Sam Wilson, co-founder and director of Virtalent, explains why the business should win the Startup of the Year category of the Guardian Small Business Showcase competition:
Virtalent offers virtual assistant (VA) services to SMEs across the UK, differentiating itself from the competition by offering a much wider range of skills. We offer everything from PA support and social media management to graphic design and web development, all at one flat rate of £21 per hour. All work is also billed to the exact second it takes to complete.
All of our VAs are university-educated and must pass through a rigorous application process, which includes a background check carried out by Onfido and an interview with one of the two company directors.
Virtalent was launched in February 2015 by two 23-year-old graduates from Aston University in Birmingham. Since launch, the team has self-built its own task management portal to handle all of the tasks carried out by its VAs, as well as an application portal to handle new applications from new VAs who would like to be contracted.
The company has been featured in national newspapers such as The Mail on Sunday and The Sunday Times, as well as smaller local publications.
Since launch Virtalent’s growing team of VAs have supported almost 50 companies, which include well-known names such as the Marco Pierre White restaurant chain and the top 50 law firm, Mills & Reeve.
This month’s invoices have hit £10,000 which we feel is great progress considering we launched less than a year ago. The company is now considering taking on some equity investment to capitalise on its ambitious growth plans.
All entries which meet the competition criteria are published and our judging panel select a shortlist of the top three for each category. Winners are announced at an awards ceremony in summer 2016.
