five minutes with
Five minutes with Butler
Cheyelene Fontanilla meets the founders of the unique home concierge service
Jonathan Lam, Angues Chan and Jeffrey Ma are the founders of Butler, a personal home concierge service that boldly strives to simplify life for urbanites. How have they set out to do that? With personalised services brought to your door as part of a monthly subscription. Delivering on their promise to provide an elevated home experience, Butler is looking to be the blueprint of 21st Century home management and it appears they’re well on their way. Before they became founders, Lam, Chan and Ma worked for as investment bankers. But this trio’s origin story goes back much further. “The three of us met at an early age, while we were in primary school. In fact, we went to the same primary and middle school in Hong Kong and eventually did our graduate degrees in London, coincidentally landing in the same industry, investment banking,” says Chan. Just as luck would have it, there was something else they had in common: an
unquestionable desire to be entrepreneurs. “We wanted to take a leap of faith and challenge ourselves. There is just so much to look forward to as an entrepreneur, something we knew we’ve always wanted to do; it was just a matter of when,” says Chan. So, why personalised home services? Recognising a recurring problem in their own lives, they realised they needed a quick, easy solution that didn’t take hours of research, correspondence and scheduling. Much like the majority of successful business owners, what began as a problem quickly became an opportunity, and when Covid struck, they knew the time to fully commit to their idea had come. Enter Butler. “Aside from seeing an opportunity in the market and personally having a need for a service like ours, Covid-19 definitely acted as a catalyst,” says Lam. The pandemic has caused an immediate shift in our relationship with our homes. What was once a place for occasional nights in, showers and sleep quickly became a space to
entertain, that also had to double as an office. Suddenly, there was a heightened demand for a one-stop shop that caters to a city dweller’s needs on multiple levels. From housekeeping, laundry organisation and restocking groceries to repairmen services, decoration, home event planning and more, Butler has it all. The company even offers a course to train employed domestic helpers in order to upskill the workforce. “The purpose of this course is to assist your domestic helper in realising their potential in relation to their work skills and job knowledge, so they can complete home chores even more effectively and efficiently,”says Chan. Like any uphill battle, their entrepreneurial journey came with a bounty of tough decisions, balanced out by numerous rewarding moments. “The entrepreneur experience, although it’s just started for us, has already been phenomenal. The roller coaster rides of preparing, pitching, designing, trial and errors, rejections, to closing deals; the long weekends and late nights; the arguments and epiphanies – were all very wonderful learning experiences,” Lam confesses. Through tougher times, these founders have leaned on each other. “Taking that leap of faith to run our company full time as opposed to a stable and relatively highpaying corporate job was one of the tougher decisions we personally had to make during this journey. We have always been very supportive of each other and transparent with our thoughts, so it feels more like three people dealing with any challenges that arise as opposed to one – which makes things less overwhelming,” says Lam. One can only assume that achieving big-picture goals tastes a little sweeter with lifelong friends by your side, and with a dream like theirs, it certainly doesn’t hurt to have people you trust on your team. “Our vision is to redefine living, elevate lifestyle and build the future of home management experiences.” With all that they’ve accomplished during a year of global instability, it seems they’re ontrack to doing just that. butlerasia.com
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