Managed by Q, an On-Demand Start-Up, Raises $25M | Hacker News Reader

Managed by Q, an On-Demand Start-Up, Raises $25M

nytimes.com

59 pointshowrude17 comments

I think it's hard to overestimate how big an achievement this is in itself. Managed by Q is going after a market dominated by ISS [1],a Danish company founded in 1901, with more than half a million employees and revenue around $75 billion. And its doing it by paying proper salaries.

The market is very interesting because and the potential for expanding into new categories and with a more modern approach to facility management.

I could imagine them getting into using drones for surveillance or even automated green areas management. It's a field I believe is pretty well defended by the incumbents but which can be disrupted using a combination of technology and more on demand services to drive down cost and increase profitability without actually having to treat it's people like uber drivers.

On top of that it has revenue and is solving a real problem.

[1] http://www.us.issworld.com/

Hadn't heard of ISS before and in Germany there's one big and many smaller incumbents doing this line of work.

Yeah there are others of course. Whats interesting is how huge the market is and how little competition it has seen because of it's unsexy industry.

It's also interesting in the sense that we will most likely see radiologist being replaced by automation than cleaning personal. (specialist algos vs. general purpose ones)

The market is huge and the potential for disrupting it is ripe.

Don't know about radiologist. I'm certain that most prefer the human aspect there. But if it means we don't have wait times anymore, then most will pick automation over humans operating machinery.

Human aspect to deliver the message, not necessarily to find the cancer.

Point is more about general purpose vs. specialized algos.

Their annual revenue is 75B DKK, which is more like 11B USD.

You are right. Not sure why it ended up being $. Good catch.

Why wouldn't offices have reoccurring cleaning on a set schedule? Every office I've been in had cleaners come every evening.

Is anyone currently using this service? Would appreciate some anecdata about them.

We're using them, to mixed reviews.

They installed a jailbroken ipad (in a holder with a cutout for the front camera) in our break room. Seems like a potential hazard for industrial espionage...

The office does seem to stay clean. They have an annoying tendency to 'organize' individuals' desks, though. I've even had some of my cables re-arranged.

Hey, Managed by Q employee here. Appreciate your feedback. Wanted to just follow up and let you know that we do not jailbreak any iPads, nor do we use the camera to collect any data. We take our customers privacy and security extremely seriously.

Regarding the organization of your desk, if you leave a post-it-note on your desk mentioning that you would prefer for it to be left alone that should do the trick.

Happy to hear that you like the cleaning quality - if you have any additional concerns feel free to follow up with me.

Why would you put a camera in your clients office at all? sounds creepy and vulnerable to abuse.

They install iPads, and iPads have cameras. The holder has an opening for the camera, but that's standard for iPad holders. They'd have to get custom manufactured holders otherwise. They could tape it (or you could), but at worst, I think that's just an oversight on their part.

Because they can take video call with them.

I interviewed with your company some time ago... there were no experienced iOS developers on the team. It seemed they did not understand Apple's enterprise vs app store signing very well and the limitations. They were definitely having software distribution issues (did not want to publish in the app store - but wanted a way to distribute updates) and jailbreak was discussed.

We use them, the employees are friendly and the office gets clean. They don't really mess with anything on our desks.

When I first read the headline it made no sense until I saw that "Managed by Q" is the name of the startup. I first thought it was a startup run by the actor who played "Q" in Star Trek the next generation.

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