TaskRabbit Gets $17.8M, Wants To Grow Internationally And Beyond | Hacker News Reader

TaskRabbit Gets $17.8M, Wants To Grow Internationally And Beyond

techcrunch.com

49 pointssahillavingia16 comments

It's interesting to note that 2008-onward is the perfect economic environment for Taskrabbit to have started in.

The tasks I've posted, for cleaning and office work, have gotten offers by Stanford and Harvard grads at rates of around $15-20/hour. Most Taskrabbits seem to have college degrees and they often bid at rates of around, or below, minimum wage in SF ($10/hour). They usually have tons of time available, not just an hour or two a day. This wouldn't work so well if unemployment weren't so high right now.

But as a product, it works amazingly well! I highly recommend trying it out, for anything you want done. You can google for a $20 off first-time user code. (I have no affiliation with the company.)

I think I'd like to be a "TaskRabbit" just to pick up some extra cash occasionally, not just because of unemployment.

Love the idea and would use the service, but sad to see that Harvard / Stanford grads are getting minimum wage :(

I know someone making $33k/year (+ benefits) in New York City working for a publishing company after graduating from Stanford with honors in English literature. Even for people from top schools, job prospects aren't always that great if you didn't study something somewhat marketable

Also when the jobs market is low, unless you have something specific special about you (perhaps a particular specialisation in your degree) that an employer sees and wants, experience tends to count for more than any degree from any establishment. Employers are themselves being squeezed hard by the current economic state and so are more risk averse than they otherwise would be: favouring a proven record (even if it costs a bit more) over someone who will need more training and may need not work out after that training.

As the bad economic times drag on longer and longer the "experience costs a bit more" starts to fall away too, as more people with experience are floating around the job market getting desperate and so lowering their expectations.

That is why youth employment rates are being hit harder than the rates for people in the 25-to-50 age bracket (above that, ageism starts to raise its ugly head and can upset the balance back in favour of the cheap-to-employ desperate youth). Now is not a good time to be graduating.

Wait wait wait, Harvard grads for $15? If that is seriously available in quantity, all my SEO buddies just had simultaneous kittens. That's cheap enough that if they can operate a Wordpress interface it is worth using them for pretty much any writing task you could think of.

I'll see if I can find someone interested in elementary education to start fleshing out BCC's site, since I haven't added new cards this year.

Surprised you haven't found someone for this on Fiverr (which you tipped me to). I've gotten book jacket designs done for $5 - and they're good.

How can you expand beyond being international? Is their long-term goal to be an inter-planetary task service?

"The wages of pedantry is pain." -Carroll O'Connor

I hear them martians is a pretty big target market.

I've noticed that a lot of people make a distinction between "going global" and "world wide". Being a global company often just means having a reasonable foothold in two continent (say, North America and Europe).

local < regional < national < global/international < world-wide

(or something like that)

Now hiring TaskRabbits http://www.taskrabbit.com/main/taskrabbits

And Ruby (or iOS or Android) engineers http://www.taskrabbit.com/engineeringjobs

http://gigboard.com

Besides Zaarly, what other local service marketplaces are out there?

coffee and power is another one

http://www.mytaskangel.co.uk/ in the UK, but still in private beta.

http://viatask.com Still in private beta, but launching soon.

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