With a brand-new CEO at its helm, TaskRabbit, the global service platform, is preparing for the next stage in its evolution, a move which has been accelerated by the global pandemic. We find out more about the role TaskRabbit has played throughout the Covid-19 crisis, and how CEO Ania Smith has begun to make her mark on the international digital enterprise.
TaskRabbit is a dynamic service platform designed to make life easier by connecting users with skilled and reliable ‘Taskers’ from within their local community, who can help them with a myriad of odd-jobs and errands, freeing up the users’ time to be more productive. From minor home repairs and wall mounting to moving furniture and sweeping flats to waiting in queues and rushing passports to the airport to avoid travel crises; TaskRabbit is the ultimate destination for solutions of all shape and size, covering more than fifty categories of tasks.
For Taskers, the TaskRabbit platform opens up a world of opportunity, whether it be for earning extra income or building their own business. The platform’s ease of use and multitude of capabilities means that Taskers can manage the back end of businesses with minimal fuss, allowing them to focus on delivering high quality services in a timely and conscientious manner. The importance of independent contractors in the global economy has never been so clear as it is now during the pandemic, when individuals have relied on those ‘household heroes’ for carrying out essential work such as bringing food and medicine to vulnerable people who can’t leave the house.
As the central ethos of TaskRabbit centres around neighbours helping neighbours and supporting local communities, the platform has developed to support the demand that has seen an accelerated increase owing to the pandemic. As many Taskers began to offer their services for free, TaskRabbit launched its volunteer category in the early stages of the pandemic to enable those who were struggling financially to access the support of their local community. As a result, TaskRabbit has become a more highly valued resource than ever before.
This applies to Taskers too, who are able to create meaningful income on their own terms thanks to the growth of the shared economy and two-sided marketplaces like TaskRabbit. The platform provides the perfect launchpad for entrepreneurs looking to drive innovation in the way they work, benefiting from the flexible working hour model that is unique to TaskRabbit and their ability to take home 100% of their rates and tips, thereby enabling them to increase and strengthen their role as independent contributors to the current and post-pandemic economy.
Taskers and users alike are also able to benefit from TaskRabbit’s strategic partnership with IKEA, enabling access to support for tasks around the home and to opportunities for working on household tasks. The relationship that TaskRabbit has built with IKEA has been fundamental to maintaining a well-funded and healthy business that can endure adversity and crisis and as such, will continue to be prioritised in the ongoing evolution of the platform.
This is just one aspect of the plans for TaskRabbit’s future that CEO Ania Smith has focused her efforts on since being appointed in August 2020. She is also facilitating the continuous development of TaskRabbit from the auction-type platform that it was conceived as in 2014 to what it is today, while simultaneously growing the global reach of the platform. With the launch in Portugal in November 2020 and in Italy in March 2021, Ania has seen TaskRabbit successfully enter its seventh and eighth markets globally, in addition to the US, UK, Canada, France, Spain and Germany.
Ania is at the head of a team of 250 that is dispersed across San Francisco, New York, London and Austin, and is defined by its values that focus on diversity, equality, and inclusion, which has led to the development of a leadership team that is 77% female. Ania’s twenty years of leadership experience have seen her grow to recognise the value of surrounding oneself with a team of experts who can be trusted for their support. As a result, she is a leader with empathy and compassion, who prioritises listening to the different perspectives and experiences of her diverse team in order to generate motivation and inspiration throughout.
Prior to joining TaskRabbit, Ania worked with UberEats and Airbnb, primarily focusing on the supply side of each business and looking after couriers and hosts. She has also managed strategy and growth for other major organisations such as Walmart eCommerce and Expedia, all of which have contributed to a twenty-year career focused on scaling and building multi-sided marketplaces, with a particular interest in enhancing the overall experience for all sides of the marketplace. Thus, as she settles into her new role at the helm of TaskRabbit, Ania is looking to make her own mark on the company by looking in particular at Tasker management and how their experience of the TaskRabbit platform can be optimised. As she does so, with the support of her team, Ania will facilitate the ongoing evolution of TaskRabbit as it plays its part as a vital pillar of communities across the globe.
