Please Assist Me

Please Assist Me is a home management company that provides residents of partner apartment buildings with a dedicated team of personal assistants, branded PAMs, who handle household chores and errands. Services include cleaning (from a tidy-up to a standard clean), grocery shopping, laundry and dry cleaning pickup and return, mail and package drop-off, dish washing, bundled visits that combine cleaning and errands in a single trip, and one-off special requests. Requests are booked through the company's mobile app or online account, and the company also sells gift cards.

Each partner building is assigned a team of two to three assistants plus an on-site manager, so that residents deal with the same, familiar staff who learn their individual preferences over time. All PAMs are W-2 employees who work in teams and wear body cameras while working in residences; the company also produces detailed apartment reports as part of its transparency practices. It offers a satisfaction guarantee promising to fix any problem within 24 hours or provide a refund, and publishes a customer satisfaction score of 9.84.

For property owners and operators, the company positions the offering as a building amenity intended to raise resident satisfaction, support occupancy and differentiate properties in the multifamily market. Buildings that can provide an on-site storage room and parking can host the service at no cost to the building, and onboarding is described as requiring two 30-minute meetings with the property team.

Founding story

CEO and co-founder Stephanie Cummings conceived the company while balancing full-time work, family responsibilities and business school, finding that laundry, dry cleaning and grocery runs consumed her limited free time. Market research with busy parents and working professionals in her network indicated the problem was widespread — she cites that 55 percent of Americans are stressed because of household chores — and she designed a service in which a dedicated personal assistant communicates with clients through an app and completes chores at their home on a recurring basis.

Business model

Please Assist Me operates a B2B2C model: it partners with apartment complexes and condominiums, which offer the assistant service as a building amenity to their residents, rather than selling directly to individual consumers. Named partner buildings include The Hepburn, 880P and Apartments at Westlight. Buildings that provide on-site storage and parking are not charged for the service; pricing for residents is described as partner-based to keep resident costs low. The company earlier operated a direct-to-consumer model before shifting to the apartment-partnership approach in order to scale faster and lower the barrier to entry.

Revenue comes from resident service fees at partner buildings. Under the earlier model described in 2019 coverage, the amenity was offered through apartment partners at $100 per month added to a resident's lease, while individual home service started at $28 per week, excluding the cost of goods such as groceries, dry cleaning and laundry materials; that price included a home refresh covering trash removal and surface wipe-downs. The company states it can operate at no cost to partner buildings that supply storage space and parking.

Traction

By 2019 the company had signed five apartment buildings in Nashville, including the tallest downtown skyscraper. As of March 2023 it was partnered with more than 5,000 apartment units across Washington, D.C. and northern Virginia. The website reports a customer satisfaction score of 9.84 and carries testimonials from partner properties including The Hepburn, 880P and Apartments at Westlight.

Latest developments

In March 2023, Virginia Venture Partners, the equity investment program of the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation, announced an investment in Please Assist Me to fund expansion to additional apartment complexes. The company continues to recruit assistants in Virginia, Maryland, Washington, D.C. and Illinois.