From what I understand talking to some other people pursuing similar ventures, the point of services like Thumbtack isn't really whatever they start out as; the point is capturing the talent in a network and then selling that talent infrastructure.
Everyone from "startup banks", to payment-processors, to service marketplaces, to coworking spaces, are all running full-tilt toward this goal, and getting a company there first (and achieving a network effect from doing so) is what has the all the investors interested.
It's not so much pivoting as conglomeration. The end-goal of all these companies is to be "the point-of-contact a small-business-owner has for everything their business does that's not making their product." (In other words, to act as a PE firm or bigcorp acquirer without needing to do any actual acquiring.)
The main method of achieving this goal, from the starting point of having any one "component" of such an offering, is merging with other companies that provide other components, or integrating others' components into your own as a "suite" or "dashboard", or selling a "concierge" service that recommends others' services, etc etc.
Ah, I see. Has anyone achieved this? It sounds difficult. as a small business owner myself, I know I'm super suspicious of middlemen, and I think that's one of my major advantages over larger businesses.
Everyone from "startup banks", to payment-processors, to service marketplaces, to coworking spaces, are all running full-tilt toward this goal, and getting a company there first (and achieving a network effect from doing so) is what has the all the investors interested.