TaskRabbit is blowing up its business model and becoming the Uber for everything
theverge.com
theverge.com
http://www.theonion.com/articles/netflix-instant-thinking-ab...
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.
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?
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.
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