Sunday is a new company offering remote 24/7 personal assistance for life’s more minor tasks.
If you need reservations at a restaurant but have to send off 25 e-mails, call back two clients, and vet the presentation you’re giving in an hour, the recently launched New York-based company wants to lend a hand.
Anyone with too much to do in not enough time would love to have a personal assistant, but the majority of us simply don’t have the cash. But now, thanks to the efficiencies of outsourcing and a back-end that Sunday’s founders say can effectively manage and distribute task requests, some of us (well, some of you) now might be able to afford our own.
Back in 2000, a company called Quixi also tried a similar model, but after a round of early hype, and an infusion of around $27.5 million, the company seems to have disappeared. Currently, there is Circles, which offers big companies a concierge service to pamper its key employees. For the less elite, there are companies like DoMyStuff, which let you post tasks and have people or companies bid to do them, and VirCierge, which, like Sunday, offers personal assistance, but the former is somewhat arduous and the latter is relatively expensive, costing $20 per month for five tasks and $50 for fifteen.
For $29 for 30 task requests or $49 for 50, a Sunday user can simply write an e-mail to requests@asksunday.com and have hard-working Indians, called “agents,” do any of a number of banal tasks. You can send your travel itinerary and they’ll book you flights, a hotel, and car. You can give them the name of your dentist and get an appointment, or have them track down tickets to a sold-out show.
Some of the tasks Sunday offers to do sound somewhat ridiculous, but were popular in its testing phase, according to the founders. For example, Sunday’s agents will give you a wake-up call in the morning and tell you the weather, or send you an e-mail in the middle of the day to update you on sports scores.
Other, more complicated tasks make more sense to us. In one instance, a VP at a private equity firm wanted to play a round of golf with a handful of colleagues and clients, but the club only took reservations exactly one week in advance. Sunday’s agents made note of the date, made the call at the appropriate time, researched train schedules, and reserved a taxi from the train station.
Sunday has created a portal for its agents that enables them to access selected password-protected accounts without having your passwords, so they can reserve you movie tickets at Fandango, make gift purchases on Amazon, use your frequent flier number when booking flights, etc, though we’re not sure we’d be comfortable with this aspect of the service.
There is also a messenger service (for NY City only) that will make deliveries as late as midnight on weekdays. More interestingly, Sunday also has “time services.” For $20 per hour, you can have someone run your errands, pick up groceries and — our favorite — wait on line for you at the DMV.
The company has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from undisclosed sources.
14 Comments
-
Marc Meyer said:
The concept seems wonderful, and I’m sure that managed correctly it could work. I tried GetFriday which is a similar company, and came away very frustrated. There was a cultural disconnect which was very hard to communicate around.
For example, I asked them to find me a rental house of a certain size for a week for a vacation near a major city in Holland. The response came back with a huge spreadsheet of housing rental agencies in Holland that had been contacted and had responded they didn’t rent for less than 6 months.
It never occurred to me to specify that they ought to only contact “vacation rental” agencies!
I had a few other similar experiences, and gave up. It would seem to be well-nigh impossible to train the workers into the same way of thinking as their customers, and still maintain the 30 tasks for $29 pricing.
It’d be great if it did work though!
-
Sumant said:
Well, try http://www.iwantapa.com ; It’s driven by a few entrepreneurs in London and is of much better quality.
The company actually has London based Customr Relations Managers, which make sure the quality you get is pretty cool.I tried them asking them to make a tourist itenary for my Mother who was visiting me in London (between 10 am - 6pm while I was at work) and they got it correct to the nail!
-
Anya said:
I have used iwantapa too - very impressive (and i’m a difficult person to please). the first task was easy - asked to find me a flight to Moscow. They came back with 3 flights, one of which was cheap (as part of the deal), second one was a bit more expensive but easier time to travel and third one was still cheap, but with flexible dates. They even provided a weather forcast for my trip. I was very impressed.
Used them again to plan my 2 week trip to Canada. They booked a very cheap flight, VC (we drove through it), provided rent prices for bikes!; listed a number of attractions and event provided motels (just in case if we got bored of our VC). I was so impressed!!!! The trip was wonderful.
-
Thomas said:
Didn’t we see this in Web 1.0?
-
PAUL said:
Great article - my company currently provides individuals and businesses in the U.S. virtual administrators and assistants.
I use one myself and I can’t imagine my life before it. When you’re running an company that exists in two different countries it is great to have someone who can take care of any of my ad hoc tasks.
-
Steve Ludmer said:
This is Steve Ludmer, Co-Founder of Sunday.
First of all, I want to thank the many readers who have emailed me personally with feedback and the new members who continue to sign up.
If anyone is intrigued by our concept and wants to see if we can help create time and enhanced mobility in their lives, I encourage you to use the promotional code: MOBILITY. Using this promotional code will allow you to try our service for FREE for 1 month, no strings attached.
We’re very excited about Sunday and the feedback we’ve gotten to-date from our growing member list. The overwhelming response we’re hearing is that we are providing extra leverage and accurate, time-saving services.
Regarding Marc’s post to this article, I think a challenge for members is figuring how to best utilize a service where you are leveraging others to get back time / convenience in your day. I think of it like learning how to manage an AA. In my experience, the more direct you can be in terms of what you want, the higher likelihood you’ll get back what you’re expecting.
Also, keep in mind the low monthly fee that members pay – plans start at $29 / month for 30 requests. At our price point, I firmly believe that we are creating a real value proposition for our members. On a daily basis, we save our members hours of time dealing with administrative tasks that normally eat into their day. Just think about how much time it takes you to add back missed frequent flyer miles, cancel magazine subscriptions, arrange travel, etc. If you think it is worth $29 / month to have someone else take care of these types of issues for you, then I’m confident you will enjoy being a member.
As for the quality of the service, my partner and I have been working many years at organizations that demand the highest levels of output. We put those same work product expectations on the Sunday Agents.
I hope to get the chance to show you first-hand the convenience and time-saved being a Sunday Member,
Steve
Co-Founder, Sunday LLC
-
Robert Koplar said:
I am an attorney in New York and I signed up for Sunday’s beta service a couple months ago, and am happily transitioning into the paid service. At first it was a fun bar trick to have research assistants at my fingertips (”When did Peter Gabriel leave Genesis, you ask? I’ll have the answer right away…”) Now I don’t know how I ever lived without it.
Sunday provides a personal secretary for a remarkably cheap $49 per month. I use them for travel arrangements, restaurant reservations, store-locater, direction-finder…I even have them send me birthday reminders so I don’t look like a jerk. They are absolutely essential when I don’t have the Internet handy, kind of like my own personal lifeline. On the downside they are sometimes slow in getting back to me during peak hours, so if you need something in a hurry be sure to indicate “ASAP”.
In case you were wondering, “Genesis’ 1975 tour was marked and closes by the departure of Peter Gabriel who did not feel comfortable anymore in the automatics of success. Drummer Phil Collins, who (after a long search for a replacement) eventually became Genesis’s lead singer after Gabriel left the band in 1975.”
-
suseela said:
i have great service from sunday.iam a physian.i dont have time to sit in front of computor.sunday has searched best prices and locations to buy some articles to my home.sunday agents give real time answers regarding flights while driving.its like pulliteeth to find answers from airlines.iam very happy to have the service.
-
Hamaad said:
I use Sunday for detailed info in London. Service has been flawless thus far.
-
Umar said:
I have just signed upto http://www.Iwantapa.com - found these guys to be very professional and efficient, will be recommending to my friends.
-
vijay krishna said:
ASK SUNDAY helps to take of day to day activities so for it makes life easier and the tasks are prformed in a professinal manner
-
Mark Campbell said:
http://www.RedButler.com - Quality, Personal Experience, Local Discounts and all their staff is located within the US.
-
Vgulati said:
To the founders of Ask Sunday: I signed up to Sunday last week and out of the two tasks I gave them they have scored a big ZERO. First one they forgot and in the case of the second Sunday’s system truncated my email (odd!) so they didnt get full details. So far I have had to chase them after I give them a task to check if it has been done. Maybe I can sign up to RedButler to chase Ask Sunday to remind them to do the things I want them to do.
If you ask Hema she will know who you are talking about.
VG
One Trackback
11:21 am
Ask Sunday « RobWebb2k said:
[...] I’ve recently been dabbling with a new service called Ask Sunday (recently written up on VentureBeat) which offers outsourced/offshored personal assistant services. Apparently they have a team of 35 [...]