Personal concierge service GoButler has launched out of beta after closing an $8m Series A round, led by General Catalyst Partners.
Additional strategic investors include Lakestar, Rocket Internet’s Global Founders Capital, Slow Ventures, BoxGroup, Ashton Kutcher & Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures and Cherry Ventures.
The funding round marks the official launch out of beta for GoButler, with the service now fully operational across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Having transformed from a weekend side project to a full-fledged company in just one month, GoButler first began operating in Europe in February 2015, moving their headquarters to New York and beta-launching in North America shortly thereafter.
To-date, the service has 100,000+ beta users and has received over 1 million requests across six countries.
As a result of this latest funding round, GoButler is working to aggressively build out its product and engineering team in New York.
GoButler’s over 120 trained operators, known as “Heroes”, are available 24/7 to fulfill requests and meet users’ needs, making everyday life easier, one text at a time.
From meal and grocery delivery to travel arrangements, restaurant reservations, movie tickets and everything in between, GoButler searches the web, compares prices, reads reviews, provides instructions and places orders, fulfilling thousands of requests per day.
GoButler is 100% free to use, leveraging the best suppliers at the best prices, with consumers paying only for the cost of their requested products and services while GoButler receives a commission from suppliers.
Joel Cutler, managing director at General Catalyst Partners and GoButler board member, said:
“We’re excited to partner with Navid and the GoButler team to build on their successes in the on-demand market and help them reinforce their leadership in the space.”
“Any consumer who values their time more than anything can immensely benefit from using GoButler,” added Niko Bonatsos, venture partner at General Catalyst Partners. “The customer experience is great and the service is free to use. If you know how to send a text message, you can start using the product immediately. This service speaks your language!”
Each user has a set of specifically assigned Heroes who, aided by personalised profiles and a proprietary artificial intelligence engine, learn individual preferences, allowing them to engage proactively and intuitively throughout the user’s lifetime.
Users simply text their request to GoButler and the service goes to work communicating via SMS as needed along the way.
GoButler founder and CEO Navid Hadzaad, said: “We’re streamlining and simplifying the on-demand marketplace by offering a one-stop solution that helps users save significant time, hassle and money.
“People are overwhelmed with the vast number of niche on-demand services out there and we’ve created GoButler to solve this pain point.
“We see the opportunity to introduce a new level of convenience and fundamentally change the way people interact with mobile devices. We’re excited to share with the world what we believe is just the beginning of a new way to leverage technology to simplify your everyday life.”