Justin Kan’s Exec Starts Running Errands For Companies And Startups Today

That's pretty much the precise reason that I don't tend to use these so-called "collaborative consumption" services more: it takes a lot of effort to ensure you get a quality experience. It's great that Exec is doing all that work up front so I won't have to.

It seems to me that a lot of startups go the two-sided marketplace route because they're unable (for fear of becoming a party to the transaction, as well as often lacking the resources) to take control and directly manage the supply side. Airbnb is a great example of this: while they provide a platform to connect hosts and guests, that's pretty much where it ends. They don't even require their hosts to keep their availability calendar accurate, which kind of defeats the point. At least when I go to hotels.com I know that I'll have a room waiting for me when I arrive.

Our early customers were probably 50% or more YC and we got a bunch of great initial feedback. So yes, this helps a lot.

There is a pay-it-forward mentality -- Justin.tv serves as an early customer for many YC startups.

A large part of our success thus far is due to that at Mixpanel as well. The founders in our batch gave us tons of feedback for everything they could want.

In fact, 60-70% of every new Y Combinator batch is generally using Mixpanel prior to launch - Exec being no exception ;)

Instead, they covered the interesting part, which is the differences between Exec and services like TaskRabbit (I've used several.)

> Unlike other services, it doesn’t make users manage a bidding process and vet offers.

That would damage their attempts at hagiography.

Lots of our customers are using Exec as a way to provide their team members with more leisure time. The way I normally pitch it is that if you want to go grocery shopping to get ingredients for a special meal you are going to cook and you will enjoy, then by all means, go for it. If grocery shopping is a chore that you don't look forward to, then outsource it. You should outsource the things you don't want to do to leave more time for the things you want to do.

Personally, I dislike having errands that require me to physically leave the office disrupt my work day, especially on days where I need solid chunks of time programming. Our goal with Exec for Companies is to help teams spend more time doing what they want to do.

My take on it is that less time doing fiddly errands = more relaxation time away from work, which results in happier workers who are more productive when they are at work. If I knew that every second of my free time was open to possibility, and that I didn't have to set aside two or three hours a week to do the "grown up" stuff, I would absolutely be a happier and more productive person overall.

I definitely understand this given all the acquihiring going on in tech right now -- it makes it hard to rely on something for your business.

That being said, for a few reasons I don't think we're likely to go away through an talent acquisition:

1) The majority of our headcount won't be engineers and product, it will be operations. This is necessarily the case because we are such a local service. This means that anyone who wants to buy a team to work on product is paying a massive premium for all these other people they probably don't want (at least, traditional tech firms won't want them).

2) I think Justin.tv / TwitchTV will already make me very wealthy. I didn't start Exec to make money. I started Exec because I want to build something that will take over the world. I want to be Facebook of labor -- not as in "a company that opens up your social graph around work" but as in "a company that fundamentally changes and expands the category it is in, and becomes ascendent in that category".

That said, it is easy to talk. Watch what we do and draw your own conclusions.

As a side note, if any readers are interested in contributing to this vision check us out: http://iamexec.com/hiring

No, but the average developer costs the company $150k/year at least. Fully loaded employee costs are much higher than salary.

At $150K, you are not "average", you are a good developer, with some specialized skills that make you hard to replace quickly.

For what it's worth, people who drive stick are conditioned not to help other people drive stick, because new stick drivers are murder on clutches, and clutches are notoriously expensive to replace.

Check my profile. If I'm close, I can help with that.

Start with a Motorcycle Safety Foundation class.

Here's a tip for when you first get started: practice giving the throttle very small amounts of gas.

In fact, when you first start out - don't even touch the gas. Idle the car on a flat parking lot in neutral and just let out the clutch very slowly and smoothly after shifting into 1st - you'll start moving forward.

Everyone always tries to learn how to perform a powered start right off the bat and that's a recipe for disaster.