Goal: "To revolutionize the world's labor force."

Free people from the shackles of low-paying jobs

Goal: "To revolutionize the world's labor force."

Photos by Pamela Littky

DANIELLE SACKS | Fast Company

TaskRabbit announced its total capital infusion had increased to $38 million

TaskRabbit currently has about 11,000 runners in 10 markets--that is, 11,000 people who have signed up and cleared background checks and are ready to profit off of whatever tasks the general public wishes not to do.

Some of the partners were increasingly convinced that TaskRabbit is " going to create the dominant labor marketplace."

What intrigued investors about TaskRabbit was the seemingly infinite nature of the peer-to-peer platform: It could be all things to all people--while earning a 20% commission on top of every transaction.

"As the network of things it can satisfy gets bigger, that makes it more and more dominant in the marketplace ... It essentially gives it an insurmountable competitive barrier."

TaskRabbit is "the one company that is changing the way people are thinking about labor."

And how will that happen?

• By Founders Fund's logic, the work available on TaskRabbit will free people from the shackles of low-paying jobs, like frothing lattes at Starbucks, and empower them to craft their own careers.

• But the jobs on TaskRabbit are almost all menial; one of the most frequently posted gigs is assembling Ikea furniture.

The narrative may be set, but TaskRabbit's actual business still needs refining.

• It seems that TaskRabbit's fastest-growing customers are small businesses looking to hire everyone from part-time receptionists to data-entry people, which means Busque is recasting part of the business to resemble a temp agency. "That model hasn't really been innovated in decades ...You have these big players in the space that are still operating the way they were 25 years ago, with tons of overhead."

On one side are other generalist hire-a-personal-gofer startups such as

• Fancy Hands ("Do what you love, we'll do the rest!"),

• Gigwalk ("Hire your smartphone army!"), and

• Zirtual ("Virtual assistants for busy people!").

On the other are targeted startups like

• Lyft, on which anyone can offer his services as a cabbie, or

• Exec, on which anyone can pose as a housecleaner for hire.

As of April, the company claims it is now adding 1,000 Rabbits per month.

The company boasts that these super-users make around $55,000 a year. To earn that much, a Rabbit must perform four tasks every single day of the year.

Take away the sheen of a sexy interface and the cute little bunny logo, and you're left with something that arguably locates a Rabbit a few notches above migrant worker.

Read the whole article at Fast Company

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