

Hunting Task Wabbits - kostyk
https://medium.com/matter/hunting-task-wabbits-c60679bad0f6

======
anateus
Something at the core of a lot of the systemic problems with these "sharing
economy"/"p2p market" companies is that they assume workers and sellers are
fungible, and are thus in something approximating perfect competition[1].
Instead, much like the dating example in the article, they are actually a
Matching Market[2]: there is some close-to-optimal arrangement of buyers to
sellers. Long-term happiness with the services involves finding the best fit,
rather than just the first sufficient fit.

The auction system of old TR allowed for discovery of these fits via the
auction mechanism. I expect that much like a lot of other econ theory
mechanisms in addition to the success stories in the article, it led to a lot
of large scale usability friction. In the end, it looks like TR chose a
smoother system with worse individual outcomes. The holy grail then is a
system that elicits information about fit without leaking too much information
and being easy to use at the same time.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition)

[2]
[http://people.duke.edu/~aa88/articles/WorldCongressSurvey.pd...](http://people.duke.edu/~aa88/articles/WorldCongressSurvey.pdf)

~~~
MediaSquirrel
the system which you seek exists and it's called Thumbtack.

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rtpg
>like Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, and the rest of the renting economy. (Please, let’s
stop calling it the “sharing economy”: Sharing doesn’t involve money.)

This really does hit the mark in qualifying the sort of feeling I get when
Airbnb and Uber talk about the sharing economy. The big winners don't seem to
be of the "sharing/driving a couple hours a week" variety, but of the
"capitalists running their usual games" variety.

Not that there's a major issue on this, but the way these companies present
themselves as "helping soccer moms make a little cash" has always felt
slightly disingenuous.

~~~
joshwa
I always liked "The 1099 Economy":

[http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/09/silicon-
valleys...](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/09/silicon-valleys-
contract-worker-problem.html)

~~~
7Figures2Commas
The problem, as the article points out, is that many of these companies may be
misclassifying their workers. Uber has been sued over this[1], and most
recently, Handy was sued for a variety of labor violations, including
misclassification[2]. Ironically, I pointed out that a description of Handy's
operations published in an article raised questions about classification a few
weeks before the lawsuit was filed[3].

There's nothing wrong with self-employment (it's great), but most of these
startups in no way, shape or form represent the true "1099 economy." It's a
total misnomer.

[1] [http://uberlawsuit.com/](http://uberlawsuit.com/)

[2] [http://www.businessinsider.com/handy-cleaning-
lawsuit-2014-1...](http://www.businessinsider.com/handy-cleaning-
lawsuit-2014-11)

[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8489834](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8489834)

------
matthewowen
I was particularly amused by the silliness of this:

“Please know that it is our policy that all journalists work through
TaskRabbit Corporate for these requests. We’d be happy to coordinate
interviews.”

~~~
johnvschmitt
Yep. The proper reply would be, "Thanks. But, I don't work for your company
and am not bound by those rules. In fact, it's the policy of journalists to
seek the truth regardless of your company policy."

~~~
eastbayjake
I think their issue is that TaskRabbit _contractors_ can't talk to journalists
without going through corporate PR. (While nothing prohibits a journalist from
asking, I'm sure the contractors would be terminated for speaking with
journalists if corporate found out.)

~~~
matthewowen
But they're still 1099s, honest!

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nicholasreed
I made an app for a ChallengePost hackathon in this area,
[http://rackspacemobile.challengepost.com/submissions/28855-o...](http://rackspacemobile.challengepost.com/submissions/28855-oddjob)
. I think TaskRabbit and similar services have a tremendous opportunity to
build a base of passionate and trusted workers, but instead they're gouging
them (25% commission past the first introduction is absurd) and
misunderstanding why every worker I've talked with feels betrayed (from lack
of trust on TR's part related to communication from worker to employer, to an
oversimplification of scheduling that actually prevents workers from
committing to multiple jobs in a day).

Or maybe the business is running smoothly and they're minting money so they
just don't care what a minority of dissatisfied-but-loud customers/workers
say.

------
rajacombinator
Good article. Task Rabbit v1 was great, I have no idea what these people were
thinking by changing their formula. From a hirer perspective the new version
sucks.

Well, actually I do have an idea what they were thinking. Some VC or MBA
probably convinced them to move to this system to create a bigger barrier to
entry and increase the proprietary-ness of their product. "Just a market" is
not nearly as sexy sounding as "machine learning black magic matching
algorithms."

~~~
prawn
I imagine they wanted people to be able to get quotes really quickly rather
than wait on a bidding process. And work with fewer, dedicated taskers than a
myriad that included no-hopers.

IIRC, Flight Fox changed tack in a similar way, going from their original
scheme of people bidding to ending up a lot more like a regular travel agent
but where you pay up front to even work with them.

------
discardorama
If the Taskers are complaining and the customers aren't too happy either, then
I see an opportunity here for someone to step in and provide services like the
TR of the old.

~~~
jonnathanson
Well, objectively speaking, it seems like the old model wasn't working. It
wasn't scalable. Without standardizing _something_ \-- be it the buyer-
description-input track, or the tasker-bidding-assignment track -- you have an
ad hoc system that is not particularly efficient at allocating supply to
demand. (Or even particularly good at standardizing supply and demand in the
first place).

This new system seems to fit the classically snarky definition of a
compromise: a situation nobody is completely happy with.

The article implies a third option: keeping the open-bidding system of old,
but focusing on a vertical or two, instead of trying to be all things to all
potential tasks. This might be a better solution, but again, you run into
standardization and supply/demand allocation inefficiencies. Less of them, but
they're still there.

There seems to be a good reason why "second-generation" sharing economy
services, like Uber and Airbnb, do really well, while services like TaskRabbit
don't. These newer services are on tightly controlled rails, they're
standardized (or at least standardizing), and they're operating in specific
verticals. They are in the variance-minimization business. Old-model
TaskRabbit was in the variance- _creation_ business.

~~~
MediaSquirrel
It was working, just not enough relative to all the capital they raised. The
marketplace was growing 8% month over month, since forever. They wanted faster
growth but couldn't get it, so pivoted.

~~~
bsder
Exactly. The folks who put in roughly $40 million wanted a $500+ million exit
in 18 months. And that just wasn't going to happen with the numbers they had.

It seems like they were running about $500K a year. Even with 100% growth per
year, it's going to take 6 years to begin moving $40 million annual revenue.
The investors aren't going to wait for that long. And, as people have pointed
out, once I use TaskRabbit, why don't I contact the task person directly next
time?

Attempts to quantify TaskRabbit's numbers: [http://www.quora.com/How-much-
revenue-is-Taskrabbit-com-maki...](http://www.quora.com/How-much-revenue-is-
Taskrabbit-com-making)

------
_delirium
Interesting, I had missed that they changed how they operated from the post-
job/receive-bids/pick-a-bid model. Here's the announcement from a few months
ago: [http://blog.taskrabbit.com/2014/06/17/unveiling-the-new-
task...](http://blog.taskrabbit.com/2014/06/17/unveiling-the-new-taskrabbit/)

------
boxcardavin
If the article is implying that taskers and buyers were happier users under
the old system, what was it about that system that made it hard to scale?

~~~
prawn
It was harder to define and lock down to a slick process. There is a reply
further up to a different question which explains it in terms of variance.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8696134](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8696134)

Some platforms have seen a lot of success from doing something limited and
simple really well (Instagram, Twitter, etc) rather than trying to be a tool
for everything. Maybe that's a parallel?

~~~
XorNot
I think lack of growth is a more accurate issue. TaskRabbit wasn't in the
business it wanted to be in - they were a matchmaker not a middleman, and
match making only turns a profit at huge scales - dating is pretty much the
entire human race, so they can only go downhill from that opportunity.

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zellyn
Seems ripe for a Craigslist-type model: keep the code and servers as simple
and efficient as possible, cover costs by charging for one or two high-value
services that make sense, and let everything else function as a free
marketplace.

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thedudemabry
This is a terrible thought, but my honest first thought when I read the title
was, ”Yikes. Someone arranged a ’Most Dangerous Game‘-style scenario over
TaskRabbit?“

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cynusx
in marketplaces there is always one side that is in oversupply , it is clear
that in Taskrabbit their case the workers are in oversupply and they are
constrained by getting "employers" in.

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logn
These p2p "sharing economy" sites are begging for a solution that's actually
p2p. The star-rating of users could be maintained by a modified form of
bitcoin. I don't know what the business model would be, but that's pretty much
the point.

~~~
lsiebert
Charge for promoted ads?

~~~
logn
A p2p distributed ad network would be interesting, if the money can flow back
to the server operators maintaining the network. Overall though I just meant
there really wouldn't be a profitable business model, much like BitTorrent,
and that would be a good thing I think by eliminating a powerful middleman.

