Anchor>> Finally tonight, an on-demand assistant for those with too much to do and too little
time. Our economics correspondent, Paul Solman has the story. It’s part of our ongoing
reporting, "Making Sense," which airs every Thursday on the Newshour.
Stanton>> As a single person
living on my own, the only reason I have so much stuff in my fridge is because somebody
else has bothered to do the shopping for me.
Reporter>> When Dr. Emma Stanton moved
to Boston this spring, work left little time for prepping her new apartment.
Stanton>> It was cleaned when I moved in, which was about nine days ago.
Reporter>> Or choosing a new coffee maker.
Stanton>> I just asked for particular recommendations, and this was one of three they suggested.
Reporter>> Cleaning her clothes.
Stanton>> This is my laundry. I just chuck it in here. The
Alfred comes and picks it up.
Reporter>> and who exactly is "Alfred"? A new online
service, the company's name is "Hello Alfred," named after batman's ultimate butler.
Movie>> There’s a problem with the graphite sir.
Reporter>> Who caters to your every need.
Movie>> Let me suggest you try to avoid landing on your head.
Reporter>> Now if you really want to outsource your chores
these days, there are apps galore, among them Instacart for shopping; Homejoy for cleaning.
But Stanton’s Alfred does it all.
Stanton>> Hello Alfred were able to be here last week, when
I had my Wi-Fi installed in my new apartment. Hello Alfred were able to be here when a storage
company came to pick up a box that I needed to go to storage, and deal with some of the
other hassles that happen when you move house.
Reporter>> Hello Alfred was conceived by
Marcela Sapone and Jess Beck, who both pulled out of Harvard business school last year to
scale up the business of butlering.
MC>> And the winner of the 2014 disrupt San Francisco
battlefield competition is: Alfred!
Reporter>> Sapone's case in point in pitching "Alfred"
at a high-powered startup competition was harried, hypothetical "Dan."
Sapone>> The butler you never had, for the very first time, the luxury of personal service for the rest of
us. For $99 a month Dan can get his very own Alfred that visits once a week, every week,
on set days to take care of his household chores.
Reporter>> Alfred was suddenly on the app map and within months, Sapone and Beck had more than $12 million in funding,
for an idea they'd come up with while working on Wall Street.
Sapone>> We were working 90-hour
workweeks. I mean, you barely saw the light of day. I was not doing a good job of taking care of myself.
Reporter>> So far, Alfred is taking care of clients who can easily afford
an extra $25 a week only in New York and Boston. But Sapone has a waiting list and plans to
expand wherever there are dense clusters of customers.
Sapone>> I’m giving people back their
time. Life is actually becoming unmanageable. And the hours that we're working are going
up, and the amount of complexity in our lives is only going up.
Reporter>> So, a good
deal for clients. But what about the Alfreds? Eeva Lee moved to New York from Finland last
summer. A psychologist, she now works part-time, 25 hours a week or more, as an Alfred, perambulating
Greenwich village with as much as 50 pounds in tow.
Lee>> Sometimes you have a lot to carry
on you, you can take it as an exercise, and don't have to go to the gym later. (laughs)
Reporter>> Especially given the flights of stairs.
Lee>> Usual day it's like, anywhere
from 20 to 40, depending on how many elevator buildings I have. I don't know if my iPhone
has a jinx on it, but it claims to me that there's one day that I’ve done 80. But that
sounds crazy, even in this job.
Reporter>> would you not rather be practicing psychology
than doing what you're doing?
Lee>> Of course. I would like to do what I have the education
for. But I understand how important wherever you work in the world, it is to know the culture
and the people and the ways of working. And I’m getting that education all the time
as work, the other very nice thing is that I sleep like a baby.
Reporter>> Unlike other on- demand services, which rely on low-paid contract workers, C.E.O. Sapone says Alfreds
are employees who earn $18 to $30 an hour. But how do the economics work if clients only
pay $25 week? >> You’re essentially sharing the cost of a personal assistant. That Alfred
is serving multiple people.
Reporter>> How many clients do you need in an area before
it's economically viable?
Sapone>> Anywhere from four to seven.
Reporter>> Boston tech entrepreneur
Nick Rellas got off the Hello Alfred waiting list four months ago. A favorite feature for
him: freshly pressed shirts from the dry cleaners down the street. So you couldn't
do this yourself?
Rellas>> That’s what my mother asks me! It’s not about proximity. It’s
about what time it closes every day. I don't leave work until at least 9:00 or 10:00 and
I never have time to get here before it closes.
Reporter>> So, Rellas's Alfred takes care of it.
Rellas>> You can see here, closes at 7:00.
Reporter>> And before wrapping up for the
day, she (real name, Lauren) leaves him a handwritten summary of tasks completed.
Rellas >> She cleaned up the apartment a little today, took out the garbage, fluffed the bed. Here’s
what I love about Alfred. She noticed I was out of garbage bags.
Reporter>> Yes?
Rellas>> And she's gonna pick some up for me.
Reporter>> But wait a second: should we outsource everything?
Selinger>> How is it that we've all become so pinched, that we feel we can't do very much for ourselves?
Reporter>> Evan Selinger teaches philosophy at the Rochester Institute
of Technology, is skeptical of outsourcing apps like Hello Alfred.
Selinger>> Instead of actually giving us our time back, they just open up more time for us to be imprisoned
in other ways, often for us to work longer hours. What kind of character do we develop,
the more that we outsource? How does outsourcing more and more change our interactions with
more and more people?
Reporter>> But on the other hand, Alfred could free up more
time for professional interactions since folks like Emma Stanton can subcontract lesser tasks.
Stanton>> We noticed one of your shirts still had some small stains on it, we took it back to
the dry cleaners. Thank you, have a great weekend. So I probably wouldn't maybe even
noticed that my shirt had a stain on it. So, I kind of like the fact that they just picked
that up and dealt with it!
Reporter>> And to CEO Marcela Sapone, it's just a division
of labor, that allows anyone in a dense neighborhood to buy a butler.
Sapone>> There’s no reason you
or I can't be just as extraordinary as batman.
Reporter>> Economics correspondent Paul
Solman, reporting for the PBS Newshour from Boston and NYC.