Every month or two I'll speak to a founder who's convinced they need a Virtual Assistant. They'll describe the chaos: a calendar in tatters, follow-ups dropping, investor updates that never quite land. A VA, they figure, will sort it.
Most of the time, they're buying the wrong product for the problem.
The real difference
VAs and EAs get lumped together, but they're doing different jobs at different levels of trust. A VA takes a task and executes it. An EA takes ownership of a part of your life and operates it.
Put more plainly: if you have to hand a VA a list of things to do every Monday, they're fundamentally a throughput mechanism. You're still doing the thinking. An EA builds the list, prunes it, sequences it, and tells you which things should never make it onto it in the first place.
What VAs are great for
- Repetitive, well-defined tasks that have clear completion criteria.
- Bulk data entry, inbox triage, travel bookings against a documented policy.
- Overflow work when the shape of the work is already known.
What EAs do that VAs don't
- Hold context across your whole business — not just their allocated tasks.
- Make judgement calls without checking in. They know what you'd say.
- Flag things proactively. "You haven't replied to X, here's why it matters."
- Own relationships with stakeholders — investors, customers, senior team — as your proxy.
"A VA frees up your hands. An EA frees up your mind."
The wrong reason to buy a VA
Price. Founders default to a VA because the hourly rate is lower and the math looks cleaner. But if the work needs someone who understands your business to get it done, a VA rate times more hours is not a bargain — it's a productivity tax on you, because you're now managing the VA closely enough to back-fill the context they don't have.
The total cost of a VA who has to be directed is almost always higher than an EA who doesn't.
The test
Ask yourself: if I gave this person the problem, not the task, could they run with it? If yes, you can hire at EA level. If the work only gets done when you break it into steps and hand over each one, either the work isn't ready for delegation yet, or you're hiring the wrong role.
Most founders we talk to are in the first camp but buying for the second.
Our VAs operate at EA level.
We call ours Virtual Assistants — but they take ownership of your workflows the way an EA would. Month-to-month, global, cancel anytime.
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