Fancy Hands

Fancy Hands is a New York-based virtual assistant service, founded in 2010, that lets individuals and businesses delegate short tasks to a distributed network of US-based assistants. Customers submit requests via the website, email, text message, phone, or the company's Android and iPhone apps, and assistants complete them; standard requests are scoped at up to roughly 20 minutes of work. Typical tasks include scheduling and calendar management, appointment and reservation booking, customer-service and hold calls, travel itinerary planning, product research and purchasing, data entry, expense reports, contact-list building, and general research.

The service is sold as a recurring subscription with tiered monthly request allowances (3 requests for $35, 5 for $55, and 15 for $125 as listed on the site), plus rollover of unused requests, recurring requests, referral credits, usage statistics, and third-party integrations such as Google Calendar and Trello, where users can add the fancy_hands account to a board and assign cards to assistants. Additional features include "Personal Touch," which routes all assistant correspondence through a single custom name and email address, and "Looking Ahead," a daily or weekly planning email containing calendar items, stats, tips, and delegation suggestions. Beyond the self-serve plans, Fancy Hands offers a dedicated assistant option and, per a third-party directory, an On-Demand Ops service for larger projects.

For organizations, the TeamWork product allows employers to give staff delegation access with administrative controls, usage tracking, pay-as-you-go billing, no minimums or contracts, and a confidentiality guarantee; volume discounts scale from 10% for 2–10 people to 25% for 100–499 people. Fancy Hands positions TeamWork both as a productivity tool for employers and as an employee perk covering personal errands.

Founding story

Founder Ted Roden was working in The New York Times R&D lab, where he helped develop News.me, while writing a book and caring for a newborn. Short on time, he hired people found on Craigslist to schedule meetings and make dinner reservations for him, and concluded that others would want the same service. He launched Fancy Hands publicly in April 2010 without a cofounder, in his thirties and as a father—counter to conventional startup advice—and kept his job until the subscription revenue could support him.

Business model

Fancy Hands sells recurring monthly subscriptions that entitle customers to a fixed number of assistant requests, each covering up to about 20 minutes of work. Unused requests roll over while the membership remains active, and customers can buy extra tasks on top of their plan. Assistants are contracted workers who select tasks from a shared pool and are paid per task, with payments processed bi-weekly through Dwolla. Businesses can buy team plans with volume discounts, bulk payment plans, conference calling, and API access.

Recurring monthly subscription fees tied to request allowances, plus purchases of extra tasks, gift subscriptions, dedicated assistant plans priced by hours per month, and quoted enterprise/On-Demand Ops engagements. A directory lists advertised pricing ranging from $17.99 to $149.99 per month for virtual assistant services.

Traction

In August 2012 the company reported thousands of customers paying at least $25 per month, seven in-house employees plus remote assistants, and a cash-flow-positive business at the time of its $1 million raise. Current third-party directory data lists 100–249 seats or staff and a $25–50 million revenue band, alongside a Glassdoor rating of 2.5 and a site-traffic figure of 11,672.

Latest developments

The company's website remains live and selling subscriptions, TeamWork organization accounts, dedicated assistants, conference calling, and API access, with a 2010–2026 copyright notice. A third-party directory lists staff in the 100–249 range and a self-reported revenue band of $25–50 million, with Ted Roden as Founder and CEO; those figures are not independently corroborated in the available sources.