Exec, the San Francisco startup that lets you easily hire people online by the hour to run your errands and do your cleaning, will be increasing the flat rate for its flagship errand-running service Exec Errands by 20 percent and more than tripling its surcharge in an apparent bid to beef up its margins.
In an email sent to Exec users today, founder Justin Kan said that the price for errands will now be $30 per hour, up from the $25 hourly rate that it touted when it launched back in the spring of 2012 as part of Y Combinator. Exec Errands is also upping its surcharge from three percent to 10 percent. The changes go into effect later this week, on June 14th.
The official explanation for the price and surcharge hike is straightforward: “We’re making these changes to ensure that we are able to continue to provide the highest level of on-demand personal assistant services to our customers,” Kan wrote in his email to users. We’ve reached out for more details on Exec’s margins and how this will impact them, and will update this with any word we receive.
Notably, the price increases do not effect Exec Cleaning, the standalone house cleaning app that launched in San Francisco in February and has since expanded to Seattle, San Diego, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago And Boston. Cleaning had already accounted for more than 50 percent of Exec’s business before it was spun out as a standalone service, and it’s now the first thing featured on the company’s landing page.
Indeed, Exec is one of several startups that launched with a focus on helping people outsource their errands but has since expanded its purview — or changed it entirely. Zaarly, which launched in 2011 as a “reverse Craigslist” for outsourcing odd jobs to neighbors, has since ditched that business entirely to focus on virtual local storefronts; TaskRabbit, which for years focused solely on errand-running for consumers, now also caters to businesses looking for legitimate temp workers.
Of course, these kinds of changes are natural as startups develop, especially in a brand-new business category (after all, just a few years ago, getting someone else to pick up your dry cleaning was something that could only be afforded by, well, execs.) We can almost certainly expect to see more shifts as the market evolves.
Our own Jordan Crook interviewed Justin Kan a couple months ago just after Exec Cleaning launched in New York City, and it was an in-depth discussion about the company’s growth thus far, future plans, the larger competitive landscape, and more. It’s embedded below: