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Taskrabbit

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TaskRabbit
File:Taskrabbit logo13.png
Type of site
Marketplace
Available inEnglish
OwnerLeah Busque
URLtaskrabbit.com
CommercialYes
Current statusActive

TaskRabbit is an online and mobile marketplace that allows users to outsource small jobs and tasks to others in their neighborhood.[1] Users name the task they need done, name the price they are willing to pay, and a network of pre-approved TaskRabbits bid to complete the job.[2] It was founded by Leah Busque in 2008 and has received $37.5 million in funding.[3]

History

RunMyErrand and beginnings

According to Busque, in February 2008, she and her husband realized that their dog was out of dog food.[1][4][5] Not wanting to go to the store, she discussed founding a website to run tasks with her husband, Kevin.[6] According to her account, Kevin thought "Wouldn't it be nice if there was a place online where we could go, say, 'We need dog food,' name a price we'd be willing to pay, and find someone in our neighborhood, maybe at the store that very moment, who could help us out?"[7] Later that night, Busque bought the domain name RunMyErrand.com, the precursor to TaskRabbit.[1][8]

Four months later, Busque quit her job as a software engineer at IBM and began working on RunMyErrand.[2] By September 2008, Busque launched the site in Boston, with the first 100 "runners."[2][9] In 2009, Tim Ferriss became an advisor to the firm after meeting Busque at Facebook’s startup incubator, fbFund.[10][11] The firm accumulated $1.8 million in seed funding from venture capital firms, .[4][11] and hired the company’s first full-time employee, Brian Leonard, a software engineer with whom she had worked at IBM.[6][9][12]

In 2011, TaskRabbit was nominated for a TechCrunch Crunchie Award for Best Mobile App and Busque was nominated for Founder of the Year.[13]

TaskRabbit and growth

In April 2010, Busque changed the name of the company from RunMyErrand, which she found was limited by the word "errand," to TaskRabbit, which she described as "fun, spunky, and more memorable."[14] By June 2010, Busque and team moved across the country to San Francisco and opened operations in the San Francisco Bay Area.

One year later, in May 2011, TaskRabbit closed a $5 million Series A financing round from Shasta ventures, First Round Capital, Baseline Ventures, Floodgate Fund, Collaborative Fund, 500 Startups and The Mesh author Lisa Gansky.[15][16] At that time the firm had 13 employees and 2,000 participating "TaskRabbits".[1] Within the next year, the firm expanded from Boston and the San Francisco Bay Area to New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Orange County.[7][17]

In July 2011, TaskRabbit launched an app, which allows users to post a task with an iPhone.[18][19][20][21][22] In October 2011, she hired Eric Grosse, the co-founder and former president of Hotwire.com, as the firm's new CEO so she could focus on product development.[23][24][25]

In December 2011, TaskRabbit received an additional $17.8 million in a Series B round of funding;[16] At the time the firm had 35 employees and generated $4 million in business each month.[1][19][26]

In March 2014, TaskRabbit shut down its Business Services portal. [27] TaskRabbit's inability to retain the transaction on the platform is widely believed to be the reason for this shutdown. Platforms like Elance and Odesk are better designed to capture transactions as they allow workflow management on-platform. TaskRabbit matches users for off-platform exchange of work. [28]

Site structure

TaskRabbit has been described as eBay for real-world labor.[2] Users post tasks on the site and declare the maximum amount they would pay for it.[2][21][29][30][31] Pre-certified, background-checked TaskRabbits, the people who complete the jobs, then bid on completing the task.[32] The user then selects the TaskRabbit who is the best match for the task.[2][33]

People wishing to become a TaskRabbit must apply online, go through background checks, and pass an online quiz based on the company's manual, previously having to also submit a video interview.[22][34] The firm says that its workforce is composed of students, unemployed workers, retirees, and stay-at-home moms, with ages ranging from 21 to 72; it claims that some people earn over $5000 per month.[12][32] The firm generates revenue by taking on average a 20% cut of each task, previously on a sliding 12-20% scale depending on total price.[16][35]

TaskRabbit employs gamification techniques.[16] A leaderboard ranks the top workers, displaying their levels and average customer reviews.[2] The workers also see a progress bar showing the number of additional points they need to jump to the next level. Points are awarded for everything from bidding quickly and accurately on tasks to referring friends to the firm.[2] The level system is exponential: moving from level 0 to level 1 takes only 60 points, while going from level 20 to 21 requires adding roughly 1,700 points to your tally.[2] Points earned also correspond to some real life benefits.[2] At level 5, runners get a TaskRabbit T-shirt and at level 10, in a nod to the professional dimension of the game, they get their own business cards.[2]

On December 1, 2013, TaskRabbit initiated the TaskRabbit Elite Program, which recognizes and awards on the first day of each month Elite status to the site's top performers. In order to qualify for admission to the program, a TaskRabbit must attain a level of 25 or greater or be in the top 5% of earners in the month prior to admission, maintain an overall user-awarded rating of 4.8 stars or more out of 5, and have no policy violations in the previous 90 days. TaskRabbits must maintain these qualifications in order to retain their Elite status.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Moran, Gwen. Building a Business on Busy Schedules and Making Errands Pay. Entrepreneur. November 21, 2011.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Tsotsis, Alexia. TaskRabbit Turns Grunt Work Into a Game WIRED. July 15, 2011.
  3. ^ Jeffries, Adrianne. TaskRabbit takes on another $13 million in funding The Verge. July 23, 2012.
  4. ^ a b Lopez, Lolita. Creative Ways to Make Money in Sour Economy. NBC. February 3, 2012.
  5. ^ Raice, Shayndi. New Valley Trend: Sharing for Profit Wall Street Journal. October 6, 2011.
  6. ^ a b Moore, Galen. Web startup RunMyErrand to move execs west. Mass High Tech. March 11, 2010.
  7. ^ a b Shontell, Alyson. Taskrabbit Leah Busque Interview BusinessInsider. October 27, 2011.
  8. ^ About Us TaskRabbit.
  9. ^ a b Kirsner, Scott. Small start-up takes an idea and runs with it. The Boston Globe. July 5, 2009.
  10. ^ Eldon, Eric. FbFund: 18 companies and 2 nonprofits win, head to Palo Alto. VentureBeat. May 28, 2009.
  11. ^ a b Kirsner, Scott. TaskRabbit's Leah Busque: The exit interview. The Boston Globe. May 26, 2010.
  12. ^ a b Hoshaw, Lindsey. Need someone to run your errands? There’s an app for that Forbes. July 28, 2011.
  13. ^ Crunchies Finalists. TaskRabbit. January 7th, 2012.
  14. ^ RunMyErrand becomes TaskRabbit. L.A.B. Unleashed. April 8, 2010.
  15. ^ Parr, Ben. TaskRabbit for iPhone Lets You Outsource Your Chores Mashable. July 28, 2011.
  16. ^ a b c d Tsotsis, Alexia. TaskRabbit Gets $5M From Shasta Ventures TechCrunch.
  17. ^ O’Dell, Jolie. How one woman technologist single-handedly created thousands of jobs VentureBeat. November 2, 2011.
  18. ^ Tsotsis, Alexia. TaskRabbit Releases Its Amazing iPhone App. TechCrunch. July 28, 2011.
  19. ^ a b Brustein, Joshua. Outsourcing Chores Made Easy New York Times. August 21, 2011. Cite error: The named reference "nytimes" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  20. ^ Hornshaw, Phil. Fresh iPhone Apps for Sept. 19 Appolicious. September 19, 2011.
  21. ^ a b TaskRabbit THRILLIST.
  22. ^ a b Myers, Courtney. TaskRabbit goes mobile! TheNextWeb. July 28, 2011.
  23. ^ Why TaskRabbit hired a CEO SFGate. October 12, 2011.
  24. ^ Taylor, Colleen. TaskRabbit nabs Hotwire co-founder as CEO GigaOM. October 12, 2011.
  25. ^ Tsotsis, Alexia. TaskRabbit Gets A New CEO, Eric Grosse TechCrunch. October 12, 2011.
  26. ^ Roush, Wade. Bay Area Biztech News by the Numbers Xconomy. October 12, 2011.
  27. ^ http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/01/taskrabbit-for-business-service-portal-quietly-disappears/
  28. ^ http://platformed.info/marketplace-rake-own-the-transaction-like-saas/
  29. ^ Cuomo, Chris. TaskRabbit: Putting Americans Back to Work, One Odd Job at a Time abcnews. September 29, 2011.
  30. ^ Chuang, Tamara. 10 Best Apps for Ordinary Chores The Street. October 26, 2011.
  31. ^ Tiku, Nitasha. Brother, Can You Spare Some Time? Zaarly, Taskrabbit, and the Rise of the Convenience Economy. BetaBeat. November 30, 2011.
  32. ^ a b Decanio, Lisa. Too Busy to Donate This Season? Outsource Your Good Deeds with TaskRabbit. BostInno. November 29, 2011.
  33. ^ Kolodny, Lora. Collaborative Consumption Leader And Unlikely VC Rachel Bostman Will Convince Us All To Share Fast Company. September 20, 2011.
  34. ^ Donnelly, Tim. How Far Can You Push Customers’ Trust Inc. November 3, 2011.
  35. ^ Gerzema, John. Why You Should Hire E-Lancers Inc. October 1, 2011.
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