6 ms·

TaskRabbit is blowing up its business model and becoming the Uber for everything

55 points by peterkchen 12y ago

czbond 12y ago
Serve some - do well. Serve many, die hard.
- dueprocess 12y ago
  It's the law of the startup though. Scale as big as you can, as fast as possible.
vincentbarr 12y ago
'Blowing up its business model'? I enjoy hyperbole in prose. Headlines? Not so much.
- jjoonathan 12y ago
  Have you ever seen a headline you enjoyed?
  - hansy 12y ago
    "Netflix Instant Thinking About Adding Good Movie" http://www.theonion.com/articles/netflix-instant-thinking-about-adding-good-movie,34958/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/netflix-instant-thinking-ab...
  - vincentbarr 12y ago
    "An Open Letter to the Phrase 'Having Said That.'" http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/an-open-letter-to-the-phrase-having-said-that http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/an-open-letter-to-the-phr...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
rwhitman 12y ago
Kind of surprising it took so long to figure out and optimize. As an outsider it always kind of smelled to me like their marketplace was flawed, even back several years ago when I first saw it.
- interg12 12y ago
  What did you always suspect was the core flaw?
  - aaronblohowiak 12y ago
    Auction takes too long / is too heavy. The whole point of a convenience app is that it is supposed to be "just take care of this for me", not "let's spend time figuring out the bid/accept process".
  - rwhitman 12y ago
    You could see the listings sitting around in the marketplace for extended periods of time if you browse a bit. And I never used it because I didn't like that I had to guess how much the job was worth. It was clear that something in the model was broken
notastartup 12y ago
I wonder how much work is actually involved with running such businesses that cater to peer economies. Airbnb, Uber, and Lyft, their site is a simple web app. I see more and more startups with simple web apps that is catered around a business model that involves being a marketplace or automating some process. What's happening behind the scenes to such startups? Is it a group of marketers? Say I create an Airbnb clone, what now? Or say I create Uber app, what's the next step? Does the chicken or the egg come first?
- jeremyt 12y ago
  Cofounder of thumbtack here - left in 2010, which basically directly competes with taskrabbit now. I can understand how you would be skeptical that there's much going on behind the scenes, but you have to understand that this is mostly on purpose. It SHOULD look simple from the outside. But underneath, we're vetting, categorizing, and matching. How do you fill a request for house painting with a database of perhaps 100 house painters that are qualified? You don't want too many bids, but you want enough to give the customer a decent choice. How many leads to you send out to get, say, three bids? It's all algorithms, and we've been working heads down on it for years and are getting pretty good at it. Not easy, though.
  - rwhitman 12y ago
    I've always thought it sounds extremely complicated. I've worked in vision / product / design on peer-to-peer social ecommerce marketplaces and getting the supply / demand right for an organicly viable marketplace like etsy or ebay is mind bendingly difficult. Every which way we cut it, we had to control the supply side more and more and that means having staff to find them, qualify them, pair them etc
damian2000 12y ago
Jack of all trades master of none.
- jypepin 12y ago
  Yep that's the problem we faced at Exec, before pivoting to cleaning.
  - _up 12y ago
    Is the process of matching cleaners so different from lets say matching handymen? Or is this more about markteting to the right audience or maybe not overwhelm the user?
romaster 12y ago
Zaarly... Taskrabbit... can anyone get this notion of "bid for the right TO service" done properly? or are we all just reduced to having to FIND our contractor, on our own.....
sotu 12y ago
There's also some players providing "kayak of local services" - http://locality.com/ http://locality.com/ is one I know of
rohans 12y ago
Hey guys, Rohan here Founder and CEO of BIZZBY, we run a mobile-first on-demand services model. We don't give users choices simply allocate the best (algorithmically based on factors we are tweaking regularly like, hours online, job acceptance rates, reputation score, jobs completed and proximity to job etc.) within seconds where the professional also accepts in real-time. End result is that within 10 seconds you're done and 60 mins later that professional turns up. No thinking. Our supply base is vetted and curated not a random neighbour. This model is very different to the open aggregation type marketplaces. The secret source is heavy on the supply logistics / operations and on boarding as well as scaling with quality at a reasonable rate side. The more mobile the world goes, anything that takes longer than a phone call or more than a few seconds is a waste of time.
fiatjaf 12y ago
Why shouldn't something like this become the hiring platform of the future? Hire for missions, not for job positions. Get a presentation of what the person can do, not the job positions he has had. It's done.

55 points by peterkchen 12y ago

czbond 12y ago

Serve some - do well. Serve many, die hard.

dueprocess 12y ago
It's the law of the startup though. Scale as big as you can, as fast as possible.

vincentbarr 12y ago

'Blowing up its business model'? I enjoy hyperbole in prose. Headlines? Not so much.

jjoonathan 12y ago
Have you ever seen a headline you enjoyed?
- hansy 12y ago
  "Netflix Instant Thinking About Adding Good Movie" http://www.theonion.com/articles/netflix-instant-thinking-about-adding-good-movie,34958/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/netflix-instant-thinking-ab...
- vincentbarr 12y ago
  "An Open Letter to the Phrase 'Having Said That.'" http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/an-open-letter-to-the-phrase-having-said-that http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/an-open-letter-to-the-phr...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

rwhitman 12y ago

Kind of surprising it took so long to figure out and optimize. As an outsider it always kind of smelled to me like their marketplace was flawed, even back several years ago when I first saw it.

interg12 12y ago
What did you always suspect was the core flaw?
- aaronblohowiak 12y ago
  Auction takes too long / is too heavy. The whole point of a convenience app is that it is supposed to be "just take care of this for me", not "let's spend time figuring out the bid/accept process".
- rwhitman 12y ago
  You could see the listings sitting around in the marketplace for extended periods of time if you browse a bit. And I never used it because I didn't like that I had to guess how much the job was worth. It was clear that something in the model was broken

notastartup 12y ago

I wonder how much work is actually involved with running such businesses that cater to peer economies. Airbnb, Uber, and Lyft, their site is a simple web app. I see more and more startups with simple web apps that is catered around a business model that involves being a marketplace or automating some process. What's happening behind the scenes to such startups? Is it a group of marketers? Say I create an Airbnb clone, what now? Or say I create Uber app, what's the next step? Does the chicken or the egg come first?

jeremyt 12y ago
Cofounder of thumbtack here - left in 2010, which basically directly competes with taskrabbit now. I can understand how you would be skeptical that there's much going on behind the scenes, but you have to understand that this is mostly on purpose. It SHOULD look simple from the outside. But underneath, we're vetting, categorizing, and matching. How do you fill a request for house painting with a database of perhaps 100 house painters that are qualified? You don't want too many bids, but you want enough to give the customer a decent choice. How many leads to you send out to get, say, three bids? It's all algorithms, and we've been working heads down on it for years and are getting pretty good at it. Not easy, though.
- rwhitman 12y ago
  I've always thought it sounds extremely complicated. I've worked in vision / product / design on peer-to-peer social ecommerce marketplaces and getting the supply / demand right for an organicly viable marketplace like etsy or ebay is mind bendingly difficult. Every which way we cut it, we had to control the supply side more and more and that means having staff to find them, qualify them, pair them etc

damian2000 12y ago

Jack of all trades master of none.

jypepin 12y ago
Yep that's the problem we faced at Exec, before pivoting to cleaning.
- _up 12y ago
  Is the process of matching cleaners so different from lets say matching handymen? Or is this more about markteting to the right audience or maybe not overwhelm the user?

romaster 12y ago

Zaarly... Taskrabbit... can anyone get this notion of "bid for the right TO service" done properly? or are we all just reduced to having to FIND our contractor, on our own.....

sotu 12y ago

There's also some players providing "kayak of local services" - http://locality.com/ http://locality.com/ is one I know of

rohans 12y ago

Hey guys, Rohan here Founder and CEO of BIZZBY, we run a mobile-first on-demand services model. We don't give users choices simply allocate the best (algorithmically based on factors we are tweaking regularly like, hours online, job acceptance rates, reputation score, jobs completed and proximity to job etc.) within seconds where the professional also accepts in real-time. End result is that within 10 seconds you're done and 60 mins later that professional turns up. No thinking. Our supply base is vetted and curated not a random neighbour. This model is very different to the open aggregation type marketplaces. The secret source is heavy on the supply logistics / operations and on boarding as well as scaling with quality at a reasonable rate side. The more mobile the world goes, anything that takes longer than a phone call or more than a few seconds is a waste of time.

fiatjaf 12y ago

Why shouldn't something like this become the hiring platform of the future? Hire for missions, not for job positions. Get a presentation of what the person can do, not the job positions he has had. It's done.