2008 to 2016
The company was founded as RunMyErrand in Boston in 2008, during the Great Recession, by Leah Busque, a former software engineer for IBM. [3] [7] She got the idea to start the company when she needed dog food but didn’t have time to get it herself. [8] [9]
In 2009, the company received funding from Facebook's startup incubator, fbFund, and Tim Ferriss became an advisor. [10] [8]
In 2010, the name of the company was changed from RunMyErrand to Taskrabbit. [11] The company also moved its headquarters to San Francisco. [12]
In May 2011, Taskrabbit raised a $5 million Series A financing round from Shasta Ventures, First Round Capital, Baseline Ventures, Floodgate Fund, Collaborative Fund, 500 Startups, and Lisa Gansky. [13] [14] [2] In July 2011, Taskrabbit launched a mobile app for iOS. [15] [16] [17] [18] At that time, the company had 1,500 active taskers. [12]
In October 2011, Eric Grosse, the co-founder and former president of Hotwire.com, was named CEO. [19] [20] At that time, the company had operations in Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City; Chicago; Los Angeles; and Orange County, California. [21] [22] In December 2011, Taskrabbit received an additional $17.8 million in a Series B round of funding from existing investors as well as Lightspeed Venture Partners, Allen & Company, and The Tornante Company. It also engaged Michael Eisner as an advisor. [14] [23] [24] At the time, the firm had 35 employees and generated $4 million in business each month. [2] [25]
In 2012, Busque reassumed the role of CEO, with Gross staying on with the company's board of directors, advising on strategy and operations. [26] The company raised $13 million in funding, bringing its total funding to $37.5 million. [27]
In January 2013, the company hired Stacy Brown-Philpot, formerly of Google, as the company's first COO. [28] [29] In March 2013, "Taskrabbit Business" was launched. It allowed businesses to hire temporary workers from the Taskrabbit users, with a 26% commission. [30]
In November 2013, the company launched in London, its first international market. [31] Because of declines both in bids and in completed and accepted tasks in the U.S., the company chose to test a new system in London whereby Taskers set their own rates and schedules, and when a new job was posted that matched their profile, the platform would send them an alert. The first to respond got the job. [9] [5] [32] In London, the results were positive: almost all the company's metrics improved, and the average amount of money that individual Taskers on the platform were taking home increased. [5] In June and July 2014, Taskrabbit began implementing this new format in all markets. [33] The new format was met with significant backlash from the Tasker community. [34] [35] Taskrabbit incorporated some of the feedback into an updated version of its app that launched in January 2015. [34] In 2014, Taskrabbit received 4,000 applications to be a tasker; it received 15,000 applications in 2015. [5]
In 2016, Stacy Brown-Philpot was promoted from chief operating officer to CEO, and former CEO and founder Leah Busque became executive chairwoman. [36] [37] [38] [39] In late 2016, Taskrabbit increased its fees by discontinuing its 15% service fee for repeat customers and introducing a 30% service fee for all tasks. It also increased its Trust & Support fee from 5% to 7.5%. [40]
2017 to present
By January 2017, the company had 55,000 active taskers. [41] In September 2017, the company was acquired by an affiliate of IKEA. [42] [43] [44] [45] [46]
In February 2018, Taskrabbit began operations in Birmingham, Bristol, and Manchester. [47] In March 2018, IKEA launched a furniture assembly service from Taskrabbit in the U.S. [48] [49] [50] [51] In April 2018, the company was affected by a data breach. At that time it had 60,000 taskers and 1.5 million users. [52] [53] [54] [55] In September 2018, Taskrabbit expanded to Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, and other Canadian cities. [56] [57] In December 2018, the company launched operations in Brighton, Cardiff, Coventry, Liverpool, Warrington, Oxford, and Reading. [58] [59]
In September 2019, Taskrabbit launched service in Paris and followed it with a rollout to other French cities. [60] [61] In October 2019, the company launched in Germany, with operations in Berlin, Bochum, Cologne, Dortmund, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Krefeld, Monchengladbach, Oberhausen, Wuppertal and the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region. [62]
In January 2020, Taskrabbit launched service in 39 cities in Spain. [63] In August 2020, Brown-Philpot resigned as CEO. [64] Taskrabbit named Ania Smith, formerly of Walmart, Expedia, Airbnb, and UberEats, its new CEO. [65] [66] [67] [68] In November 2020, the company launched service in Portugal, with operations in Lisbon, Porto, Braga, Coimbra, and Faro. [69]
In March 2021, Taskrabbit launched in Italy in Rome and Milan. [70]
In May 2022, Taskrabbit announced that it would close its physical offices, including its San Francisco, California headquarters, and transition to becoming a distributed company, with all employees engaging in remote work. [71] [72] Taskrabbit launched a global brand refresh, introducing an all lower-case wordmark with two different "a" characters. The company also removed the image of the "rabbit" from its logo and updated its default brand colors. [73] [74] [75] In July 2022, Taskrabbit launched service in Monaco. [76]
In November 2024, Taskrabbit acquired Dolly, which was a moving services company based in Seattle. The two brands will still stay separate. [77]
