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A Los Angeles startup that specializes in providing on-demand home technical support is gunning for your job — the unpaid one you perform every time a parent calls and asks for help with a gadget.
A new online destination called BuyYourParents.com lets people purchase home technology services for their parents, no guilt involved. The site, an extension of HelloTech.com, provides information, training and support for new products.
“It’s aimed at adult children who have parents in their 50s to late 70s who have support needs and don’t know how to do that alone,” said HelloTech Chief Executive Richard Wolpert. “You can go online and gift that to your parents.”
BuyYourParents’ service taps into the on-demand technical support HelloTech provides through college students. Techs undergo training, testing and a criminal background check before they’re sent into someone’s home. The services they provide, within 24 hours of an initial request, range from improving the performance of a PC to fixing the home wireless network or setting up a Sonos digital stereo system.
Wolpert said he and the founding partners came up with the idea for a tech-support gifting service while meeting with potential investors to pitch HelloTech, a startup founded in November 2014.
“Almost 100 percent of the time people said to me, ‘Can I buy this for my parents?'” said Wolpert, recalling the conversations. “They went on to say, ‘I am the tech support person for my parents. They call and they assume, since I’m in the tech industry, that I know everything. I can’t say no.'”
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
