Small-business owners are like Swiss Army knives: expected to handle
dozens of specialized tasks without falling apart. But even the sharpest
entrepreneurs have it tough this time of year — inevitably, some will
outsource part of their workload to other enterprising people.
You're the Boss
How Small Businesses Use Fiverr, TaskRabbit and Other Services
Have you tried any services like these? If so, what worked for you?
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This season, dozens of start-ups are competing to take on your holiday
headaches. Here are four time-gobbling situations and the young
companies vying to eliminate them:
CHALLENGE Your to-do list is crammed with tiny tasks. How can you delegate them cheaply?
ONE SOLUTION For $5 you could drink a large latte and work through the night. Or you could hire a minion at Fiverr,
which bills itself as “the world’s largest marketplace for small
services.” Starting at $5 apiece, tasks include designing business cards
and letterheads, sending out handwritten cards, editing newsletters,
making short commercial videos and throwing darts at a picture of your rival.
“Pretty much anything you imagine can be found on Fiverr,” said the
company’s chief executive, Micha Kaufman, who set out in 2010 with Shai
Wininger to build what Mr. Kaufman calls “an eBay for services.”
“It’s giving people the tools to do business with the entire world,” he added.
Fiverr, with headquarters in Tel Aviv and offices in New York and
Amsterdam, has more than a million active buyers and sellers across 200
countries, Mr. Kaufman said. He would not disclose revenue or the number
of sales his site has brokered so far. Fiverr has raised $20 million in
financing and has 60 full-time staff members. The company collects a 20
percent commission on each sale.
THE COMPETITION Fiverr’s success has inspired an army of imitators, including Gig Me 5, Gigbucks, TenBux and Zeerk. Building and selling Fiverr copycat sites has also become a cottage industry
for online software developers. Asked whether he took this as a
compliment, Mr. Kaufman replied dryly, “One of my friends said, ‘It may
be flattering, but it’s a very annoying way to flatter you.’ ”
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CHALLENGE You want to delegate complex, highly
specialized tasks, but it’s hard to find people whose expertise matches
your needs.
ONE SOLUTION SkillPages connects skilled workers with those who want to hire them. The site showcases an array of specialists — beekeepers, tree surgeons, witches, clog dancers — along with professionals with more conventional business skills, like payroll administrators, social media marketers and typists.
Iain Mac Donald decided to start SkillPages after seeking a tree cutter
online to do work in his yard. “This guy arrives with a huge truck, and
he could have taken down a forest,” Mr. Mac Donald said. “He was going
to charge me $3,000. It just wasn’t right.”
Mr. Mac Donald figured there had to be a way to help make better
matches. To that end, SkillPages identifies specialists whom users’
families and friends may already know through social networks like
Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Users can also view work samples online
and contact members directly.
Based in Ireland, SkillPages went live in 2011 and opened an office in
Palo Alto, Calif., this year. The company’s 35 employees handle traffic
from more than nine million users worldwide, 1.5 million of them in
North America. The company has received $18.5 million in financing, said
Mr. Mac Donald, the chief executive, declining to disclose sales
figures.
SkillPages’ basic services are free. To make money, it sells advertising
space and offers premium memberships with stand-alone Web sites for
those offering services. Next year, Mr. Mac Donald plans to offer a paid
matchmaking service for talent-seeking companies. He is also building a
“targeted offers” program that will let niche vendors present deals on
products and services to members with relevant expertise. The vendors
will pay SkillPages a bounty for each sale.
THE COMPETITION Guru, oDesk and Elance also focus on skilled work. LinkedIn added a “skills” component to its profiles last year.
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CHALLENGE You are overwhelmed by errands and other
location-specific jobs that cannot be farmed out to the other side of
the planet. You need an affordable gofer: competent, trustworthy, local.
ONE SOLUTION TaskRabbit
is an on-demand service for handling quick jobs: assembling Ikea
furniture, packing boxes, wrapping gifts, mailing invitations or even
carrying awkward objects like Christmas trees.
The company sends requests to a network of “rabbits” — errand-runners
screened through video interviews and background checks — who bid for
the work. Last month, 80 were hired to wait on Black Friday lines.
Leah Busque got the idea for TaskRabbit one night in 2008, when she was going out to dinner and realized she had no food in the house for Kobe, her yellow Labrador. Envisioning an online service for dispatching errand-runners, she quit her job as an I.B.M. software engineer to build it. A year later, she won a slot in Facebook’s now defunct incubator program and later moved her company, then called RunMyErrand, to San
Francisco from Boston.
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