news Airtasker, a new online community marketplace based in Australia that lets people outsource everyday tasks and chores to ‘runners’ — local community members looking to earn some extra money — was launched on February 21, according to a media release issued by the company this week.

A brainchild of web entrepreneurs Tim Fung and Jonathan Lui, Airtasker aims to provide a platform where people who need help with everyday jobs can connect with people in their local area who are looking to earn some extra cash by running errands, completing handyman tasks and doing other odd jobs.

According to Fung: “Everyone has an Airtasker moment, where they need someone to help with a chore or painful task they’ve been ignoring for weeks or just aren’t capable of doing themself.” He said he realised there was a marketplace for these types of tasks when he himself moved house and was helped by a friend to set things up. The media release says posting a task on Airtasker is free and takes just a couple of minutes. You pay only what you think a task is worth and when it’s completed.

To get a task done, you post on Airtasker what you need done and how much you are willing to pay for the service. Runners (local community members interested in doing the task) can ask questions and then make an offer to help. You can then check the Runner’s profile, history and ratings and once you’re satisfied, you can assign the job to the Runner. Once the Runner completes the task, you can pay with cash or securely through Airtasker’s PayPal facility.

Runners pay Airtasker a fee of $2 plus five per cent of the value of the task being completed. As a special promotion from launch, Runners can start using Airtasker for free without having to provide their payment details if they simply spread the word about Airtasker on either Facebook or Twitter.

Features like ‘Task Walls’—to let people chat about a task before working together, and an SMS system to verify users’ payment information and phone numbers have been built into Airtasker to make the platform safe and to help people get a better picture of who they will be working with. The release says members are also encouraged to gather references and feedback reviews from people they work with.

Users can set up an Airtasker profile or can sign up using Facebook Connect, which may help add to the trust and safety level by allowing users to check out other people’s real profiles (public Facebook profiles only) and mutual connections before deciding to accept a Runner to carry out a task. People can also see if friends have worked with other community members earlier, thus increasing the confidence with which people use Airtasker.

Fung draws inspiration from the success of other collaborative online communities and is confident that Airtasker is going to be a big hit in Australia. “We’re launching Airtasker today in Sydney and plan to expand cross country pretty quickly,” he said. Research carried out by Pure Profile for Airtasker showed that 40 per cent of people would be willing to assemble someone else’s furniture to earn some extra cash. Other survey findings:

• 84% of Aussies surveyed weren’t on top of all their life admin chores, with one or more tasks sitting untouched
• More than 50% of Aussies spend four or more hours per week doing household chores — more than two working days per month
• 70% of Australians would pay up to $20 to outsource their most hated errand whilst more than 30% of Australians would pay up to $40
• The task people hate the most and put off as long as possible is cleaning the bathroom and toilet (28%)
• 20% of men said that they were on top of everything whereas only 12% of women said they were on top of all their chores

Tasks people are most willing to do to earn some extra cash were Data entry or filing (73% of those surveyed); Buying or delivering groceries (48%); Walking a neighbour’s dog (46%) and assembling IKEA furniture (40%).

opinion/analysis
It’s not a bad idea that Airtasker has going here, and it’s clearly using the same crowdsourcing transactional model that has worked well in other categories (I’m actually wondering if AirBnB would have something to say about Airtasker’s brand name). However, I can’t see this startup taking off in the short-term. The reason is that there are geographical barriers to entry here.

The reason why many other crowdsourcing startups (DesignCrowd is a good example work so well is that they are not dependent upon geography. Anyone in the world can carry out tasks from the comfort of their home office. However, in Airtasker’s case, many of its tasks require those carrying them out to be physically present (the aforementioned assembling IKEA furniture. This changes the cost model.

If you’re going to drive for 20 minutes (a minimum in Sydney to go across town) to get to a location to carry out a task, that increases the cost a fair bit. And I’m not sure if people are going to be willing to pay that much for simple tasks to be carried out for them. In small, dense locations where a lot of people are clustered (around universities, for example), I can see it working. However, in these sorts of locations, people are probably already too cheap to pay for this kind of stuff.

I’m happy to be proven wrong, though ;)

Image credit: Airtasker. Opinion/analysis by Renai LeMay.

Related posts:

1. Airtasker startup wins $1.5m in funding
2. Startup pays local to line up for iPad
3. Delicious buys Aussie startup Trunk.ly
4. Pollenizer calls for new startup partners
5. Evernote buys Aussie startup Skitch

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1. Level380
   Posted 22/02/2012 at 12:08 pm | Permalink | Reply

   iPhone only app… Fail!

2. Steve
   Posted 22/02/2012 at 9:58 pm | Permalink | Reply

   In case a thing went south – who pays for insurance or liability? The runner or Airtasker?

   In traditional sense of contractor/tradesman it is clear who is in charge of those sort of expenses.

3. Level380
   Posted 22/02/2012 at 10:32 pm | Permalink | Reply

   It should be noted that this isn’t a ‘new idea’ its been around in the USA for a while now, sites like task rabbit will do this for you. These guys are just bringing the concept to Australia.

   • DeLorean
     Posted 24/02/2012 at 2:47 pm | Permalink | Reply

     haha – just check out taskrabbit – It looks exactly the same. Even the web design!

     Not original.

4. Luigi
   Posted 12/04/2012 at 2:28 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Need1.com.au launches in 2 weeks!!

   • Renai LeMay
     Posted 12/04/2012 at 2:35 pm | Permalink | Reply

     ?

     • Level380
       Posted 12/04/2012 at 2:50 pm | Permalink | Reply

       Looks like spam to a soon to be released completing product….. Time to delete and ban!

5. Luigi
   Posted 12/04/2012 at 2:59 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Nope, not spam. Just a great website coming soon. Registration forms are available for download from http://www.want1.com.au/wingreg.docm . Oh…. and an Android APP

   • Noddy
     Posted 12/04/2012 at 5:10 pm | Permalink | Reply

     Spam and possibly attempting to spread a virus. I wouldn’t open that document and enable macros like it says.

6. Luigi
   Posted 12/04/2012 at 5:43 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Hi Noddy, thanks for your concern. Macros dont HAVE to be enabled, it mearly provides access to the drop down menu for City selection. If you don’t feel comfortable doing this, you can email the City seperatly. Otherwise you can also wait until the site officially opens and subscribe on the website. This word document is far from a virus, its a Early Bird registration form.
   Look forword to seeing you on the site!!

   • Noddy
     Posted 12/04/2012 at 5:55 pm | Permalink | Reply

     Why the would I want to? The domain registered 6 days ago. You seem to have asking for info their like you are maybe starting a business like the one mentioned in the article (based on guess work and reading the fine print) But you don’t explicitly tell anyone that. Just ask for some details and want them to send you a copy of their ID. Seems very unprofessional.

   • Renai LeMay
     Posted 12/04/2012 at 5:56 pm | Permalink | Reply

     Luigi,

     that’s enough. No more posts about your startup.

     Cheers,

     Renai