New York-based chore wizard Hello Alfred is about expand its mission to make life easier, one to-do list at a time. The company commands a small army of thoroughly trained home helpers who take care of domestic tasks like sorting mail, taking out the trash and picking up groceries. Those helpers pop by on a weekly basis, and subscribers pay a monthly subscription fee to free their lives of little things that tend to add up to more than the sum of their parts.
Now, with a new $40 million Series B round, Hello Alfred is set to scale. The round was led by investors including real estate developers Divco West and Invesco. Spark Capital and New Enterprise Associates (NEA) also participated in the $40 million round after previously investing in the company. The company won our Startup Battlefield at Disrupt in 2014, back when it was just “Alfred .”
With its Series B, Hello Alfred will execute its plan to expand from serving 10,000 homes (some in Alfred partnered apartment buildings) to serving 100,000 by the end of the year. The company also intends to invest further in its technology data operations and its own line of home goods, known as Alfred Home Essentials.
Hello Alfred began in New York and currently operates in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Boston, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles with planned launches in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Miami, Portland, Raleigh and San Jose on the horizon. The company also intends to double the size of its team in 2018 while continuing to expand partnerships with vendors and products and real estate developers that fit its brand.
While many startups work to to automate away the human aspect of their business, Hello Alfred is all about the human touch. Instead of relying on contractors à la TaskRabbit or so many other services in the on-demand economy, Hello Alfred’s “Home Managers” are all full-time W-2 employees. Those workers get to know their clients, developing familiarity that ideally leads to even better hospitality over time.
Another thing that sets Hello Alfred apart: It’s profitable. The company opted to scale slowly, paying employee salary out of the profits it’s been generating since launch. With investors interested and a sustainable business model that could do without them anyway, Hello Alfred seems to be hitting its stride.
from TechCrunch