2014: Year of the Uber-ing of everything

SAN FRANCISCO — Look back on 2014 and one thing becomes instantly clear. Technology is helping us become the Laziest Generation.

Think about it, people. In the old days, we'd stand bravely in the rain waiting for a cab. Now we just fire up Uber—which despite executives' unsavory reputation on privacy and women just raised $1.2 billion—and our chariot rolls up.

We used to take pride in getting up early to bag the perfect heirloom tomato at the farmer's market. Now we can just visit GoodEggs.com and a few keystrokes later those multi-hued goodies arrive at our door.

And our stamina and patience had once been battle-tested by painfully slow visits to the post office, but we've been relieved of those trials , too. With Shyp's app, you take a photo of what you're mailing and a smiling messenger instantly arrives to whisk your item away to a place where elves wrap, box and ship your package off.

Will there not be any drudgery left to enjoy delicious bragging rights like,"You can only get these mushrooms if you're at the market by 5 a.m."?

Not if tech entrepreneurs can help it.

"We're definitely at this amazing crossroads where you have so many people with computers in their pockets in the form of smartphones, and at the same time culturally we're more comfortable than ever trusting others with our things," says Curtis Lee, who has stolen from us the sweet thrill of finding an elusive parking space.

Lee's start-up, Luxe Valet, allows you to pre-arrange for a uniformed valet attendant to meet you at your destination. When you're finished, you can have your car meet you at the same or a different location. The cost is $5 an hour, with a $15 cap. For a fee, they'll gas up and wash your car, too.

"Some people think we're a service for the one-percenters, but the most common car we park is a Prius with baby seats in it," says Lee, whose business, which raised $5.5 million from the likes of Google Ventures and Redpoint Ventures, is up and running in San Francisco with other cities online soon. "It's really about safety and convenience. And about saving your time, which has a value."

What many of these businesses truck in is the democratization of things that once had an elitist cache. Uber started out as a way for Town Car drivers to make extra money in their down time. And who doesn't like to ride in a Town Car instead of a smelly cab?

Well, Sergey Petrossov thinks he can do Uber one better when it comes to helping the masses masquerade as millionaires. Petrossov has created an Uber for private jets.

Called JetSmarter, it charges $7,000 for an annual membership, which entitles you not only to discounted rates on the chartering of jets but also occasional free flights if your travel plans happen to match up with routes that would normally be flown empty as a jet returns from one location to its home base. Non-members can also use the service, just without the free-flight perks. On Christmas Day and New Years Eve, he'll offer up empty legs to non-members as a way to amp up interest.

Petrossov's vision was less about providing everyone with a slice of the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, and more about bringing transparency and efficiency to a marketplace that he felt had neither.

After the 26-year-old's first business venture did well, he decided to charter a jet for fun with friends. "The process was archaic," he says. "You had to deal with a broker and you really had no confidence in what was going on."

So who's signing up? Petrossov will only say that his app has had 300,000 downloads since it launched toward the end of last year, with 1,200 flights booked this year.

"It's really much more accessible than you think, depending on where you're going and how many are traveling," he says, nothing that most jets wind up costing fliers about what they would pay for a business class seat, "but without the hassle of dealing with an airport and security."

Speaking of hassles, it's safe to say that cleaning up pans and dishes after the nightly family meals falls into that category. Which is why Kitchensurfing.com wants to send a private chef to your home for dinner tonight.

"We don't think this is something just for the elite, it's actually quite affordable," says Jon Tien, CEO of the New York-based company, which offers its services in the Big Apple, Seattle, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Berlin.

Kitchensurfing is out to prove that having your own chef is no more expensive than going out to dinner or ordering some good take-out. The company offers a $40-per-person cocktail party as well as $50 and $100-a-head dinners, the latter typically for special occasions.

To bring the service even more downmarket, Kitchensurfing is in the midst of trying out a new on-demand service that, for $25-a-diner, sends a chef to your home that very night to cook from a limited menu. The chefs are trained to be in and out in 30 minutes.

"We have found that it's been difficult for consumers to process the idea of having a chef come to their homes," says Tien. "But slowly people realize it's attainable."

James Touchi-Peters also had a business idea that he felt people would ultimately find indispensable. But after two years of research, it crashed spectacularly last month after about 60 days. Called Netropolitan, the site was to be a Facebook for the Robb Report set, an exclusive place to virtually meet and greet your well-heeled peers at the cost of $3,000 a year after an initiation fee of $6,000.

"We were very careful about the price point, in that we wanted it high enough to be exclusive but low enough to attract users," says Touchi-Peters, who adds that he saw Netropolitan as country club membership, "without the golf and eating, just the socializing."

Amazingly, some did sign up. Perhaps not surprisingly, "many used stolen or nonexistent credit cards," he says. The site also instantly generated a rash of online backlash and a repeated headline, "Facebook for the rich."

Says Touchi-Peters: "What we didn't count on here was simple. We assumed wealthy people wanted their own social network. But it turns out, they're not interested in expanding their social circles. They're fine the way they are."

So there's the rub. When you want to feel rich, there are now a growing number of apps for that. But when you are rich, you have people - drivers, pilots, chefs - for that.