A few weeks ago, we featured Nana.io ‘s story as our ‘Startup of the Week.’ Here is a guest post on the Gig-Economy from its CEO and founder David Zamir.
The gig economy is often touted as providing opportunity, but with gig workers employed as contractors without benefits or job security, there is a limit to that opportunity. I think that immigrants are going to play a huge role in changing that, and as an immigrant from Israel, I’m determined to do my part.
David Zamir, Founder / CEO
Nana is an app allows people to schedule high-quality appliance repair, home cleaning, and other household chores easily and quickly and easily. There are other apps that do this, of course, but I really believe that we do it differently. Most companies that are part of the gig economy rely on workers that they view to be disposable. But with Nana, it’s important for us to pay our workers fairly, to treat them well, and maybe most importantly, to give them the opportunity for stability and mobility.
I know a little bit about mobility.
I grew up in Haifa, Israel, in a poor neighborhood. My father passed away when I was 12 years old, and my mom raised my sister and me alone. She is a warrior. She was 33 years old with two kids, and she worked and worked and worked and worked to provide for our family. After my father passed away, we had no money. As a child, my mom was never home, she had shifts constantly. She was a nurse, and she worked as many shifts as she could and also went to after-hours classes at the university so that she could get a promotion. And then when she was home, there was so much to take care of, with us, with the house. She worked so hard, and from the time I was a little kid, I knew that I wanted to make life easier for her.
At first I thought that meant making a lot of money.
I became an entrepreneur very young with this goal in mind. I opened two businesses, an apparel store and an importing company. Then at 25, the businesses failed, and I was $300,000 in debt. I had failed. And I had failed her.
I was determined to avoid bankruptcy, to get back on my feet, to get back to my plan. But I had to pay back the $300,000 in loans first. I had a childhood friend in Toronto who was fixing appliances. I knew he was making a lot of money, and so I called him and said, can you teach me? So I flew to Toronto to check it out. I’d never fixed things before, I had never thought about fixing things! But I shadowed him for one week fixing appliances, and I learned how.
My wife is American, so we made the decision to move to the U.S. to follow opportunity there. We chose the Bay Area, we wanted to be somewhere that had a future. I had $675 in my pocket when we arrived in San Francisco. But we put an ad up. My wife answered the phone and immediately started me booking me repair jobs. I’d wake up at 6:30 a.m. to go to my first repair appointment by 8 a.m., would get home at 10 p.m. after my last appointment. I was in combat mode. I didn’t talk to my friends. I didn’t go out. The only thing I did was work, work, work, and work.
I wanted to scale the business, in order for me to scale the business, I had to start to train people, I found good people and started to train them to fix appliances. I paid off the debt within a year.
The debt was a setback, but I never lost my dream of building a business that would help me provide for my family. I scaled this business from a team of two to 45 employees and $5 million a year in revenue. We now have 45 people in my company, and I knew that in order to grow it larger, it had to be through technology. But I also know that I couldn’t stop hiring and training the best people and doing the best work. I’ve worked in this business a long time, and I know that the people are the most important part.
I became an American citizen in 2016, and in 2017 we launched the Nana app. I have worked doing this work, I still have some of my first customers that call me directly to come to their homes and fix their appliances. I feel proud that I took the time to understand the nuances of home appliance repair and the domestic cleaning industry and bootstrapped my business before taking it tech. I feel proud that I know my employees, that I’ve been my employees. It’s one of the reasons that I feel so confident about our hybrid model.
At Nana we combine the best of the gig economy with the best of the “traditional” economy. Meaning that there is tier of Nana worker who is a contractor, and gets the perks of that kind of work. And there are perks: it’s extremely flexible they work as much as they want, when they want, and they can make money quickly. But we don’t treat these workers like “gig” workers. We really do care about our employees and want them to be happy.
The second tier is unique to us, other companies in this new gig economy aren’t offering, and that’s an employee tier. These employees are just that—full-time employees who are well-trained, work a full work-work, are given benefits including healthcare and paid time off. They get stability. I think the opportunity for full-time conversion is so important. Good workers need somewhere to go, they need incentive. I want to reward expertise with full-time positions later down the line.
My mom is my hero, and I named my company after her because she provided me with peace of mind to be where I am today. I want to provide people around the world the world the peace of mind they need to enjoy their parents, their kids, to sit with their kids and invest time in them to avoid the rest of it, the annoying and time-consuming chores that take time away from what is really important. And want service workers to work for a company that they care about, that they know cares about them. I want to build back the self esteem of the service providers in this country. They work hard and I do believe they deserve better.
Author: David Zamir, CEO and Founder of nana.io
Amazing story and great business model! Smart man!
you are the king’the king of life never give up