The Founding Letter

Hi, I'm Sukh, the Founder of VirtualAssistants.ca. My mission is to build Canada’s largest, customer centric and most affordable outsourced virtual assistance services provider.

People keep asking me why I would take on the headache of building a services business especially one so dependent on human capital. Everyone is curious why I would even waste my time on a decades old idea.

Unfortunately it was not a spark of genius, or some deep insight. Truth is, I am building VirtualAssistants.ca out of desperate necessity. Without it, I found myself pulling my hair and needlessly wasting 100s of hours.

Six months ago, I started bootstrapping a Google Sheets plugin project. I have very little technical capabilities and my wallet is quite small so I went out to find someone to build my plugin.

I interviewed 45 different service providers all over the world. I would wake up before work and be on the phone with a Australian developer, followed by some developer in Serbia and another interview with some agency in Bangalore.

I had no idea what the difference between a headhunter, agency, Toptal, full stack, back-end and design was. One thing was true - if you have money to spend, everyone is ready to help you spend it.

I had heard a lot of remote hiring horror stories - agency's running away with money, poor quality, costs running away or failure to meet timelines. Some of the people I met gave me bad vibes or had horrible reviews. However, I underestimated the talent I was able to find. Everyone I met had several years of experience, spoke amazing English, was willing to work to my time zone and were hungry to work.

After interviewing 24 engineers and 20 different agencies, I finally found someone in LATAM who had several years of experience working with Canadian companies, spoke amazing English and was someone I felt could be more than just an engineer, someone who could help me make leadership decisions.

However, the price the headhunting agency was charging was far from what I could afford, worst of all it was in USD. As a result of having a trust fund baby running Canada, all U.S. service providers were 1.40x more expensive than the marketed price for a Canadian business. I also learned hiring agencies had at least a 2-3x markup for all services.

I had no choice - I found someone I wanted to work with, so I decided to pay the price. As the Canadian FX rate deteriorated my costs ballooned. However, my new hire was truly a all-star and guided me through the development process. We continue to work towards getting our plugin into market.

Out of this experience I had a few learnings. Hiring remote global talent takes a lot of valuable time, none of the service providers offer CAD pricing, agency's have to much margin, having quality supervision and administration is important and paying your contractor can be expensive using remittance platforms.

I was also surprised by the quality of talent across the globe, willingness to work on a North American time zone and the fact you could hire someone for a fraction of the cost of hiring a full-time employee in North America. I met people who were more ambitious and spoke better English than locals.

Based on the philosophy of my business heroes, Jeff Bezos, Sam Walton, Jim Sinegal, I wanted to make the process of hiring remote global talent faster, cheaper and raise the bar for quality. As Bezos said “Your Margin is My Opportunity” - I want to offer Canadians Top 1% Global Talent for 80% less and pass along the savings to Canadian businesses.

On that note, I'm proud to introduce VirtualAssistant.ca — a talent-as-a-service subscription service that helps Canadian entrepreneurs access the Top 1% of Global Talent for 80% less. We offer:

• Amazing highly-skilled, English speaking virtual assistant services such as executive assistants, software developers, bookkeepers

• Tailored service for North American hours

• Cheaper CAD pricing, with NO headhunting fees or deposits

• Ongoing support and supervision

• Fill your required role within two weeks

• 1-week free trial period

Faster, Cheaper, Better.

We have already found our first customer, my best friend. She recently hired a remote bookkeeper for 1/3 of the cost and onboarded her new hire within a day. As someone who had no idea what to expect with remote hiring, my best friend was amazed by her new hires work ethic, amazing English and experience. She loved the service so much, she converted her 2-week free trial within 1 day and now focuses her time on sales.

VirtualAssistants.ca takes care of the placement, payments and ongoing supervision and support. 9/10 businesses fail, costs are rising and competition is fierce, the need to find high quality for low affordable prices has never been higher.

In the decades to come, inspired by the ethos of my business heroes—Bezos, Walton, and Sinegal — I aim to implement thousands of improvements over the years, continually passing along more savings and enhancing the value we provide to our customers.

My vision for VirtualAssistants.ca extends beyond simply helping businesses hire talent; I want to create the technologies that eliminates routine tasks and gives teams more time to work on things that truly matter.

If your starting a company, building software, looking for a bookkeeper, need someone to manage your calendars or just need an extra set of hands, we are here to help.

Thanks for reading, and for giving VirtualAssistants.ca a try. You can always contact me directly if you have any questions at sukh@virtual-assistants.ca. Remember We Offer a One-Week Free Trials!