Between his junior and senior years at The University of Texas, Connor Tomkies did what so many students dream of doing. He loaded his backpack, took out about $1,000 of spending cash and traveled around Europe, passing through about 15 countries.
And, like many students traveling on a budget, he opted to stay with the locals, using services like Airbnb and HomeAway instead of hostels and hotels. But staying in other people's homes means a lot of uncertainty. Will they have a nice clean room, fresh linens and plenty of towels and toiletries? Or will you be stocking the place yourself?
"There's no real standard for customer service," Tomkies said. And, in those new locations, he could never be sure which smartphone apps might work or what on-demand services might be available.
"You have to figure out 'what's the Favor of Italy?'" he said. "How do you get around? What's the best way to get on-demand deliveries?"
When Tomkies got back to the states, he discovered a San Francisco-based service called Magic, Inc., which had a team of people ready to respond to text requests from customers who need anything from a dozen roses sent to their partner to a pizza delivery to booking a flight. You text them, and they figure it out.
With that as a baseline, Tomkies sought to build his own business called DelegateIt to help travelers -- or anyone who wants something done for them -- get quick responses and solutions by simply sending a text or using a smartphone app. And he teamed up with co-founders Austin Middleton and George Farcasiu.
For the consumer, DelegateIt is pretty simple. You use their app or a text message to request whatever it is you need. It could be a restaurant reservation, groceries or a toothbrush. Refine your order, if necessary, pay and wait for it to arrive.
But, on the other side of that message, it's not always so simple.
Once a request is made, a DelegateIt employee works to fulfill the order either using a third-party service, like Favor, Burpy or Postmates, or by doing the work themselves. In some cases, DelegateIt has a relationship with the vendor for discounts or expedited service and detailed notes on what services worked well in the past. Once DelegateIt finds a way to fulfill the request, they text you back with a price estimate and ask if you still want to order. If so, they complete it and you pay in the app.
While it's pretty easy to order food, book a flight or hotel reservation or schedule home cleaning service, which are the most common orders, DelegateIt sometimes gets trickier requests. For example, DelegateIt primarily serves Austin and San Diego where they know most of the local vendors and can solve problems quickly with local knowledge. But they take orders from anywhere. And, recently, someone in New York needed 300 lanyards delivered to the New York Historical Society the next morning.
"We had to get pretty creative. We were calling manufacturers and print shops to see if they had extra lanyards on hand," Tomkies said. Long story short, they landed the deal after about three hours of searching.
"Even if it is kind of messy on the backend, we try to make sure everything is pretty smooth on the other end," he said.
The startup is focused on the travel industry. The founders completed a 3-Day Startup project with HomeAway, and the startup gained access to HomeAway's API to integrate the service for homeowners who sign up with DelegateIt. It's free for homeowners, and it lets DelegateIt contact renters a few days before their trip with a list of services. DelegateIt has also created welcome books for renters that include house rules, local recommendations and services they can quickly provide with a simple text.
DelegateIt typically charges different rates, depending on the service. Tomkies said they couldn't really charge a straight percentage markup for things like flights, but, on smaller orders, it charges a higher margin. And it's providing a lot of discount opportunities to encourage people to use the service. The startup plans to expand within Texas in the near future and eventually wants to grow internationally using local delegators to provide local knowledge.
The delegators are typically college students looking for flexible gigs and supplemental income. They're paid hourly and have flexible schedules, and particularly difficult orders are assigned to the most experienced delegators available. Eventually, Tomkies hopes to create a training program and crowdsource orders.
DelegateIt is among the startups hoping to roll multiple services and app features into one place in hopes of helping consumers avoid app overload. To that end, the team's developers are working on native language processing and artificial intelligence to provide customized suggestions based on your usage history and location.
"The time of 'theres an app for that' is kind of over. I think people don't want 100 apps. People want 20 that do most things."
"The time of 'theres an app for that' is kind of over," he said. "I think people don't want 100 apps. People want 20 that do most things."
But DelegateIt is also operating in a perilous space in which on-demand ideas rise and fall while massive companies like Amazon and Uber launch new products that can chip away or even dominate the market. And there are still relatively fresh memories of dot com bust companies such as Kozmo, which would delivery pretty much anything, and Urbanfetch, which operated a similar business.
Tomkies said his previous startups include a service called Expedited Expedition that set up campsites for campers before they arrive. But he said it had a scalability problem. He also started Austin Philanthropy, a website that put civic service opportunities in one place for people find ways to pitch in.
DelegateIt, which is bootstrapped and now has nine employees, went through the Longhorn Startup Lab, an incubator program, and is supported by Tripchamp, which uses AI to book flights. And Tomkies is drawing lessons from his other full-time job at Embark, the Austin-based canine genetics startup, where he handles business development and logistics.
"Right now, we are profitable," he said. "I know right now a lot of startups are revenue focused... it's a lot more 'can you turn a profit?' with startups. And we're doing alright."
