Varsityhire takes aim at a different kind of homework
Site connects people needing work done to students needing money, writes Lloyed Lobo.
Homeowners and renters are often challenged to find affordable help for regular tasks, while students are challenged to find flexible jobs while focusing on their studies.
Varsityhire is an online market place that connects homeowners with students looking for parttime work, allowing customers to find immediate help with tasks such as housecleaning, moving assistance, yard and pet care.
Here’s more from Varsityhire founders John MacLellan and Paul McCarron:
Q How did you come up with the idea for your startup? Was there an “ah-ha” moment?
A Starting as early as Grade 5 and through to high school, we ran a lawn mowing and snow shovelling business in our rural neighbourhood, going door to door to acquire new customers. We knew there was a bigger idea out there to help students and residences in every community connect with each other. Everyone seems to have a task or job that they could use their neighbourhood student to complete, and most students are looking for a way to contribute to their expenses without impacting studies. Being recent graduates ourselves, we knew how hard it was to find flexible, part-time work while balancing our education, so we created Varsityhire to solve this problem.
Q What has been the biggest challenge so far? What have you done to solve it?
A The primary challenge continues to be embedding the overall culture and person-to-person community feel among our users. We approach this challenge beginning at the company leadership level. Our team is fully aligned on our vision and objectives and we promote the same in everything we do, from speaking to users and promoting our service, to developing our website and applications.
Q What advice would you like to share with others starting out?
A Find a way to test the core concepts of your idea in the cheapest way possible. For Varsityhire, that meant connecting students looking for work with local residents looking to hire. Before you look to create an elaborate website or application, find a way that you can validate the idea quickly at the lowest cost possible.
We ran Varsityhire for six months without an automated website to ensure we truly understood our users, the full range of our service offerings, and how users interact with the process. This saved us significant time and money in the long run as we developed a service that the users wanted and found valuable, not one that we thought users wanted.
Focus relentlessly on service quality and user experience. For the first several months of Varsityhire, we worked as closely with the students and customers as we could. This allowed us to gain valuable feedback and build a closer relationship with our users.
Q What made you choose to go down the path of entrepreneurship?
A The desire to solve a problem that could have a significant impact. We tested the market early and received very positive feedback, so we decided that we needed to turn our full attention to this project.
Q What do you and your startup need help with?
A Having just recently launched our fully automated website, we are actively seeking new people to use our service. Try us out at varsityhire.com and let others know how your experience was.