So a little story about Thumbtack. My girlfriend is a chef and she and her chef friends have all turned to Thumbtack at one time or another to seek out private clients. There's a ton of them here in SF since lots of people have money in the city.
One by one, they all dropped off. I've overheard them talking about their experiences. Private client posts gig, asks for bids. Chef buys credits, uses them to bid. Private client opens email, never responds, drops off the face of the Earth. Chef loses money. My girlfriend probably spent $100 without any return. She has since gone on to other much more profitable sources for leads.
Thumbtack of course reaps the reward, but at some point their user acquisition flywheel is going to have trouble turning.
Well, for me at least, the bids were either spammy advertising or just astronomically high. I'm not even going to waste my time responding to someone who is clearly wasting my time. For example, I was trying to get our house ready to put on the market. One of the jobs I posted to Thumbtack was to replace the cutoff valve, supply line, and fill valve of a toilet. All-in-all, it's less than one hour to do the job (which I ended up doing). I also checked that I would provide all parts and supplies, because I already had them. I just had too many other things on my plate at the time. Instead of reasonable estimates, I got crap. The first set was people just using Thumbtack as lead generation. They wouldn't give an estimate, even with the clear details I gave. Instead, they wanted to charge me to come out and give an estimate. Others basically ignored my post and sent me random advertising about their services, which had nothing to do with what I was trying to get done. The final set of people were posting absurd prices that were 4-5x what would be a reasonable maximum for the amount of work. So yeah, I never responded to any of them.
Hey, sorry to hear about your girlfriends troubles, as well as everybody elses. We are working on a marketplace for chefs called Homemade, I love to invite everyone to check it out.
One by one, they all dropped off. I've overheard them talking about their experiences. Private client posts gig, asks for bids. Chef buys credits, uses them to bid. Private client opens email, never responds, drops off the face of the Earth. Chef loses money. My girlfriend probably spent $100 without any return. She has since gone on to other much more profitable sources for leads.
Thumbtack of course reaps the reward, but at some point their user acquisition flywheel is going to have trouble turning.