About Funape

Funape is a small London-based team that handles administrative and organisational work for people who run out of hours before they run out of tasks. We were set up in 2022 and have spent the years since then working with independent professionals, small companies and busy households across four areas of the city.

How the company started

Funape began with a single desk and a laptop in a shared office space, not far from Brick Lane. The founder had spent several years working inside small companies as an office manager, and kept noticing the same pattern: business owners spending their evenings on inbox management, invoice chasing and diary rearranging instead of the work that actually paid the bills. There was no shortage of people willing to do that work for them — the problem was finding someone reliable enough to hand it to without having to check every result.

That gap became the starting point for the business. In the first year, Funape worked with a handful of local clients, mostly through word of mouth, handling email management and scheduling. By the second year, the range of requests had widened to include bookkeeping support, travel arrangements and event coordination, so the team grew to keep pace. Four years on, Funape is a team of seven, offering eight distinct services, and has completed 370 jobs for 252 clients.

What we set out to do

The mission at Funape has not changed much since the first year: take repetitive, time-consuming administrative work off a client's plate and do it to a standard they would not have to redo. We are not trying to replace an in-house team or to make decisions on a client's behalf — the aim is narrower and, we think, more useful. We complete the tasks that are clearly defined, follow the instructions given, and flag anything that needs a client's judgement rather than guessing.

Looking further ahead, the plan is to keep the team small enough that every assistant knows the clients they work with by name and by preference, rather than scaling into a call-centre model where a client speaks to a different person every time. Of the 252 clients served so far, 81 have come back for a second piece of work, which suggests that the model of matching one assistant to one client over time is worth keeping rather than abandoning for the sake of growth.

Principles that shape daily work

• Say what will be done, then do it. Every task starts with a short written brief confirming scope, deadline and price, so there is no ambiguity about what was agreed.
• Reply quickly, even if the answer is "not yet". Our typical reply time is one hour during business hours. If a task will take longer, we say so early rather than at the deadline.
• Keep client information contained. Login details, documents and correspondence are handled only by the assistant assigned to that client, not shared across the wider team unless the client asks for a second person to be looped in.
• Charge for the work done, not for time spent thinking about it. Pricing is set out plainly in advance, task by task or by the hour, with no reinterpretation after the fact.

Where the experience comes from

The seven people on the Funape team come from different backgrounds — office administration, bookkeeping, retail management and hospitality — which turns out to be useful, because client requests rarely fit into one neat category. A single week might include managing a diary for a consultant near Spitalfields, preparing invoices for a small design studio, and organising a supplier list for someone running weekend markets in east London. Working across four districts of the city means the team has also picked up practical knowledge that would not come from reading a manual: which courier services are reliable for same-day drop-offs in the City, how far in advance a venue near Shoreditch needs to be booked for a small evening event, and which bookkeeping software local sole traders tend to use already, so there is no need to migrate their records to something new.

This is not expertise built on certificates or big client names — it is expertise built on repetition. Booking travel for the fortieth time is different from doing it for the first, and the same applies to reconciling accounts, drafting a supplier email or setting up a shared calendar that three people need to check without confusion.

How a working relationship is organised

New clients sometimes ask what actually happens after they get in touch, so here is the process in order:

1. Initial enquiry. A client describes what they need, by phone, email or the contact form. We reply within about an hour during business hours to ask any clarifying questions.
2. Scope and quote. Based on the task, we confirm what is included, how long it should take and the price — either a fixed fee for a defined job or an hourly rate for ongoing work.
3. Assistant assigned. One person from the team is matched to the client based on the type of work and, where relevant, familiarity with the client's district or sector.
4. Access and handover. The client shares whatever is needed to complete the task — calendar access, a document, login details for a specific tool — through a method they are comfortable with.
5. Work carried out. The assistant completes the task, keeping the client updated at agreed points rather than leaving them to guess at progress.
6. Review and close-out. The finished work is checked against the original brief before it is sent back. If something needs adjusting, that is done before the job is marked complete.
7. Ongoing or one-off. Some clients need a single job done and stop there; others set up a recurring arrangement, which is how most of our repeat clients work with us.

This structure stays the same whether the job is a two-hour task or a monthly retainer. It keeps expectations clear on both sides and means nobody has to chase for an update that should have been sent already.

Why the team stays small

It would be possible to grow Funape faster than we have. There is enough demand in London for virtual assistant services that a larger operation, with dozens of assistants working from a shared queue, could probably find clients too. We have chosen not to go that route, at least for now. A team of seven means every assistant carries a manageable number of ongoing clients, which in turn means fewer handovers, fewer repeated explanations from the client's side, and fewer mistakes caused by someone picking up a task cold.

That said, growth has not stopped entirely — the team has roughly doubled since the company's first year, and the service list has expanded from a narrow set of email and diary tasks to the eight services offered today. The plan is to keep growing at a pace that does not outstrip the ability to give each client consistent, direct contact with the person actually doing their work.