Got some IKEA furniture that needs assembling?
No worries.
In March, TaskRabbit launches in the Austin and San Antonio markets and people will be able to post all kinds of tasks on the site for others to perform for a fee.
The most popular task in San Francisco is assembling IKEA furniture, said Johnny Brackett, TaskRabbit spokesman.
TaskRabbit, which launched in 2008 in Boston, is now available in Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, New York City and Los Angeles.
“Austin makes sense as the next step,” Brackett said. “We look for urban cities and tech-savvy cities.”
TaskRabbit saw a lot of demand from people in the Austin and San Antonio area requesting the service, Brackett said.
Nationwide, TaskRabbit has more than 3,000 people who work as TaskRabbit runners. Anyone over the age of 21 can apply to run errands.
“It’s sort of like a college application,” Brackett said. The site does federal, county and other background checks to license its errand runners. The whole process takes around five to seven days but it can also take up to four weeks. TaskRabbit is accepting applications now for the Austin and San Antonio market.
“Some of our most active Taskrabbits are running two to three tasks a day and cashing out $5,000 a month,” Brackett said.
In addition to furniture assembly, other popular tasks include cleaning, grocery delivery and lunch delivery. The site provides a platform for micro-entrepreneurship, Brackett said.
“We even get some unique ones like paint a mural on my wall or help me prank my colleague by wrapping everything in cellophane,” Brackett said. “We’re saving people time. It’s all about living more efficiently.”
Trust and security are really important to TaskRabbit, Brackett said. It has built in a reputation engine into its system so that errand runners are reviewed on a task by task basis. They’ve also built some game features into the site to reward so-called Taskrabbits for completing tasks.
“We’re all about transparency and ratings and reviews,” Brackett said.