- This Irvine, CA-based B2B managed services provider has startup DNA, so it makes sense that they would know how to serve newly-minted businesses. Wing Assistant offers general and specialized VAs, for either 80 or 160 hours a month.
- With its “bucket system” of buying hours, TaskBullet provides significant ease of use and convenience to its clients. The company doesn’t do monthly bills, fees, and contracts, which could be a blessing to a startup that only needs VAs intermittently.
- BELAY touts that it has a less than 3% acceptance rate for applicants, making its screening process more rigorous than Harvard’s. The company mainly provides general virtual assistance, virtual bookkeeping, social media management, and website design.
Looking for Virtual Assistant Companies For Startups, we got you covered here.
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, there were 32.5 million small businesses actively operating in the country in 2021. It is clear that startup culture is alive and thriving in the country.
However, the road to having a successful enterprise is no cakewalk. It’s common knowledge that most startups don’t make it past their first year—less than half make it to five years.
Building Something Meaningful
It is in a startup’s DNA to overcome struggles, especially in the beginning, when it’s just getting its bearings. In the pursuit of creating something remarkable, startup founders often have to get past dozens, if not hundreds of obstacles.
Delivering projects to meet lighting-fast turnaround times is pretty common in startups, but that doesn’t mean it’s not tiring. Often, founders find themselves buried in busy work instead of actually making a difference in the direction of their business.
Business owners can devote more hours to strategy and development by offloading tedious tasks to virtual assistants.
What To Offload To A VA For Startups
There are several use cases for virtual assistants, in industries as diverse as e-commerce, real estate, content marketing, sales, and more. Some virtual assistants even specialize in helping startups—below are typical use cases for startup VAs.
1. Product development support
Startups, especially ones in tech-focused industries, have a lot of heavy lifting to do in product development. As such, full-time employees working as developers in these companies don’t have room for non-core activities tied to development, like documentation and troubleshooting. These are things that a VA can handle for you.
2. Help with the recruitment cycle
Hiring the right people is a necessary part of startup growth, and scaling often requires business owners to hire a lot of people in a short period of time.
Virtual assistants ease this process in several ways. You can task a VA with:
- Booking appointments
- Organizing email inboxes
- Sending letters to applicants
- Screening CVs and portfolios
- Onboarding and orientations
When you have a VA, you can focus on training your new full-time employee and making sure they fit into the company culture. You don’t have to think of administrative or HR tasks—your virtual assistant will handle it all for you.
3. Digital Marketing For SMBs
Besides recruitment and development, VAs can help free up your time by taking on digital marketing. Startups need to aggressively promote their products and services, but that means spending a lot of time on creating content, making ads, and putting these out on the internet.
Having a VA who specializes in marketing means not having to worry about scheduling social media posts, creating articles for your blog, or doing simple SEO on your website. You can offload all of these to your remote assistant.
There’s no doubt that having a virtual assistant, especially for tasks in marketing and HR, will streamline your startup team’s schedule. However, after you’ve decided that you need a VA, the next question is—from where are you going to hire one?
Top 10 Virtual Assistant Companies For Startups
Today, a startup founder has a wealth of options for managed VA services. Here are a few companies that cater to startups and why one should subscribe to them.
1. Wing Assistant
This Irvine, CA-based B2B managed services provider has startup DNA, so it makes sense that they would know how to serve newly-minted businesses. Wing Assistant offers general and specialized VAs, for either 80 or 160 hours a month.
There’s no cap to the number of tasks you can assign to a Wing VA, provided it is legal, possible, and you do it within the 4- or 8-hour window specified in your contract.
Wing Assistant is uniquely geared to help small and medium businesses, entrepreneurs, and startup teams.
One reason is that they offer a wide range of services for a low monthly fee. You can get a part-time VA for $499 per month, and a full-time one for $799.
It means that you’re spending approximately $6 per hour on your virtual assistant every month—a great investment, considering the amount of work you can assign within 4 to 8 hours a day.
Another thing that makes Wing Assistant a perfect fit for startups is that they offer dedicated assistants. Because of the fast-paced nature of growing a business from scratch, startups cannot afford to keep training and onboarding assistants when they subscribe to a VA service.
Yet this is something that could happen if you stick with other managed providers—some, unlike Wing, do not offer dedicated assistants.
In contrast, when you hire VAs through Wing Assistant, they’ll only work with your company. It means they’ll only get better at their work the longer you subscribe to Wing.
2. Hello Rache
For startups in the healthcare industry, Hello Rache is a great option. You can offload healthcare admin tasks to a Hello Rache VA, freeing up medical professionals to do work they actually specialize in.
The service is limited to the healthcare industry, though, and provides no free trials or money-back guarantees.
3. TaskBullet
With its “bucket system” of buying hours, TaskBullet provides significant ease of use and convenience to its clients.
The company doesn’t do monthly bills, fees, and contracts, which could be a blessing to a startup that only needs VAs intermittently.
If you would like to hire a VA long-term, though, TaskBullet’s system might be a little clunky. They also don’t allow hours to carry over into the next month.
Still, they mitigate their limitations by assigning a VA project manager and a US-based team leads to each virtual assistant.
4. BELAY
Established in 2010, BELAY touts that it has a less than 3% acceptance rate for applicants, making its screening process more rigorous than Harvard’s.
The company mainly provides general virtual assistance, virtual bookkeeping, social media management, and website design.
Their prices start at $34 per hour, and their basic plan provides 20 work hours per month. This might be too expensive for too few hours, especially for startups.
5. Magic
Magic, a text-based concierge service, shares some characteristics with Wing Assistant. Both started in the personal assistant space and branched out into B2B. Both currently provide virtual assistants for personal and business tasks.
However, a major difference between the two is that Magic requires an upgrade if the client wants a dedicated assistant. Like BELAY, Magic charges more than $30 per hour for managed business clients.
Another thing of note is that going for the lower-cost option—the one which charges $10 per hour—means having an unmanaged virtual assistant.
6. Prialto
This company specifically positions itself as a solution for small and medium businesses. It claims to be a “one-stop shop” for solo entrepreneurs, handling it all from administrative tasks to operations and even sales.
The company leverages international talent from Central America and from Asia and integrates tools like Hubspot, Mailchimp, Salesforce, and more.
Prialto offers 55 hours of support for $1,200 per month. They have options for 165+ hours per month (for 3+ members, at $3,600 per month), and for 440+ hours per month (for 8+ members, price available upon request).
7. Time Etc
Another good contender for “good VA company for SMBs” is Time Etc. They offer support starting from 10 hours per month for $270, meaning clients pay approximately $27 per hour.
There’s an option to roll over the unused hours to the next month, and the larger the hourly package you purchase, the greater the discount.
For businesses that want to stay lean, though, Time Etc’s pricing structure might be a little too rigid. For one, their minimum is 10 hours—you can’t hire their VAs for fewer hours than that.
They also seem to just have assistants for a limited number of services.
8. MyOutDesk
Established in 2008 by real estate professionals, MyOutDesk tackles tasks in healthcare, biotech, finance, marketing, legal, and more. Its remote assistants come from Southeast Asia, mostly the Philippines.
They have three pricing plans which lock subscribers in for 3, 6, and 12 months. For startups that value flexibility, these might be too long. If you have very specific to-do lists, though, you might find value in their services.
9. Fancy Hands
Hiring Fancy Hands professionals is the best for companies with short, quick tasks that need to be done immediately. It is not the best fit for recurring work—the company does not provide dedicated assistants, and it operates on a request-based system.
Plans come in Small (3 requests at $17.99 per month), Medium (5 requests at $29.99 per month), Large (15 requests at $74.99 per month), and XL (30 requests at $149.99 per month).
10. Zirtual
Lastly, you can explore Zirtual, which offers support starting at $449 per month for 12 hours. Like most others on this list, they don’t have lock-in periods, and you can communicate with your VA through a platform of your choice.
However, Zirtual’s response times are a bit slow—they have a two-hour response time even if you message during business hours.\
Quick Links:
- You Can Hire a Social Media Virtual Assistant
- Best Freelance Virtual Assistant Online Jobs To Make Money
- VMware Workstation 16 Pro Review: Is It The Best Virtual Machine?
Conclusion: Virtual Assistant Companies For Startups
From refining their products or offerings to securing suppliers or finding the best messaging for their target audience, startup founders and employees often have their hands full.
Finding the best virtual assistant for your startup, then, might spell the difference between quickly ramping up your operations and spinning your wheels trying to do everything yourself.
