are we going to do for the next 75 years, to move forward.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/realestate/t-j-gottesdiener.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

The Haggler: A Customer Who’s Always Satisfied

April 24, 2011 by Leave a Comment

WHO is Lucas Fayne?

A very happy customer of Kent Elliott Roofing in Burleson, Tex. — that is certainly one answer.

“We were very satisfied with the service and efficiency of your company,” Mr. Fayne wrote on Kent Elliott Roofing’s Web site, in the testimonial section. “Getting the quote was quick and easy, and your staff started on time each day and worked hard. We are very confident with the job you did and have been recommending you to all of our neighbors.”

But let’s not diminish Lucas Fayne by describing him as merely a man who is delighted with his new roof and is living, according to the site, in Irving, Tex.. Because he is much more than that. Mr. Fayne is also a gentleman flat-out tickled by the work done by Pro West Remodeling, a construction company in Stow, Ohio.

“We were very satisfied with the service and efficiency of your company,” Mr. Fayne wrote on the testimonials section of Pro West’s site. “Getting the quote was quick and easy, and your staff started on time each day and worked hard. We are very confident with the job you did and have been recommending you to all our neighbors.”

That compliment was paid when Mr. Fayne lived in Akron, Ohio. At some point — it is not clear when — Mr. Fayne lived in Belmont, N.H., and invested in yet another home improvement project, this time with a company called American Exteriors in Manchester, N.H.

“We were very satisfied with the service and efficiency of your company,” he wrote.

Etc.

If you are like the Haggler, at this point you have questions. Like, why does Mr. Fayne move around so much? And why can’t he find novel language to rhapsodize about all these companies?

Before answering, let us take a moment to appreciate just how nomadic Mr. Faye is, and just how eager he is to share the good news about the contractors who have worked on his 50 homes.

That’s right — 50 homes. Just Google “Lucas Fayne” and you will find that the first five pages of results are nothing but huzzahs for the gifted men and women who have enhanced his houses in states across this nation. There is Mr. Fayne in Chesterfield, Mo., lavishing praise on Haddim Construction. There he is in Bethany, Okla., spreading the word about Metro Tech Maintenance and Home Improvement in Oklahoma City. And that’s him in Minneapolis, rejoicing about the fine efforts of Guarantee Exteriors of Denver.

By the time the Haggler was done browsing through all these testimonials — most of them word-for-word copies — he had begun to entertain some doubts about Lucas Fayne. And then the Haggler noticed that these sites had more in common than just one elated customer. All were created with software by Intuit, which offers services for building Web sites.

Time to call Intuit, the Haggler thought. A spokeswoman, Elisabeth Gettelman, said Lucas Fayne was indeed an invention of a software writer, one who worked at Homestead Technologies, which Intuit acquired in 2007. “Lucas Fayne” is part of a Web site template for small-business owners, one that has been bought by thousands of companies over the years. Obviously, companies are supposed to swap out the fake name and fake blurb with a real customer and a real blurb.

But many, as we have seen, do not.

So, what is with all the Lucas feigning?

The Haggler called around and discovered that many Fayne-endorsed companies prefer not to discuss the nation’s most omnipresent, fictional customer. Others, like William McVicker of Pro West Modeling, gave an answer that might be more appropriate for a phone solicitation:

“I’m really not interested but thanks anyway,” he said before hanging up.

Somebody who identified himself as Bona — just Bona — at AB Stone Innovation in Madison, Ala., said, “I do believe we have a customer named Lucas.”

Bona then checked with the people who run AB Stone’s Web site and called back to say that he was embarrassed to have a made-up person fawning over his company.

“It bothers me,” he said. “We’re going to change it.”

Well, that’s nice. The Haggler, meanwhile, has been trying to figure out if there is any deeper meaning to the ubiquity of Lucas Fayne. And a thought occurred while looking at the Web site of Diamond Roofing, which is based in Manhattan in New York and has been commended by you know who.

(Actually, “Michel Belair” was recently swapped for “Lucas Fayne” on the site, though oddly enough the full “We were very satisfied” quote stayed intact.)

As the Haggler talked to John Luciano, owner of Diamond Roofing, he noticed that the company’s email address is weshowup@hotmail.com. It turns out that “we show up” has been a company motto of sorts, Mr. Luciano explained when asked about the phrase. 

The Haggler read that and thought: Oh, come on. Is customer service in this country so benighted that it’s enough to simply boast that you will “show up?” Not “show up on time,” “show up with the right tools” or “show up, do the work and charge you the amount we agreed on before we got there”?

This motto vowed only that someone from the company would be physically present, at some point.

“And you know what,” Mr. Luciano told the Haggler, “there is another company using that same slogan in Brooklyn,” adding that he was trying to stop that business from doing so.

Mr. Luciano would not elaborate in a terse follow-up phone call on Friday. To be fair, the Web site seems also to have long pushed a far more ambitious phrase, “We get the job done!” But  can you imagine, dear reader, companies  fighting over a motto that promised the bare minimum of customer service?

Only one man could hear about this tussle and find it anything but sad.

You already know his name. 

E-mail: haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=66e5b0b7417988f1efe0543e936c4c42

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,