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Not many people will list “not afraid of spiders” on their resume. However, in Sydney, home to the world’s most venomous spiders to humans, not being disturbed is a monetizable skill when asked to expel unwanted spiders.
Airtasker – an Australian online marketplace that connects people in need with cleaners, carpenters, gardeners and more – has found a marketplace for spider scavengers in addition to full-time fumigators.
One woman posted that she would pay $35 if anyone could get a giant spider out of her house immediately. Within hours, her post was copied multiple times, and a niche industry was born.
For Airtasker founder and CEO Tim Fung, the rise of spider catchers is proof that people don’t realize the kind of service they need. “Certain skills are recognized, but others are not,” he said. “But not being afraid of spiders is a skill. Everyone has unique things they can do.”
Professional tasks such as IKEA furniture assembly, Lego tutoring, and bathroom faucet replacement may seem niche, but in general, have become lucrative side jobs for “taskers” and big business in the market.
Feng gave the example of a tasker, known as a “trampoline whisperer,” who can earn tens of thousands of dollars a year installing trampolines for parents who are unwilling or unable to do it themselves and surprise their children.
The idea for Airtasker came in 2012, when Fung asked friends to help him move. That friend has a truck that usually delivers frozen chicken nuggets. When he moved his chicken-scented property into his new home, Feng asked himself why he had asked a reluctant friend to help—why no eBay-like gig marketplace existed.
Ten years on, Airtasker has 150,000 Taskers serving 1.2 million paying customers and is ranked 292nd in FT’s ranking of high-growth Asia-Pacific companies.
The value of jobs booked through the e-commerce company has now reached $1.1 billion since its inception.Beginning in 2008, it has expanded to the UK, New Zealand, Singapore and the US, competing with near rivals such as US platforms Mission Rabbit and pushpins.
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Australia’s strict lockdown measures during the pandemic have hampered Airtasker’s growth, as in many places its taskers aren’t allowed into people’s homes to do odd jobs. That has taken a toll on its share price, which has halved since October.
But the company has begun to recover since those measures were lifted. Airtasker’s revenue rose 10 per cent to $13.9 million in the first half of the year, and while it remains in the red, it has raised its growth prospects for the year.
Fung’s journey into the world of startups has been extraordinary. The Sydney native worked for Australian bank and asset manager Macquarie for five years but decided to switch careers. He first joined a fashion company in 2009 as a child model. There, he met Peter O’Connell, a telecommunications industry veteran who was building virtual mobile network operator Amaysim, and Fung joined in 2010 with what he called an “MBA in how to grow a startup.”
Similar to other gig economy companies, the biggest criticism of Airtasker is that Tasker doesn’t pay well compared to full-time professionals. The union argues that companies like Airtasker are exploiting a subclass of workers.
Feng admitted that the company had been guilty of focusing on building a customer base without taking the tasker’s perspective into account. “If you think of Uber or Deliveroo, it’s ‘how do we make this cool customer service’ and ‘we’re going to put a lot of pressure on a bunch of riders and drivers to make it happen,'” he admits.
However, his company works with reputable mission officers to avoid competition to the end. Fung said that 70% of jobs posted on the platform are not offered at the cheapest price, showing that customers are willing to pay more for quality of service.
He recalls watching Uber founder Travis Kalanick talk about how his company will make more money when self-driving cars can operate without a driver. Feng said that if robots replace human cleaners and other jobs, it would be a bad thing for both his company and mission crews.
Airtasker has also been criticized at times by professionals who say their income is undercut by eager hobbyists who take small things from their business — like changing faucets.
But Fung doesn’t expect Airtasker to replace household services like plumbing or cleaning, despite competing with them for small jobs. The value of Airtasker, he argues, lies in the “long tail of niche services” that will expand the overall scale of home services as people apply their skills to small jobs — like clearing spiders or getting drones out of trees.
With Airtasker, Fung hopes to make these odd jobs easier for people: “Five to 10 years from now, we’ll look back and think, ‘This is so hard, isn’t this crazy?'”
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