Just a short note: We had to take down new signups due to overwhelming demand. Leave a contact and we'll get to you within a few days.

Hopefully people here and elsewhere can appreciate that as opposed to doing a shoddy job. :)

It may be helpful to add an inline status alert (similar to those used by Twitter, Netflix, Basecamp, etc) in the actual dashboard when you're experiencing high demand.

I signed up yesterday afternoon and submitted a couple of requests and wasn't sure what to expect for turnaround time. If you are not currently completing requests as quickly as you normally would, it would be reassuring to trial members (and existing members) to receive a notice that things may take slightly longer than normal but you are indeed working hard to catch up with demand.

Great idea. We're working around the clock, even though a quarter of our staff was on Eid break when the site launched. They're all back, but yes, everything should be back to normal in terms of turnaround in the next 24 hours. We've also added more people.

That's good to hear. I hope this uptick in activity will be good for your overall business and the growth will be sustainable.

The two responses I received this morning were top-notch, by the way. The information was very concise and saved me a bit of time already.

thanks! we try our best.

I saw that on the website and was really impressed. I'm confident that when I sign up I won't have to worry about you stretching your resources too thin to help me adequately, even when it's in your short term best interests.

Zaki... Great job on the service! The tasks that have been done thus far are of the highest quality I could expect. My concern is the tasks not getting done.

I had 3 or 4 done yesterday, but since then, nothing. Will you be able to cope with the load soon?

Wow... all of a sudden they're gone! Nvm, thanks anyway!

We should be back at full strength in terms of service time by mid-next week. When you say gone, do you mean replied to? My email is zaki (at) timesvr.com if you have any issues.

Could someone who successfully uses an assistant like that outline concrete tasks they delegate to them? Both private and job related (software engineering here). 9 out of 10 restaurants here do online booking and I don't need to book at the "Fat Duck", with its annoying phone reservation, that often.

I asked for a bunch of research: some background data for my market, with sources, and a comparison of some vendors I'm interested in. If I was deep in code, this would be pretty useless.

I will try it out and report later.

Perhaps my assistants can up my article. ;)

I actually signed up for timesvr earlier tonight after reading this. They claim $59 a month buys you unlimited tasks, which I cannot believe is profitable, but if they can make money off of my business, I wish them health and happiness.

Hahahaha! It's surprisingly exhilarating when someone else does your work for you.

I'm pretty surprised by it as well. The 1 week free trial is awesome too - worst case, you have a team of assistants to do free work for you and you leave after 7 days. Although at their prices, that's really only a $15 free trial so it's not really going to hurt them any

It is surprising that this can be profitable, but if you value your time at anything above $20/hr and this saves you a few hours a week, this is certainly worth it to you if the work done is at a high enough quality level.

I should outsource surfing news.yc.

I think I would still prefer a live, personal, one-on-one assistant. Sure there are a lot of downsides, but if you get a good person and you learn each other's personalities? I think the upside is a lot bigger than the downside.

Completely agree. However, most people can not justify or afford a full time, or even part time, assistant. They're just looking for 30 - 45 minutes of help a day. That's where we step in :)

Thanks for the article Sid. Appreciate your balanced review :)

Zaki Mahomed CEO, TimeSvr.

This is why I love Hacker News.

Your FAQ is messed up, some links that go nowhere and some old info?

Downvoted because...?

What does it cost? links to http://www.timesvr.com/signup.html

" Will unused tasks get carried on to the next month?

No, the basic tasks expire at the end of the month. This is to help us price our service affordably by optimizing the Aide's time. You are however welcome to use all your tasks each month, and purchase more at a reasonable rate."

This does not seem relevant to an unlimited service.

Upvoted. I didn't see the FAQ page, I just used the service. I agree with you, it's not relevant so they should correct that - (or clarify why it's relevant. My hunch is you were downvoted because people have a knee jerk reaction to downvoting tangent negative comments =)

Also, the FAQ sliding is slightly out of alignment in Safari (the text is too far left and out of sight, and more text is visible to the right)

yep, aware of that. A couple of alignment issues on Opera as well. One surprising thing we learned was that Safari behaves very differently on a Mac and a PC. Oh well :P

thanks for the heads up. We've fixed it. Upvoted, of course.

Is spanish on the way?

No plans yet to offer another language. Hard to find native-quality speakers and we don't want to compromise service quality.

If you want to offer other languages your best bet for the short term is to outsource the translation. Keep hiring English speakers as usual, but when dealing with alternate language users use an outsourced middleman for translation. There are plenty of services available that provide native-quality human translation in a fairly short amount of time. A good service will offer at least 10 languages and possibly up to about 30. It's the easiest and fastest way to support many languages.

thats a great idea! Thanks man. Didn't actually think of that.

It's answered in the FAQ.

Very interesting review, Sid. I'd be interested to know where things stand in 4-6 weeks time and if you've made a choice to support either of the services exclusively.

...moments ago from my girlfriend:

> you never checked on [important thing] did you? You are so irresponsible.

Yeah, I need this badly.

I entered a few tasks in this system in the morning and they were already done by the time I was back from lunch.. Great service so far!

What kind of tasks?

Basic research so far... Like personal finance software for the mac and options for keeping a google calendar and an iphone in sync.

Tomorrow I'll see how well they do finding a place to rent.

Thanks this is actually very helpful to see the actual responses these folks give back to generic requests like the ones you asked.

Been interested in the whole VA/personal outsourcing thing since reading 4HWW - I know, how original - but was put off by the pricing.

Definitely going to be giving this a shot in the near future.

Just called them. GREAT customer service. I dont know if the business numbers can make it profitable when scaling out. If it is everything it seems, they will do well.

Just signed up. I gave them a research task I already completed myself last weekend. I want to see how the results compare. Will probably post the results somewhere.

If this is really all it's made up to be, I will be using this on a regular basis

This is a brilliant concept! I wish I had thought of this.

Very interesting comparison. Thanks for sharing!

flow charts for the win!

Thanks. I worked really hard on those. It was a long, 2500 word block of text before I put them in.

Should've outsourced it.

LOL

Ok, I deserved that. Upvoted. [sigh] ;)

Very professional work, awesome minds. Congratulations TimeSvr Team!

cool!

interesting.