初創公司幫你忙，總有一款適合你
????美國硅谷面向高薪IT人士的創新服務初創公司層出不窮。
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????經歷了疲憊漫長的一天或者一周之后，我最不想干的就是家務活了。于是乎，家里的臟盤子、臟衣服堆積如山，地板也沒清潔。每次發生這種情況，我都會花更多的時間在家里爬上爬下，披著睡衣苦思冥想——其實有這些琢磨的時間，我早就可以動手干家務了——不過我琢磨的是自己到底想做什么：是刷浴缸呢，還是雇人替我干活？ ????但凡不想做的事情，無論哪種，幾乎都可以在硅谷找到一家初創公司為你代勞。懶得打掃房間？那就試試Exec或者Homejoy公司的服務吧。忙得沒空置辦食品和日用品？Instacart公司的灣區私人代購團隊為你解憂。Hasty公司把健康美味的大餐送到你家里。Prim公司上門取件，洗滌衣物，還打包送回。Medicast能讓用戶聯系可以出診的大夫。有了Uber、Lyft等流行智能手機應用，大家再也不需要在雨中的街角傻站著招呼出租車了。從表面上看，提供“有求必應”類服務的初創公司每周都在增加。然而，這種商業模式還很簡單：企業要做的無非是給客戶提供所需的外包服務，迅速完成任務，然后就由此帶來的便利收取額外的費用。 ????很多灣區的上班族的上班時間并不是朝九晚五。瑪麗莎?梅耶就是一個典型的例子。入職谷歌（Google）的前五年里，她每周要工作130個小時——平均每天達到了令人難以置信的18.5個小時。科技人才在創業早期要么不給自己開工資，要么只靠少量的一點工資勉強度日。除了這種特殊情況，科技人才的薪資水平大多遠遠高于美國普通民眾。就業網站運營商戴斯控股（Dice Holdings）的數據顯示，2012年，科技人才的平均薪水達到了101,278美元。 ????工作時間長，薪水豐厚，還有灣區俯拾皆是的服務類初創公司催生了一些有趣的應用案例。TaskRabbit無疑是個典型的例子。這家初創公司的業務是篩選自由職業者來完成組裝宜家家具、退貨等短期散工。這些工作任務本身也很特殊。一名高薪的軟件工程師坦言，為了在iPhone 5公開發售的第一天就買到這款新手機，他曾經在TaskRabbit上請人，替他在當地的Apple蘋果專賣店外排了幾個小時的隊。羅伊?巴哈特是IGN娛樂公司的前總裁，同時也是掌管著7,500萬美元的Bloomberg Beta風險基金的一把手。他表示，自己在TaskRabbit雇傭了一名司機，載著他整天在各個會場四處奔忙，而他則安心地坐在后座上撥打工作電話。 ????這兩年，我一直在使用Uber，有時是為了工作，有時只是純粹圖個樂子。Uber不僅可以叫車，還可以查詢出租車與乘車者之間的精確距離，因此可以說是物超所值。如果一座城市的出租車異常難打，令人惱火，而乘車者又恰好趕著赴約，這時候的Uber就顯得尤其重要。（有了Uber X等較新的Uber版本，乘車者還可以“召喚出”公司核準的業余司機，這樣就不需要乘坐出租車了。而且實際上，它比傳統的出租車還便宜10%。）我還體驗過Instacart的服務，這家網店在送達價格公道的貨品時附加了一小筆不固定的配送費。這樣一來，我就省下了一大筆時間，不需要辛辛苦苦跑到Safeway、Trader Joe's、全食（Whole Foods）、好士多（Costco）等超市去采購了。
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????After a long day or week, the last thing I want to do is house chores. So plates and laundry stack up. The floors don't get Swiffered. When that happens, I'll spend more time clambering around, pajama-clad, and deliberating -- time I could have used to actually perform these chores -- wondering which I'd prefer: scrubbing the tub or paying someone to do it for me? ????Here in Silicon Valley, there's a startup offering to do almost anything. Too lazy to clean the house? Hit up Exec or Homejoy. Too busy for groceries? Instacart's platoon of Bay Area personal shoppers do it for you. Hasty brings healthy, gourmet cooked meals to your door; Primpicks up, does, and drops off laundry; Medicast connects users with doctors who make house calls. And popular smartphone apps like Uber and Lyft mean never having to stand on a rainy street corner hailing a cab ever again. The number of startups in this space of "on-demand" services grows seemingly by the week. Yet the business model remains simple: build a service fulfilling tasks people wish they could outsource, do it swiftly, and charge extra for sheer convenience. ????Many Bay Area tech employees don't work 9-to-5 schedules. Marissa Mayer, obviously an outlier, worked 130 hours a week during her first five years with Google (GOOG) -- an incredible average of 18.5 hours a day. And with the exception of early-stage startup founders who routinely pay themselves nil or just enough to get by, many of these same techies make significantly more than the average American: $101,278 in 2012, according to career sites provider Dice Holdings. ????Long days, high salaries and the widespread availability of service startups in the Bay Area make for some interesting use cases. That's certainly the case for TaskRabbit, a startup that screens freelancers to do short-term errands and projects including IKEA furniture assembly or store returns. Tasks also verge on the idiosyncratic. One highly paid software engineer admitted he hired a TaskRabbit to stand in line for hours outside the local Apple (AAPL) store to pick up his iPhone 5 on launch day. Roy Bahat, former IGN Entertainment president and head of the $75 million Bloomberg Beta venture fund, admits he hires a TaskRabbit to drive his car from meeting to meeting all day, while he sits in the passenger seat making work calls. ????For two years, I've used Uber for work and fun. Being able to summon a car and know exactly how far away it was still makes paying extra worthwhile, especially in a city where cabs can be infuriatingly elusive and I'm rushing to an appointment. (Newer Uber options like Uber X conjure up company-approved citizen drivers in lieu of black cars, but actually charges 10% cheaperthan traditional taxis.) I've also used Instacart, which tacks a small variable delivery fee on top of reasonably priced produce. In that case, it saves me the time-suck of hoofing it among Safeway (SWY), Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and Costco (COST). |
