Ep 91 · 34 min · Mon 21 Jun 2021

What Can’t Michael Schumacher Do?: The Airtasker Story

Tim Fung, Airtasker

In this episode of Add To Cart, we are joined by Tim Fung, founder of Airtasker, the community platform that connects people who need jobs done with people who want to work.  Started in Australia in 2012, Airtasker now operates in New Zealand, Singapore, the UK, Ireland and the US and listed on the ASX earlier this year.  In this chat, Tim shares how he got started with Airtasker and effectively scaled a two sided marketplace that now lists over 80,000 tasks every month.

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In this episode

In this episode of Add To Cart, we are joined by Tim Fung, founder of Airtasker, the community platform that connects people who need jobs done with people who want to work.  Started in Australia in 2012, Airtasker now operates in New Zealand, Singapore, the UK, Ireland and the US and listed on the ASX earlier this year.  In this chat, Tim shares how he got started with Airtasker and effectively scaled a two sided marketplace that now lists over 80,000 tasks every month. He gives us insights on how eCommerce skills are in demand and how some businesses are turning to Airtasker to fill skill gaps.  And he reveals  some of the most fascinating tasks that the platform has listed – including removing spiders from light fittings, entertaining drag queens and even Tim himself helping review your pitch deck. 

In one of the early months, I had a burn rate of $150,000 in a month and out of $1.4 million dollars, $150k is pretty scary

Tim Fung

Questions answered in this episode include
  • How did Airtasker get started?
  • How does Airtasker manage and organise such a huge amount of product to give users a great online experience?
  • What is your top tip for an effective pitch deck?

All in from the ground up

Airtasker in particular is a business that is built on network effects and scale. And so it’s really hard to experiment. A lot of people will say, “Oh, the best way to see if a company is viable is throw up a landing page, chuck a couple of Google ads to it, spend $50 on Google and then see if there’s traction.” One of the problems with Airtasker in doing that is that if you have no taskers, then that’s not very interesting. Equally if you have no jobs, you can’t really find out whether service providers, taskers are going to want to do those jobs. So you can’t really take it by halves.  And so it was a very challenging business to build, I would say. 

The way we went about it, it’s really how do you take that sort of ambiguity and what’s the appropriate level to take a crack at it? And what we did is we had to build a team straight away. So we engaged a great group of engineers to help us build the platform. My co-founder Johno’s an engineer, but not a developer. And I went on the marketing and the business side. We put our own money in to be able to hire people and build a proof of concept. And then from there, we had to go to the capital raising trail.

And so we raised about $1.4 million just after we launched, which I think in the context of what you can do today, maybe that’s a lot of money. On the other hand when you’re staring down having to build a company and all the things that you have to do, it can feel like a very small amount of money. I remember in the early months, one of my months I had a burn rate of something like 150 grand in a month. And it was like, “Out of $1.4 million, 150 K is pretty scary on basically zero revenue,” because when you do the math, we were charging 15% of the task value, even if you’re doing $10,000 worth of tasks, it’s only 1500 bucks, doesn’t go very far. So it definitely was challenging because it’s built on scale and network effects.

Open and Infinitely Horizontal

One of the things I think that’s interesting about Airtasker is that we are an open and infinitely horizontal marketplace. And what we mean by that is first of all being an open marketplace means that rather than having operational staff, telling people what to do, we’ve built a system based on transparency and accountability. So you can come onto the Airtasker, you can start working, you can start building up your brand or reputation, and that’s what really drives great customer outcomes.

The second part is that we’re infinitely horizontal. So rather than having a specialist cleaning website, or even a website which has cleaning plus plumbing, plus electrical, we’re actually infinitely horizontal. So customers can really come into Airtasker and ask for anything that they need done within our community guidelines. And we empower our taskers to be able to solve that problem in any way that they see fit. And by doing this, we enable all of these service industries that couldn’t have existed before Airtasker.

And so examples of that, Ikea furniture assembly, we did millions of dollars of jobs in that industry last year, or maybe some of the more nichey ones like removing a spider from a light fitting, we did $70,000 worth of those jobs last year. And I guess what we really believe, I think somewhat uniquely is that, that long tail of all those things that people need done actually sums up to something that is absolutely enormous. And that’s why we have such high conviction on Airtasker being horizontal rather than a vertical or specialized kind of marketplace.

COVID, eCommerce & Airtasker

So there’s no doubt that e-commerce absolutely exploded and small businesses were clambering all over platforms and marketplaces like Airtasker to bring in that extra fire power that they needed during that period. I would say that it has been really interesting. 

One of the things from COVID is that it’s a difficult macro environment to be hiring, it’s tough. If you’re an employer or you’re a person looking for help, those skills are in strong demand and there just ain’t the people to be able to do it. And we’ve certainly felt that in the Airtasker marketplace, looking for skills, but finding those people with skills, given that net migration is negative in Australia, you got more people leaving and you’ve got coming, has definitely caused a strain on being able to access those skills, which I think is what Airtasker is designed for. 

So we can really be a part of solving that, but it’s a tough situation from a macro perspective.

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Read the full transcript Auto-generated

Tim Fung: I can take you bouldering out in the Kuhringay National Park. I'm a drag queen and I can entertain at a party. I write biographies. I can write your life biography. Let's make services as easy to buy as products. I remember in the early months, one of my months, I had a burn rate of something like 150 grand in a month and I was like out of $1.4 million. 150k is pretty scary on basically zero revenue.

[Voiceover]: Welcome to Add to Cart, the podcast that Express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving of e commerce. Every month, Nathan Bush from 12 High and an E commerce industry expert will share the news, research and insights that you need to know to keep you at the top of your game and of course, keep your customers Adding to Cart hello and welcome to Add to Cart. My name is Nathan Bush, host of Add to Cart and director at E commerce talent agency E Suite. The last time I moved house I hired removalist because I am a lazy bugger and I couldn't think of anything worse. But when I was younger, like most people, I'd actually ask my mates to help and because I could pay them with a carton of beer and they thought it was a pretty good deal, it usually worked out all right. Not sure I'd get away with it today. Today's guest did the same, but for him it was a catalyst for a business idea that would change the way that many of us now offer and use services. Today I'm talking to Tim Fung, founder of Airtasker, the community platform that connects people who need jobs done with people who want to work. What a time for that. Started In Australia in 2012, Airtasker now operates in New Zealand, Singapore, the UK, Ireland and the US and was listed on the ASX earlier this year. In this episode, Tim shares how getting started with Airtasker, he Effectively scaled a two sided marketplace that now lists over 80,000 tasks every month. Imagine having 80,000 products every month. He gives us insights on how e commerce skills are in demand and how some businesses are actually turning to Airtasker to help fill skill gaps. And he shares some of the most fascinating tasks that the platform has done, including removing spiders from light fittings to entertaining with drag queens. To Tim himself helping review your pitch deck. So thanks to our partners Shopify plus and Signet, here's our conversation with Tim Fung from Airtasker. Tim, welcome to Add to Cart.

Tim Fung: Thanks for having me.

[Voiceover]: Thank you for joining us. I'm super excited about this conversation. Before we get in. I was just on the Airtasker site and I think you have one of the best lines on your homepage that I've ever seen. It actually says, it's amazing what you can't do yourself.

Tim Fung: That's right. One of the things we found, it's actually that everyone is good at something. And, you know, even when you think about, I don't know, Michael Schumacher might be the best driver ever. You know, we thought it was hilarious to think, you know, but he might not be able to cook a decent pasta or he might not be able to operate a vacuum cleaner. And so it kind of became this hilarious thing where we would go, it's amazing what Michael Schumacher can't do.

[Voiceover]: I try and pretend that I can't operate a vacuum cleaner, but my wife never believes me.

Tim Fung: Yeah, I used to have that as a kid, actually. You know, my. My sister used to say, I wonder which one of us could take the clothes off the clothesline the fastest. I would. I would rush in and do all of that and she'd go, wow, you're faster than me. So see you later.

[Voiceover]: She played you well, didn't she?

Tim Fung: Yeah. That's terrible. When you have a. You know, when you're five years old and you have a sister four years older than you.

[Voiceover]: Now, Tim, for people who may not be aware of Airtasker and followed your story, can you give everyone a little bit of an overview of Airtasker and what you guys do?

Tim Fung: Yeah, sure. So Airtasker, we're Australia's number one marketplace for local services. Really simply, we connect people who need work done with people who want to work. One of the things I think that's interesting about Airtasker is that we are an open and infinitely horizontal marketplace. And what we mean by that is, first of all, being an open marketplace means that rather than having operational staff telling people what to do, we've built a system based on transparency and accountability. You can come onto airtask, you can start working, you can start building up your brand and reputation, and that's what really drives great customer outcomes. The second part is that we're infinitely horizontal. So rather than having a specialist cleaning website or even a website which has cleaning plus plumbing plus electrical, we're actually infinitely horizontal. So customers can really come onto Airtasker and ask for anything that they need done within our community guidelines. And we empower our taskers to be able to solve that problem in any way that they see fit. And by doing this, we enable all of these service industries that couldn't have existed before Airtasker. And so examples of that Ikea furniture assembly. We did millions of dollars of jobs in that industry last year or maybe some of the more niche ones like removing a spider from a light fitting. And we did $70,000 worth of those jobs last year. And I guess what we really believe, I think somewhat uniquely is that that long tail of all, all of those things that people need done actually sums up to something that is absolutely enormous. And that's why we have such high conviction on Airtasker being horizontal rather than a sort of vertical or specialized kind of marketplace.

[Voiceover]: I bet you can have some crazy data around the people who use Airtasker and around the series of tasks that they've asked to be performed for them.

Tim Fung: Yeah, so I mean, there's some common cases where we look at cross selling and those are examples like when you're moving homes, you know, you're going to need a removalist, you're going to need someone to do an end of lease clean in your previous home. You're going to need someone to clean up when you come in, you're going to need someone to help with furniture assembly and you know, setting up it around the house. So there's lots of like these common kind of cases. But also I think it's worthwhile kind of calling out that, you know, every single person has different, you know, life circumstances and so there are just these different things that come to, you know, everybody has their own unique things that they need done.

[Voiceover]: Absolutely. And do you find. Well, actually, let's go back, let's go back to the start. How did you come up with the idea of Airtasker? Because I understand it launched in 2012. It wasn't from your sister taking racing you to take clothes off the line, was it?

Tim Fung: No, it wasn't actually. So yeah, I was moving apartments back in 2011. I used to live with a few friends in the city and decide to move to a smaller apartment. And I asked one of my mates, Ivan to come and help me do the move, which I think is pretty common. Right. When you're in your 20s, get a friend. He had a truck that he uses to do deliveries for his business.

[Voiceover]: Poor fellow would be the most popular, popular friend going around.

Tim Fung: Well, he literally told me this is the fourth time I've had to help someone move because he's a friendly person. And so everyone's like, oh, you got a truck, right? Why don't you help me move? I'm sure that's the same if you own a ute or something like that. And so he helped me do all of that. And that just got us thinking. He's like, why do we ask friends and family to do all these kinds of jobs where underemployment in particular is really, really high? People are looking for ways to make money. The cost of a beer in pubs is, you know, eight or ten dollars these days. Everyone's looking for that extra money. So why is this not happening? And what we kind of realized is there just isn't a place for it to exist. You know, there's no simple way to just go, hey, can somebody help me do this? And to be able to have a trusted network for that, for that to occur in. And so that was the idea for Airtask, like let's make services as easy to buy as products.

[Voiceover]: Australian brand Rolling Nation makes footwear that is lightweight and the favorites of suitcase stuffers around the globe. So when Rolling Nation wanted to put a greater focus on direct to consumer, they migrated to Shopify Plus. With integrations into Gorgias for customer service, Smile for loyalty, Klaviyo for direct marketing, and Okendo for customer reviews, Rolly Nation were able to deliver a site that was as lightweight as their shoes. They immediately achieved a 62% improvement in page speed, which contributed to a 3.5% increase in conversion. As Limp Bizkit would say, they're now Rollin, Rollin, Rollin. To read more of Rollie Nation's story and to see other case studies, visit the customer sections on Shopify. The. Where did you start? Obviously, because it's a two sided marketplace, there's a lot of technology driving it in the background. How did you get a proof of concept up to see that it's viable?

Tim Fung: Ned Husker in particular is a business that is built on network effects and scale. It's really hard to experiment. You know, a lot of people will say, oh well, the best way to, you know, see if a, if a company is viable is throw up a landing page, chuck a couple of Google Ads to it, spend $50 on Google and then see if there's traction. One of the problems with Airtasker in doing that is that if you have no taskers, then that's not very interesting. Equally, if you have no jobs, you can't really find out whether service providers, taskers are going to want to do those jobs. And so you can't really take it by halves. It was a very challenging business to build. I would say. The way we went about it is really like, how do you Take that sort of ambiguity and what's the appropriate level to take a crack at it? And what we did is we had to build a team straight away, so we engaged a great group of engineers to help us build the platform. My co founder, Jono, is an engineer, but not a developer, and I went on the marketing. The business side. We put our own money in to be able to hire people and build a proof of concept. From there it was, you know, we had to go on the capital raising trail and so we raised about $1.4 million just after we launched, which, you know, I think in the context of what you can do today, maybe that's a lot of money. On the other hand, when you're staring down having to build a company and all the things that you have to do, it can feel like a very small amount of money.

[Voiceover]: Yeah.

Tim Fung: And, you know, I remember in the early months, one of my months, I had a burn rate of something like 150 grand in a month and I was like, out of $1.4 million, 150k is pretty scary on basically zero revenue, because you do the math, we were charging 15% of the task value. Even if you're doing $10,000 worth of tasks, suddenly $1,500 doesn't go very far. So it definitely was challenging because it's built on scale and network effects.

[Voiceover]: Absolutely. And was this your first venture?

Tim Fung: So I've done a few things before in various scales and in various roles. During uni, I started a motorsport events company where we would go higher up racetracks and then invite people to come along to that. That's obviously the smaller scale. And then when I was at Macquarie, we did a lot of entrepreneurial things like setting up taxi networks and obviously completely different scale. But then I wasn't the founder. I guess my main experience before Airtasker was that I helped build a company called Amasim, which is the mobile virtual network operator. And I guess that was a great opportunity to work with a chairperson and a CEO that had done it before, and to watch them do it and see it built from the ground up and be a part of that without being a founder myself. Before Airtask, which is really being thrown in the deep end, even though I'd had that experience before, definitely was the next level.

[Voiceover]: Yeah, absolutely. I can see how that helps. When you are faced with those burn rates and all the other scary decisions that you've got coming up. If you've had a mentor or someone that you've seen go through it, it's totally different, I'm assuming when it's your call and your responsibility. But at least you've seen a sort of playbook before.

Tim Fung: Definitely.

[Voiceover]: Now, fast forward and last year, was it earlier this year you launched on the asx.

Tim Fung: Yeah. So I guess the last couple of years has been every year, I think as a founder CEO, your role changes and the whole thing just seems to whatever you learned in the previous year gets torn up and you have to do it again. So, you know, if I kind of think back a couple of years, 2019 for us was all about taking a business where we had just been really growth at all costs and turning it into a real business. So that was pretty challenging, to be honest. Focusing on growth at all costs is kind of fun. You know, you kind of like, yeah, just do that. That's more customers. You know, everyone's really into that when it comes to, okay, we need to make this a bit more efficient now. We had to look at even things like engineering efficiency. So, like our infrastructure, you know, is this the smartest way to be scaling? So that was sort of 2019, 2020. We were so thankful that we'd done that because we got to cash flow positive and that was kind of like, great. We have a business that is paying its own way now. And then Covid hit and we're like, oh, just when we got to cash flow positive, this happened. And we were so thankful that we had gone through that pain in 2019 to get to 2020 to be in that position, so that when things got tough again, we are ready for it. 2020 was really interesting because at the beginning of COVID we did see our volumes drop by about 14% month on month. And that was pretty concerning. Airtask is a pretty somewhat predictable business because of the scale of it now, but it did drop at the beginning of COVID But then what we saw was quite remarkable and sort of spoke to our open and infinitely horizontal model, which is that we saw that customers just started asking for different stuff and taskers were really motivated, empowered to be able to solve those new kinds of problems that came around during COVID For example, shopping, delivery. That was something that was really big. Bike repairs, people bought tons of bikes, fitness training at home, people wanted, I want to have a remote fitness trainer. So all of these things kind of came about and the end result of that is that 2020 was actually our biggest year of growth, albeit definitely felt some interruptions along the way. Then that sort of led to the decision to become a public company. And what we Were really thinking about there is how big is this opportunity globally? We've been running in London for a number of years and seeing that continue to grow, albeit again disrupted by Covid. But we were really thinking, like, how can we access the capital and move in that really fast way to be able to be able to go global? And so we made decision to list in September, and thanks to the great work that our finance and engineering and data teams have done before, it was feasible to do it in six months. So we ran at that opportunity. It was an absolute blur. My wife will never let me forget that she works at Airtasker, but she'll never let me forget how hard that time was. And we finally did it at the end of March, so it was a great milestone to pass.

[Voiceover]: Amazing. Congratulations.

Tim Fung: Thanks.

[Voiceover]: And when you say it was hard, is there any particular story or moment that you went, oh, maybe this is all too hard?

Tim Fung: Look, I have that about lunchtime every day where I sort of, as I'm eating my lunch, I'm just like, oh, my gosh, like, the number of things that you have to go do. But I just think that the opportunity that we have ahead of us is so massive that, you know, I'm willing to push through a lot of pain to get there. But, you know, one example I would say is we realized that in order to be able to hit our IPO timeline, that we would have to start doing our audited accounts on literally the 1st of January. Like, we have to start at like, 8:00am on the 1st of January. And, you know, so our finance team, Jen, Gina, Brendan, my whole finance team were like, all right, we're up for this, but we're only going to do this once. And so we were literally on conference calls January 1st, and it was just incredible to see a team pull through that and get that done in five days so that we could stick to our timeline. But, yeah, there were definitely times, like, those times aren't that infrequent. They happen pretty frequently, at least for me.

[Voiceover]: Happy New Year. And can you describe the feeling when you finally got there and you rang that bell? How did that feel for you as taking this from the ground all the way to that moment?

Tim Fung: Well, I've got to say, it's mixed, right? I think what you often find with founders who build companies is you often just get into like, okay, what's the next thing that happens to happen? What do we need to do next? And I guess probably a month before the ipo, that was kind of my mindset. So it's just another day. We just need to list this company so that we can get to the next level, we can access the capital, and then we can start moving again. And I was, I was probably in danger of just cruising through it like another, like another day. And actually my chairperson, my coach and my wife pulled me aside and they were like, you really need to enjoy this and the rest of the team needs to enjoy this because it is a big deal. You know, as much as you can say, oh, it's just a capital raising event and, you know, things will just, you know, carry on, which is also true. You've got to smell the roses and celebrate. And so that was a great turnaround. And what we ended up doing is, you know, rather than just going back to our desks on that day, we totally partied that day. And then we actually had a celebration with the friends and family who had, you know, come along that journey and actually did it with a. I just invested in a boat marketplace called Floatspace. And so they, you know, very graciously let us have a boat for the night. And, you know, we had 120 staff rocking it out that night. And so it was a really great milestone and it was an incredible feeling. And you know, my parents were there, they rang the bell, my mom rang the bell with us. And it was just a, it was just a huge, it was a huge thing. So, yeah, it's a bit of a balance of the two.

[Voiceover]: Yeah, that's a, that's a very strategic investment as well. I like that, I like that. I like where you're going. And I think so many lessons in there, whether it's celebrating the big milestones, but also the little milestones and bringing not only your team along, but the people who help your team outside of work. I think there's a really, really nice lesson in that.

Tim Fung: It's a grind for people. Like, one of our company values is when it's on its own and it seems like it's always on. So I think you definitely have to take stock of that and take pause to celebrate with people.

[Voiceover]: Absolutely. Now, you mentioned before that you had a whole bunch of new industries and activities pop up on Airtasker with COVID whether that be fitness or shopping or otherwise. From an E commerce perspective, did you see any particular skills pop up around, say, development, design, marketing as more people, more SMEs and businesses tried to get into E commerce?

Tim Fung: Yeah. So I would say in general, and you know, it's interesting because we feel the parallels both as a company doing Our own hiring as much as, you know, in the marketplace of Airtasker itself. So there's no doubt that E commerce absolutely exploded. And small businesses were clambering all over platforms and marketplaces like Airtasker to bring in that extra firepower that they needed during that period. And I would say that it has been really interesting. One of the things from COVID is that it's a difficult macro environment to be hiring. It's tough if you're an employer or you're a person looking for help. Those skills are in strong demand and they just need the people to be able to do it. And we've certainly felt that in the Airtasker marketplace, finding those people with skills, given that net migration is sort of negative in Australia, like you got more people leaving than you got coming, you know, has definitely caused a strain on being able to access those skills, which I think is, you know, what Airtasker is designed for. So we can really be a part of solving that. But it's, it's a tough situation from a macro perspective.

[Voiceover]: Absolutely. And if there are people. So notice exactly the same thing in what we're doing, trying to find people in for positions and that it's tough getting people full time. And it also feels like those that are in full time work are getting through. They got through Covid and they got to this year and they're like, can we just have a break? Can I just put my head down and do something? And do something really well? Do you find that your taskers on the site are doing it full time or are they going, oh, I've got my day job, this is something. And I've got these skills that I can also offer it to people outside of my traditional work hours as an added bonus.

Tim Fung: So we've got a bit of a mix. We have a group of taskers, they're called our Platinum Taskers. So the folks that have really gotten up to the top tier of tasking, smaller number of those. But of course they account for really important to the marketplace because they do a lot of the work on Airtasker. But actually we have a long tail of tiers as well. So we have platinum, gold, silver and bronze. And so we have, you know, a whole mix of people, many of whom are hobbyists, etc. You know, just doing a couple of jobs a month, etc. One of the interesting new dynamics that we've had is we've just introduced a new marketplace model called Airtasker Listings. And the way Airtasker listings works is that now it's taskers or service providers. It could be anyone are able to list up a package of services that they will provide for a fixed price on Airtasker. So it's kind of reverse Airtasker in some sense. It's now the service provider. So here's what I could do. Does anyone need this service? And that sort of changed the dynamic a little bit now because now we have people on Airtaskerly say, I can take you bouldering out in the Karengo national park, or I'm a drag queen and I can entertain at a party or. Or I write biographies. I can write your life biography.

[Voiceover]: That's awesome.

Tim Fung: I'd love to see your listing on Airtasker as well. Yeah. If we can get you to pop up a listing, that'll be pretty cool. And you might just land on the homepage of Airtasker.

[Voiceover]: What would I. I don't know what I'd even offer as a skill, maybe.

Tim Fung: Well, how about making a podcast interview

[Voiceover]: you about your business?

Tim Fung: Yeah, exactly. Life interviews. Totally. We've got some really cool stuff up there and it's definitely sort of broadening Airtaskers horizons. You know, primarily we were in home services, but you know, I'm just having a look at the. At what the top picks are this week. Someone will draw caricatures of you for $88. Someone will give you private wedding dance lessons for $150. Or we even got someone doing leafy exotic plant care. So there's a whole bunch of different stuff on there. It's pretty cool.

[Voiceover]: It's amazing because it kind of puts the inspiration in. It's not just kind of trying to. To go, I've got this problem. Can I get someone to solve it? It's like actually inspire me as well, which is brilliant.

Tim Fung: Totally. And I'm looking just now there's a whole new category that's just popped up all about crypto. We've got cryptocurrency, bitcoin trading coaches, people teaching you how to invest in bitcoin, et cetera. So some really, really cool things. And I'm so excited about creating these new services categories through this model.

[Voiceover]: And I read that you have 80,000 tasks placed every month from an E commerce perspective, a traditional retailer perspective. If I had 80,000 SKUs coming in every month, I'd be like, oh my God, how would I even merchandise this? How do you organize and keep everything organized so that customers and users can have a really great experience and find what they want?

Tim Fung: Yeah. So first of all, Whilst we don't publish our posted task numbers, we actually have quite a lot more than 80,000amonth. So it's actually a bigger problem even than that you mentioned there. And it's a growing problem, which is a good problem for us, but certainly still a problem. One of the things I would say is it's great to be a community based marketplace, which means that, you know, when tasks come up on Airtasker, we have this great community of taskers who are helping us curate that, showing us what they find to be interesting or not interesting and, you know, obviously replying to all those tasks. And you're absolutely right, if we had manual operations where we had to handle each of those tasks, it absolutely would not be possible, I don't think. Especially since we're doing that across the UK now, in the US and in cities all across Australia. It's really about leveraging one, the community, so people power and then two, investing a fair bit into machine learning and data science to be able to figure out, well, what do people want to see here and how do we get it to them in the quickest possible way.

[Voiceover]: Yeah. I also read and correct me if I've got my information wrong again, that you've got two AI bots called Carl and Alan, is that right?

Tim Fung: Yeah, that's right. So we've got Carl, who's our friendly AI categorizer. So one thing that is really complicated about having an open marketplace is it's virtually impossible to sort of put categories on certain things someone puts up. I'm looking at it now, that they'll draw caricatures of you. You're like, well, is that party entertainment or is that more like, is that artistic services or is that graphic design? So I think that is what Carl's job is then. Alan is our friendly moderation AI. So Alan will go through and find out where there are situations in which something isn't meeting our community guidelines. So if there's naughty pictures or anyone's not quite upholding the standards of the Airtasker community, then Alan helps us flag that. And of course, supported by our Airtasker community.

[Voiceover]: That's brilliant. I love that you've given them names. It almost feels like they're team members.

Tim Fung: I believe they actually stand for really complicated data science acronyms like Carl Sands.

[Voiceover]: Of course they do.

Tim Fung: Yes. It was really. So obviously it goes way beyond my levels of ability, but to know what those acronyms are. But yeah, they weren't just made up names.

[Voiceover]: If I asked you who you thought the Captain Planet was of Australian retail. I'm sure the team over at Flora and Fauna would get most of your votes. They continue to set the benchmark for sustainable retail and sustainable business in general. So we are so proud to share that they have partnered with our friends at Signet to create create plastic free packaging. Using Signet's eco friendly protective packaging range, Flora and Fauna have been able to save 30 tons of plastic from landfill while keeping their 8,000 products safe in transit. As Captain Planet would say, with our powers combined. Visit signet.net audience to find out more. One of the things that I did see is that you recently made yourself available on Airtasker. You posted your own, your own availability to review pitch decks. How did that go?

Tim Fung: Yeah, so I've actually done. My listing's been booked a couple of times already. So I'm really excited about that. So, for example, my listing is that I charge $500 for somebody to send me their pitch deck and I'll help them refine it and then, you know, jump on a zoom call with them to sort of take them through the feedback. But I'm just looking at this and I can't believe this. The team did promote my listing to the front page. It was under the top staff picks last week, but I've looked at it now and they've taken me down. So I'm a bit upset about that. And I can also see here that one of the really successful listings was a baby first aid course and they have been on there for a couple of weeks straight. So I can't understand this, but I think I have to go talk to my merchandising team to find out why they're. They're dissing my listing.

[Voiceover]: Maybe. Maybe they're going to make you speak to Carl. Exactly.

Tim Fung: $500.

[Voiceover]: That's a bargain.

Tim Fung: Look, I thought it was pretty good value. I did get a number of bookings pretty quickly, but it's obviously my side hustle.

[Voiceover]: That's great. I love it. And just on that, only one question. I'm not going to use $500 worth of your value. What's the biggest tip that you give to people when preparing a pitch deck for investors?

Tim Fung: Oh, wow. I mean, there are so many things, I guess if I think about a pitch deck, I think that it would be all about having a very clear mission and vision for the company. And by the way, I think one of the real myths about founders is that people are in the shower one day or sitting in their car and it just all comes to them. And they know exactly what they want and it's all perfect. The reality is that usually you start on a journey and as you go on that journey, you refine and learn more about your space and you want to be creating greater and greater clarity and vision over time. But I think even if you look at a Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos or something like that, we reviewed them as these visionary founders and they are incredible founders and executives. But I imagine that along the way they were probably working it out as they went along. And I don't think Jeff Bezos woke up in 1994 and said, we're going to have this thing called AWS and we're going to, you know, own Whole Foods and all that sort of thing. It was definitely a journey. And so I think that, you know, my tip would be, to the extent possible, you know, really spend that time to try and articulate that, because that is what people end up believing in.

[Voiceover]: It's a great tip. Thank you. Now, we've got to wrap up. I've got so many questions here for you, but we'll wrap up and we'll ask what is next on your radar now that we're. We're not quite through Covid, we've still got a few scares going on, but what's next on your radar for Airtasker?

Tim Fung: Yeah, so we have. We recently upgraded, you know, after our ipo, we've seen the marketplace really continue to grow well, so we upgraded our prospectus forecast and then last week we actually acquired a company in the US called Zali, which was a really, really exciting US marketplace. And we raised a little over $20 million to be able to invest into the US and the UK market. So in this coming year, it's going to be all about continuing to invest in our Australian marketplace through products like Airtasker listings, and then taking that product to the US and to the UK as well, and launching new cities in those markets. So that's the bit, you know, I'm super, super excited about.

[Voiceover]: That's really exciting and so great to see Australian company taking it to the world. And the story so far has been incredible and I know it's only the start, so thank you for sharing, Tim. Really appreciate that and your insight on pitch decks and everything else we covered. If people are interested in either partnering, working at a atasker, what's the best way to be in touch with yourself or the team?

Tim Fung: So we have a Airtaskercareers page, so head over there or jump on our LinkedIn, which is where we post up all of our job ads. A lot of people just hit me up directly on LinkedIn and you know, I still, I still look at that when I get the opportunity to. And then if it's interest in media or partnerships, we have mediairtasker.com but what I would say, number one is jump onto Airtasker listings and create your own listing because I reckon that's the best way to get value out of the Airtasker marketplace.

[Voiceover]: Spot on. Or just go on and save up $500 and then hit you up for a pitch deck.

Tim Fung: That's right, yeah. For a small check of $500, I will be at your service.

[Voiceover]: That's awesome. Tim, thank you for joining us on Add to Cart.

Tim Fung: Nathan, thanks so much for.

[Voiceover]: What an amazing story. It's one of those moments where I pinch myself and think how lucky am I to have conversations with some of the best business and entrepreneurial minds in Australia. When I started this podcast, I certainly wasn't thinking that I would be sitting down with the likes of Tim Fung to have conversations around their business. When I was first talking to Tip and the Airtasker team about coming onto the podcast, I was a little hesitant because I didn't know if it fit the E commerce mold. However, as you can see here, Airtasker is actually one of the most significant two sided marketplaces in Australia just for services, not products. And what I really like about the model is that it fills those serviceable moments that often fall between the gaps. The ideas and services that might not be big enough to make an entire business out of, but together create a really strong community and a fantastic, fantastic offering. I think that's an idea we can all think about. Are there experts or specialists in our field that we can bring into our business to add value in small increments to give our customers value that we wouldn't be able to? As Tim showed, it's not an easy model to get right, but when it clicks, it can be so powerful. To finish up, I have three resources for you. Firstly, if you're a first time listener about to cut and you want to stay up to date with new episodes, head over to addtocart.com and you can sign up for our weekly newsletter. We'll let you know every time a new episode drops, as well as giving you my three takeaways from each episode and a link to the transcripts so you can know that this is an episode that you want to dive straight into. Secondly, if you want a weekly roundup of the best e commerce case studies, tools and resources research. Sign up to the Hi5 Friday newsletter which is delivered to inboxes at 8am every Friday morning. I read all the e commerce news and send you the bits that I think you can take action from. Sign up at 12 high 12 h I g h.com au hi 5 and the last thing if you are looking to explore your next e commerce opportunity, head over to eSweet talent.com we are a dedicated e commerce talent agency connecting the best e commerce talent with the fastest growing brands. Check it out. Sign up to the email and get in touch with me if you want to discuss your next move. Until next time, thanks for listening and keep those customers adding to car.

Tagged

  • Founder Story
  • Marketplace and Amazon
  • International Expansion
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