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TaskRabbit Confirms Layoffs As It Realigns To Focus On Mobile And Enterprise

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Re: TaskRabbit Confirms Layoffs As It Realigns To Focus On Mobile And Enterprise

#11

Post by 2pasc »

rbucks wrote: post #9
2pasc wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem of Taskrabbit is that they could not be associated with one clear repeatable need that people had, which lead to a sub par experience for almost all use cases. Most marketplaces in this space are pretty "directed" by the Company (Postmates: deliver food, Instacart: delivery grocery, Lyft: deliver people with car, HomeJoy: deliver cleaning ladies). Lyft is a good example of a P2P system that worked when ev…

Great point. As co-founder of Scripted, I whole-heartedly agree. I think Leah is great -- I've never met her but have heard and read good things. However it's hard to be one size fits all anymore. Craigslist and oDesk may be the last two marketplace leaders without single focus.

Indeed, especially in the era of mobile which tend to focus on remote control solutions to problems. I like Scripted a lot - funny that you work with Paul B. also ;-)

Re: TaskRabbit Confirms Layoffs As It Realigns To Focus On Mobile And Enterprise

#12

Post by inthewoods »

I think it is pretty tough to see how this works on a such a low-margin service - in order to reach scale, they need to do a massive education of the ordinary consumer. Huge costs. Looks to me like they raised their money on that vision, but have found that $30m actually doesn't get you that far.

So it looks to me like they're shifting to the B2B side - which is smart but also difficult given the competition in that space. oDesk has been shifting their model away from the 10% commission on small account model to a more enterprise sale - I expect TaskRabbit to move that way as well.

Re: TaskRabbit Confirms Layoffs As It Realigns To Focus On Mobile And Enterprise

#13

Post by smartwater »

sdhull wrote: post #10
danso wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually have a hard time thinking of clones in this space (not counting general freelance sites like odesk and fiverr)...who was TaskRabbit's biggest competitor (not counting Zaarly, which also pivoted)

www.taskisland.com http://taskpandas.com/ https://sortedlocal.com/ etc... there are lots

Those 3 wouldn't even be considered competitors. All have an Alexa higher than 1 million, so they are barely known. Depending on how long they've been around, one might say they've failed.

Re: TaskRabbit Confirms Layoffs As It Realigns To Focus On Mobile And Enterprise

#15

Post by hkmurakami »

2pasc wrote: post #5
jareau wrote: post #3

I think collaborative consumption companies changing their business to focus on a specific niche or vertical is quite common. Getable (fka Rentcycle) did it. Zaarly did it. I'm head of sales at balancedpayments.com, a payments company that works with online marketplaces, so I interact with dozens of marketplace founders in a given week, and in my opinion the true P2P/collaborative consumption movement is a few years…

The problem of Taskrabbit is that they could not be associated with one clear repeatable need that people had, which lead to a sub par experience for almost all use cases. Most marketplaces in this space are pretty "directed" by the Company (Postmates: deliver food, Instacart: delivery grocery, Lyft: deliver people with car, HomeJoy: deliver cleaning ladies). Lyft is a good example of a P2P system that worked when ev…

iirc the vast majority of exec use is house cleaning as well so it does seem that the generic -> specific refocus is quite common in this space.

Re: TaskRabbit Confirms Layoffs As It Realigns To Focus On Mobile And Enterprise

#16

Post by dr_ »

Hope they are able to grow their consumer service. I've found it tremendously useful. I used it when I proposed to my girlfriend, to hire talent. I also used it to pick up something very important from Jfk airport that I had left on my flight. If you use if for the right reasons, it's a magnificent tool.

Re: TaskRabbit Confirms Layoffs As It Realigns To Focus On Mobile And Enterprise

#17

Post by piratebroadcast »

aarondf wrote: post #14
piratebroadcast wrote: post #8

I make good money on TaskRabbit. I hope it doesn;t move too far away for a "Regular guy" like me to make use of it...

what kind of stuff do you normally do? what is "good money" in terms of USD?

I do mostly engineering, and by that I mean I may do anything from backing up someones data to assembling Ikea furniture at an office in Midtown. I bring in sometimes $600 extra a month for meeting cool people and doing shit I generally like doing anyway.

EDIT: I'm learning Rails right now and doing Tasks to bring money in while I learn... It would be so rad to work for them as a Rails dev one day. Circle of life, man.

Re: TaskRabbit Confirms Layoffs As It Realigns To Focus On Mobile And Enterprise

#18

Post by callmeed »

I think their move to business is really smart. The times I've used it was to get data for small MVP projects (eg to get happy hour menus from several SF restaurants) and it was awesome for that.

I never like their consumer model—but if they could become the "LinkedIn for temp workers", I think it could be a hit.

Re: TaskRabbit Confirms Layoffs As It Realigns To Focus On Mobile And Enterprise

#19

Post by enko »

piratebroadcast wrote: post #17
aarondf wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what kind of stuff do you normally do? what is "good money" in terms of USD?

I do mostly engineering, and by that I mean I may do anything from backing up someones data to assembling Ikea furniture at an office in Midtown. I bring in sometimes $600 extra a month for meeting cool people and doing shit I generally like doing anyway. EDIT: I'm learning Rails right now and doing Tasks to bring money in while I learn... It would be so rad to work for them as a Rails dev one day. Circle of life, ma…

> engineering, and by that I mean I may do anything from backing up someones data to assembling Ikea furniture

I thought I'd heard pretty much every creative interpretation of the word "engineering" possible but have to admit - you got me with the IKEA furniture assembly.

Re: TaskRabbit Confirms Layoffs As It Realigns To Focus On Mobile And Enterprise

#20

Post by temphn »

Taskrabbit is a great idea and very useful. Here are a few things they could improve:

1) Take a page from Exec and do flat-rate pricing in different verticals (e.g. $25/hour for Exec Errands). Doing a price auction every time is too time consuming, but that's the UI default at the moment.

2) The refocus on mobile/realtime (like Exec) is also good.

3) Figure out a way to incentivize people to do more transactions through the site. Once you meet a good service provider, right now there's an incentive to do all future interactions outside the site.

4) Re: enterprise refocus: do some sales calls with all the admin assistants of VC funds and funded startups in the Valley. Set up a bulk enterprise account for $Xk per month and have them go crazy assembling Ikea furniture.

Taskrabbit is a great concept and really should succeed with some tweaking.

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