Tim Fung – Scaling a global two-sided marketplace | Airtasker Co-founder & CEO

Bryce: [00:00:03] Welcome to another episode of Equity Mates, a podcast that follows our journey of investing. Whether you're an absolute beginner or approaching Warren Buffett status, our aim is to help break down your barriers from beginning to dividend. My name is Bryce and as always, I'm joined by my equity buddy, Ren. How you going? Oh, I'm. 

Alec: [00:00:30] Very good, Bryce. I'm very excited for this interview. We've spoken to a number of CEOs over the journey now, but many of them from, you know, big companies that have been around for hundreds of years, you know, the Telstra's of the world. But the CEO that we have in the studio today started a company while we were at uni. Yes, very. It really puts it in perspective. You know, what have we been doing with our last ten years and it's now ASX listed companies? Yeah. Pretty cool story. Excited to get into it. 

Bryce: [00:01:00] Absolutely. It's our pleasure to welcome Tim Fung to the studio. Tim, welcome. 

Tim Fung: [00:01:04] Thanks for having me. 

Bryce: [00:01:04] So Tim is the co-founder and CEO of Airtasker. Since its founding in 2012, Airtasker has grown to more than 4 million users in over $1,000,000,000 in work. Airtasker, as Ren said, is trading under the ticker ART and it listed on the ASX in 2021. I'm remember it very clearly and we're excited to unpack the story and your journey. Tim so, so welcome. We're really keen. Let's crack in Ren.

Alec: [00:01:32] Let's do it. So Tim, whenever we have a CEO in, we like to start by having them describe their company in their own words. So what is Airtasker?

Tim Fung: [00:01:40] So Airtasker is an online marketplace that connects people who need work done with people who want to work. Pretty simple business model. We're addressing the local services space and bringing e-commerce to local services. And I think, you know, when you kind of think about how people buy physical products, it's kind of crazy because like buying physical products is super slick and sweet and fast. But when you think about how people buy local services, it's generally like, Oh, now, should I just do this myself? Should I ask a friend? It's really like stuck in the Ice Age. So I think Airtasker is, is bringing that simple e-commerce. But, you know, at the heart of what Airtasker does is, is creating jobs for people. So creating working opportunities and creating that flexible labour market, which we think is going to be a big part of the future. 

Bryce: [00:02:28] Well, I've used Airtasker, but it's more for the traditional jobs to get the couch cleaned. I need to move my house. Can you come and pick up my mattress? Those sorts of things. But when researching this interview, there are a couple of nice jobs that appeared on the platform Spider catching, installing trampolines, LEGO Instructors. What are some of your favourite initial out of left field jobs that have popped up over the years? 

Tim Fung: [00:02:51] Oh look, we're getting like thousands of jobs a day now. So, you know, of course at Airtasker we've got like an internal slack like holy across. I don't want to say this thing that's going down at the moment. So we've got like tons and tons of different stuff. I actually really like some of the stories which sound like they'd be really Nishi but actually I you deep dive into them they're not that Nishi one of them that we found is like trampoline assembly. You know, I think if you're if you're a parent leading up to Christmas, you're probably aware of this. But literally you can see the Google trend and the Airtasker trend just like growing and growing. Growing has been to Christmas. And we've got this one guy who is the trampoline whisperer who basically does ten G's a week in trampoline assemblies leading up to Christmas. Wow. It's a it's a huge like I know it sounds like so noisy and I think this is one of the things that our tasker does like give the opportunity for some of these Nishi things to not become such an issue, kind of like how YouTube is done with videos or you know, you know, podcasting, you know, blow with the friction, give the chance for something to happen. And sometimes you find out that some of the stuff is like way bigger than you might have initially thought. 

Bryce: [00:04:01] You could front run that for that on the app and kind of say, hey, everyone is on the app. We know leading into Christmas trampoline insulation is big. If you're are if you're if that's you like get ready trampoline installation is coming and I might be like I could give that across.

Tim Fung: [00:04:16] I mean, like, I think that, like, it's kind of like any other market. It's really useful to like share data with the people in the marketplace because that helps them make decisions and match, you know, themselves with, with the best jobs available. So like, for example, during all the lockdowns, of course, like the demand for labour dropped, you know, people are at home and they can't do so much work when it started to really heat back up again, which it did in Q2 of this financial year, we had to get back out there and kind of tell we were like, holy crap, jobs are increasing, you know, 15% a week. We need people to come back into the market. So it's kind of similar to a stock market. You got to show and share the data with people so that they know how to participate. 

Alec: [00:04:58] Yeah, yeah. So as we've said, Airtasker is now listed and for memory you guys had a like a crazy first two days, you shot up massively. I guess first part of the question is how was that experience? But then the second part is, obviously we've. How do you know, six months to a year where the market hasn't loved tech and unprofitable tech and it has fallen as a result of that. So I guess how's it being being a public CEO going from those elation of those first couple of days and then the tech selloff that followed? 

Tim Fung: [00:05:32] Yeah, I think that the first couple of days, you know, the stock went up to, I think like a dollar 80 or something from $0.65. So it was like it was pretty crazy. But I think we all kind of thought that was a bit, you know, it was a bit crazy. And so it's always nice to feel loved, but we were actually looking at that more with probably concerned and with like elation because, you know, we want to make sure that we've got a sustainable, you know, a sustainable stock price that lets everybody like share in the value of Airtasker, but not to become like a meme stock or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it was, it's kind of, you know, it's a combination of of course it's yeah, it's always good to feel loved and to see, you know, a whole bunch of charts going up and to the right and all that. But probably a little bit more concern there. Do you get.

Alec: [00:06:11] Annoyed by the investment bankers? Are you like, we left a heap of money on the table? 

Tim Fung: [00:06:15] Not really, because it was like it depends on which kinds of people you're trying to get to invest in in the company. And, you know, I think it's probably fair to say that we had a fair bit of like retail investors. You know, the cup table became like mainly retail investors after that. And and that kind of means that the, you know, the share price can go up and down much more, kind of like with high volatility. And so, you know, we really want to have, of course, like a whole bunch of awesome independent investors, but we do want to build out that base of institutional investors who, you know, spend the time to analyse the business and really put a sustainable valuation on the company. 

Bryce: [00:06:49] So let's have a chat about growth and global expansion. And over the last couple of years, your revenues almost doubled, going from 14002019 to 27 mil in 2021. What have been the big drivers of this? We would kind of assume perhaps covered, but if you can enlighten us further. 

Tim Fung: [00:07:08] Sure. So I think one of the things about building marketplaces is that it takes a fair bit of time to build up what we call that liquidity and then to be able to, like harness the value of network effects as it grows. And so basically it's quite a curve that you see in terms of revenue growth and GMV growth. That's gross marketplace volume, which is effectively like the sales going through the marketplace. So it is very much like the first few years are really, really, you know, you're investing hard to build out that initial network effect, but once you have it, that's really the thing that creates a huge amount of customer value. As the network effects grow more people in the marketplace, you get access to more skills, you get access to more services. As a result, task is get access to more job opportunities and everything just happens faster. So I remember like when I first was using Airtasker, you know, ten years ago, I post a job and it would be amazing if someone like responded to your job in an hour or two and that was still like way better than, you know, what typically happens if you use, you know, the Yellow Pages or something like that. By now, if you use Airtasker, you know, in many cases you'll get an answer in like 90 seconds. Yeah. And so I think that's a huge part of what's driving the customer experience and that's a big part of what's driving the scale. 

Bryce: [00:08:24] Yeah. 

Alec: [00:08:24] Yeah. I mean, we've never tried to scale a marketplace business, so I'm only not speaking from experience here, but it does feel like the one of the hardest businesses to try and scale because you've got to get that balance right. And if it gets out of whack, it can go wrong very quickly. And you sort of started Airtasker in that period of like the golden age of marketplace businesses. Airbnb was what, 2008, Uber was 2009. I think Instacart was same year as you in 2012. And we see marketplaces try and start today and they struggle to cut through. So was it just right place, right time for you guys or was there anything that you did? I think. 

Tim Fung: [00:09:01] Um, I think we do think a lot about marketplaces at Airtasker. And one of the, the things that I spend most of my time doing is working on our marketplace principles and the, I guess, the architecture of the marketplace and the you know, there are a few things that make Airtasker unique compared to, I think, a lot of the companies that sort of, you know, you mentioned back in 2008 to 2012, there are a lot of folks that sort of started and only a fraction of them actually built a sustainable business. And we kind of went about it in a slightly different way. I think a lot of those marketplaces were sort of undecided as to whether they were like truly marketplaces, i.e. individuals connecting and and making, being empowered to like make decisions between each other or whether they were more like, you know, service companies that happened to have like an outsourced face of supply. And I think if you're not sort of like super clear about that, it gets really gets really hard. At Airtasker, we've built our philosophy and our principles over over the years and like we are really big on, we empower people to connect with each other, to trust each other and make decisions. And we provide the framework of transparency and accountability. But we don't make those decisions. You make those decisions with other people in your. Immunity. And I think it turns out that that model scales pretty well. Like it's a sustainable business model as well as like a good a good service. But yeah, I think that's when you get kind of confused about that like are you a marketplace or are you a business? Because every business is two sided in one way, right? Like, you know, if you Nike shoes, you're a marketplace. You know, in a sense, you've got to buy leather and rubber to make shoes. And you also sell, you know, something the customers you could argue, are you ever a marketplace for like connecting rubber sellers with with shoe areas, you know? But like there's sort of a line where at some point you're not a marketplace anymore and you're kind of like a, you know, traditional company. 

Alec: [00:10:52] Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Tim Fung: [00:10:53] Um, yeah. That's been a big part of it. 

Alec: [00:10:55] There's a whole employment law conversation about where that line is and, you know, like Uber and all of them have been having that conversation over in the States. But yeah, I think we can safely say that Airtasker is offshore. 

Tim Fung: [00:11:05] I mean, like when, you know, we don't even see a lot of the tasks that happen on our platform. But I think one of the things that we did kind of think about in a bit of a contrarian way, you know, you hear a lot of people kind of start with the negative. They're like, oh, if you let people do things, couldn't someone come over to your house and just like slap you in the face and walk away? It's kind of like, you know, I think that is possible, but that is always possible. You know, you could get into an Uber and the driver just slapped in the face and drives you somewhere else. That is in theory possible. But one of our like beliefs is that like people, you know, are much better than you intuitively assume. And so if you empower people, put them together, make sure it's transparent and make sure there's like a loop of accountability so that like, you know, you have to be held accountable for your actions. That stuff turns out pretty good, and you don't actually have to control people and tell them what to do. And that was one of the core tenets of, of, of what we built it at. Harsco. Yeah.

Bryce: [00:11:59] So. Tim Yeah, there's the freelancing marketplace is incredibly crowded as we kind of just started alluding to freelancer, Fiverr, artwork, TaskRabbit, you name it. How do you think about competing in this space and how would you define what your long term competitive advantages are?

Tim Fung: [00:12:15] Yes, you know, you mentioned some of these names like Fiverr and freelancer. And of course, you know, you've got TaskRabbit and maybe high pages and people like that in a you know, in different spaces as well. It also is actually like quite unique compared to all of those models. So if you look at like Fiverr and freelancer and stuff similar sort of like software platform but different customer proposition and different base of supply. So mainly like freelancer and Fiverr, except to their proposition is get it done cheaper by someone who's in a, you know, in a different locale that that has lower labour costs. And so by definition, like the the supply base tends to be overseas and the the proposition is mainly about buy price. So that's like quite different to Airtasker, which is playing in local services. And it's not about price, it's mainly about convenience and access to skills you can't do yourself. And then you've got things like TaskRabbit in the US and the UK and that's quite different again because they fit more like an agency model, like they vet and interview all of the all of the rabbits on the on their platform. And so I think that's good. And one way that you can kind of have some predictability over, you know, this person's been to university or they've got a certain degree or something like that. But of course it reduces the range of skills. So if you're like, Hey, I really need someone to translate a document from like Hebrew to Japanese, you're unlikely to find that person, you know, in a smaller base of people like, like with TaskRabbit. Whereas on Airtasker it's like it's an open community marketplace. So you will find that that person and then you've got things like hi pages and, and one flower which is we recently acquired which run a, a different model to that which is more facing businesses as opposed to individuals like on Airtasker. So I think there's definitely some different categories there in terms of competitive advantage. I think one of the biggest competitive advantages of Airtasker is the community that we've built. So as you build network effects, it becomes harder to replicate those network effects elsewhere, which obviously keeps people sticky to our to our platform. And that's that's part of what they love and what we love. And I think also specifically on Airtasker, we have this thing called the Reputation Passport, which is that as you do more jobs on Airtasker, yet more ratings, you get more reviews, you're uploading like verified, you know, our trade licences and stuff to our platform. That means that you're building your brand on Airtasker. That really creates a better customer experience, which is a bit of a competitive moat. 

Alec: [00:14:48] So you mentioned high pages there and we've spoken to the CEO, Robbie, just a few months ago now and it feels like very similar to what he's trying to do. What you're trying to do is you obviously competing with each other in some instances, but it's mainly competing with like that offline, you know, the fridge magnet with the local tradie or like writing down the trades number that's on the on their car as they're driving past like that feels to be like where the majority of the total addressable market. It still is. 

Tim Fung: [00:15:16] Yeah, I think it's really interesting as well in terms of competitors, which is like, you know, I know rugby in the High Pages, guys. Well, and I think they're doing a good job. It's almost like kind of going to a new found land and you know, we've got this tiny little farm on one side of the new found land and and high pages and others have, you know, this tiny farm on the other side of the new found land. And it's like we don't really have to concern ourselves with each other because there's honestly just so much opportunity in the space. You know, it's a $52 billion opportunity in Australia, it's a $500 billion opportunity in the US, UK and Australia combined. So I don't, I don't think, you know, looking our competitors is anywhere near as important as just, you know, build a good product, get customers to like what you're doing and basically, you know, try to bring more, you know, individuals into the Airtasker movement.

Alec: [00:16:09] Well, on that point, you mentioned the US and the UK, and you haven't just stayed in Australia, you've expanded overseas. Correct me if I'm wrong, but New Zealand, Singapore, UK, U.S.. Are they the. 

Tim Fung: [00:16:20] And Ireland. 

Alec: [00:16:20] And Ireland. Okay, nice, nice. You need to advertise. Yeah. Yeah. 

Tim Fung: [00:16:26] You know, it's quite interesting because, you know, it's kind of like connected in in the UK but you know they have the lovely idea of having a different currency. So like it is quite a perspective. It's actually quite a new endeavour.

Alec: [00:16:37] I'm sure the Irish wouldn't appreciate it. So let's not go there. So talk to us about the the journey of expanding overseas. I'm sure there's heaps of challenges scaling the TAM, but also trying to replicate building a two sided marketplace because you really have to start from scratch when you go to these new markets today. So taught us how that's fine. 

Tim Fung: [00:16:58] Yeah. So the first thing is really interesting is that for good or for bad, there's no one doing Airtasker in any of those countries that you mentioned. Like for us working like, oh, this is kind of like, you know, somewhat obvious business model. I guess it's like this should exist. So most people now are like, Yeah, why not? Why wouldn't you have a marketplace where you just connect with other with people in your community and get stuff get stuff done. But in all of those countries, it's pretty blue ocean. Yeah. 

Bryce: [00:17:25] Um, what about TaskRabbit? 

Tim Fung: [00:17:27] Yeah. So, as I mentioned, I think TaskRabbit is, like, really much more like this agency model. So if there's, like, a specific thing that you want, like if you're on an I need someone to help with, like moving a home or like up to, you know, fortnightly apartment clean for sure. I think, look, I'm painting with TaskRabbit on that, but if you need anything that doesn't fit into one of those like specific categories. Yeah. 

Alec: [00:17:49] Trampolines. Yeah, totally.

Tim Fung: [00:17:51] Yeah. I'd say I do have a theory on that which is like it's really hard to know what the size of stuff that doesn't exist inside the category like how big that is. Yeah. But it's easy to know that cleaning is cleaning. Yeah, it's hard to know. It's like, what is the summation of spider removal possum in light fitting clean leaves from got off boxes like what is the some of that it's just hard to get your head around it but I think a good observation other that are US founder Beau Fishback said to me was like, you know, when you think about like Craigslist, it's actually like a crazy good business. Like it is. It's sick because like, it's everything that doesn't fit neatly into Airbnb or Uber or Instacart. It goes to Craigslist. And we often knock it because we're like, Oh, but like their interface isn't as slick as Uber's, but if they tried to make it that slick, then you wouldn't have that like incredible liquidity that you get on Craigslist. And so and one of the things that we say in terms of Craigslist, like sick like. 

Alec: [00:18:50] But like. 

Tim Fung: [00:18:51] Craigslist. 

Alec: [00:18:52] Is, is there a bit of echoes of Gumtree in Australia with that as well, just that sort of gone for everything else? 

Tim Fung: [00:18:58] Totally. So I think that Gumtree and Craigslist is actually really, really interesting. Our business models at Airtasker, our belief is that you do need to add like a layer of transparency, accountability payments, insurance, like just that next layer up, but of course like the aspect of like liquidity and like enabling stuff to happen that wouldn't happen if you created too much friction is is pretty massive on on on Gumtree and Craigslist. Yeah. But we've probably diverged a little bit from like the question about like, you know, starting out new marketplaces. I think it's a blue ocean in the US and the UK in particular, which is where our main focus is. I think one of the biggest challenges is, yes, we are starting, you know, you've got to start a marketplace from what we call like 0 to 1. Like how do you do that? I think what's been good about Airtasker is we've we've now done it in Australia. And so, you know, when we were doing it in Australia, it's more like can it be done? Is this a thing that you know will work? Now we kind of know that, hey, if you get it to this kind of scale, this is how it starts to play out. So one of the biggest jumps was starting the second country. That was a huge jump for us, like cannot be done again. And so we went to the UK. We've invested in that market for a couple of years now and what's really awesome is it's now actually like. Becoming a really meaningful chunk of Airtasker as revenue and marketplace volume and sort of like crap like where we're kind of at second stage of like sweet. I was like, you know, this is something we've got to really invest into. And so that gives us even more confidence to go into like a whole new country like the U.S. and do that again. But it's definitely, you know, like a it's a pretty crazy journey to to go back to the start again. Yeah. 

Bryce: [00:20:36] Well, speaking of the US, it's, it's particularly interesting to us given that you have a sort of focus on key four key cities being Atlanta, Kansas City, Dallas and Miami. So why target these four cities? 

Tim Fung: [00:20:50] The genesis of actually launching into the US was we acquired a company called. It's got a crazy back story where, you know, the CEO of eBay was on their board. Ashton Kutcher and Kleiner Perkins put $50 million into the company and it just went absolutely ballistic about about ten years ago. And and both Fishback, the founder, is still running it ten years later, which is which is awesome. But actually, the reason why we're in those cities is because they were really focussed on Kansas City and Dallas, and that's because both from Kansas City. So right now the area. 

Bryce: [00:21:28] Strategy is very. 

Tim Fung: [00:21:29] Strategic, but in terms of are moving down into like Miami and Atlanta, I think what was, you know, of course, some of it is finger in the air. There's no way you're going to be able to like predictably know this is the exact right decision to be making. So you only want to spend a certain amount of analytical time on making these kinds of decisions. But for us, we saw as really high adoption of other services in those two cities, and also that they're not those top two tier cities. They're not New York and San Francisco and Los Angeles. And one of the advantages of our task as a model is that we don't have to go and set up a whole bunch of like fixed infrastructure like Instacart and Uber and, you know, some of these companies which need, you know, physical stuff on the ground. And so it made sense for us to go after second tier cities first. 

Bryce: [00:22:21] Yeah. Has that been your only acquisition? 

Tim Fung: [00:22:24] So actually we acquired a company called One Flower yesterday. 

Bryce: [00:22:26] Oh, nice. 

Tim Fung: [00:22:27] So, yeah, that happened yesterday. That's pretty wild. Oh, yeah. We did a trading halt yesterday. Acquired acquired one player, which is Australia's third largest marketplace for local services. You know, of course folks like Airtasker are high pages and one player was the number three. So we bought our one player into the Airtasker family. Billy Tucker, the CEO of One Place, joined Airtasker. And it's, you know, a significant increase in in volume in Australia. It adds about 30% in addition of the customers to to our platform. And you know, we timed it right in terms of getting the acquisition right because one player is an incredibly high quality company. They had a lot of investment from, you know, Fairfax and Domain and some other like just rock solid venture capitalists. But I think that they just didn't achieve the scale in the time that I talk and with equity markets tightening up. You know, we had the opportunity to bring them into Airtasker and and frankly I'm like just super stoked to be working with Billy and the CEO of one flat out to go to the next level. 

Alec: [00:23:35] So they're more like plumbers, electricians, more qualified tradies. 

Tim Fung: [00:23:39] Yeah. So I mean, the strategic rationale was was threefold. I think first was strengthen network effects. So have bigger marketplace. It means that customers get access to a wider range of skills means all of the service pros, the service providers on the platform, they get access to more customers and match stuff better. So more people means you you find the right person for you even faster. The second thing was to unlock the trades and Home Improvement and Professional Services category for Airtasker. So we slowly start to see that happen organically. Like people go to Airtasker now and there are tax consultants and lawyers and all this kind of stuff on Airtasker already. But we did see in one flare like this massive opportunity because they had built this suite of features which was built for businesses like they had built their their whole marketplace and platform around, you know, verified businesses. And so bringing all of those features across to Airtasker. And I think when we combine that marketplace, that's going to be a massive opportunity to address these higher value segments. And then the third rationale for it was like one platform. When you have a marketplace, one of the biggest cost aspects is you have to like the minimum barrier to entry is you have to spend a lot of money building a, a software platform, payment systems, you know, the post, a task flow offer management systems and of course that's duplicated across Airtasker Monthly. So we bring that out together and we can really focus those. Those people that are that are working on the two platforms on just one awesome platform. 

Alec: [00:25:19] Now, Tim, we're going to take a quick break and then we want to ask the question that we imagine probably keeps you up at night more than anything else, which is, are people getting on the platform, finding a customer or finding a service provider and then leaving the platform? We'll let you think about that for a minute while we take a quick break. So Tim, before the break, we I feel like we've covered a lot of ground in this interview from where you started, Airtasker listing some of your expansion overseas, the competitive set. But the one big question that we always have when we think about these marketplace businesses is you can find a service provider on the platform. And then how do you keep that relationship on platform rather than them just exchanging phone numbers and doing it off platform? So I imagine you've got teams of people thinking about this question and trying to improve that. So can you talk us through how you face into that challenge? 

Tim Fung: [00:26:11] One of the things about Airtasker up until probably about 12 weeks ago is that we were entirely focussed on that first transaction. We spent the first ten years really cultivating that and focussing on that, and that was what was important to us. And it turns out that we could build a really sustainable, you know, strong company just off the back of that. And so when people ask me like, oh, like, what's the leakage? You know, that's what a lot of people refer to. What's the leakage? On the second transaction, we're kind of like, I think it's 100%. It's actually like you can't actually, you know, it's a little bit like a, you know, Tinder or something, you know, like what's the repeat rate between like the two, you know, the same two people, you know, having a hook-up on Friday, that's like it's one that I get. I come back for a minute to organise the second date. That was our attitude for the first ten years, and I think that focus was actually important because there's a lot of value in connecting to people together. But of course we we see that there's a massive opportunity as well. It's a different kind of value opportunity for our customers for the second transaction. So in the first transaction you're mainly paying for like connexion. You're like, Hey, I want to meet this person and you need to get access to like a skill that you don't have or like somebody to do something at the right at the right time. And you're also paying for a little bit of like handling value, which is like payments, insurance, convenience administration. Of course, on the second transaction, it's a little bit more weighted towards the handling value. It's less about the connexion. Of course, you do need to be able to connect with them, but it's more about that handling value and so it's a different kind of value proposition. So we are working on a product to address that. It's called Airtasker Contacts and it's basically like, you know, how most people like, Hey, I got a tree guy or got like the pool cleaning lady or I got the, you know, the babysitter, you know, teenager up the road or whatever. So we are building that into Airtasker. And so now if you go on to the homescreen of Airtasker, you'll see all the people that you've worked with before. Oh yeah. And you can just have a message, you can send them a message and transact through the platform with a much lower fee. Right. So one of the things because you're offering different value to people, of course, you can't charge them, you know, for the connexion and the handling, you're got to charge them a lot less for the connexion. And, you know, probably the same thing for the handling of the task as you are getting payments, insurance, convenience, etc.. Actually, like one of the best moments in like my product development career was when we turned this on like basically on our task, we have a messaging system, but we would block the messaging a week after you had completed a task. So it would be like, Oh, okay, that connexion is done. Let's close off that chat thread and it would just be closed. So one of our engineers decided to write about 28 lines of code that just stopped that block from happening and literally, like press enter to like deploy that code. And immediately hundreds of people started talking through that channel. They were like, Oh, it looks like we've been blocking this. And this must have been like really annoying before. And now we've got like thousands of people a week who are who are talking through that messaging system. And so, you know, we're just going through that process now, like iterating on the fee model, the incentive model, communication to our audience to get them to understand that new kind of value prop. But, you know, we charge 1.9% to our task is on the on the second transaction, which is basically cheaper than, you know, Afterpay or a credit card. So yeah, I think that it's a really attractive proposition and we've just got to get the word out there. 

Bryce: [00:29:45] Yeah, yeah. I think that's great. I think you should try and get like a referral mechanism or something because like I think another one of the big things is just knowing who's good and how to trust. When you go on the platform like I need my sink fixed, I type it in and then you get all these quotes and you just like, How do I actually know if it's good or not? But if Wren has had his sink fixed and he's like, I have a guy, it might be in his contact list and how can everyone get rewarded for referring me? 

Tim Fung: [00:30:09] Okay, don't hold me to this like I don't know, specific to the robot, but it is my it is my desire to have it so that you can, like, give a nickname to the person in your contacts list so you can have, you know, your poor guy, you know, Bryce's poor guy, you know, Ren's tree guy. Yeah, we had to refer them because that is how people talk. 

Alec: [00:30:31] Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got a tree guy. 

Bryce: [00:30:33] And Wren trusts him, so I'm going to trust him, and we're going to get it done. 

Tim Fung: [00:30:38] So it's a it's definitely like a new it's a whole new area and a whole new value prop for us. But it's pretty exciting what we're seeing so far. 

Alec: [00:30:45] Yeah, yeah, that's cool. I mean. 

Bryce: [00:30:48] If you need any more advice, let us know

Tim Fung: [00:30:52] Like for like, right by playing live by the. 

Alec: [00:30:55] Most transparent company. I would say that that'd be fun. Well, hey, we have done it before, so we will extend the offer to you as well. If you want to do a retail investor earnings call, we crowdsource questions from the retail investor community and and I'd actually. 

Tim Fung: [00:31:11] Really that'd be that'd be awesome to get out. Do you get like some hairy questions? Yeah. 

Alec: [00:31:15] So we had Larry Larry Diamond from zip code and yeah, there was some tough questions. 

Tim Fung: [00:31:21] Was that reason.

Alec: [00:31:22] Like lost. 

Bryce: [00:31:23] Track of it? Yeah, I. 

Tim Fung: [00:31:24] Got to go also. 

Alec: [00:31:25] Anyway, we'll figure something out for them. So Tim, you founded the business less than ten years from listing on the ASX like that's an incredible story, a story that we're pretty envious of. We had plenty of business ideas, went in 2012, one year at uni and we just didn't do anything and look where we could be. But we want to talk about the Australian start up saying because you are an advisor to a number of start ups, comic store, mad pause, huddle, childcare, float space, that's all I could find when I was doing some digging. I'm sure there's more, starting with just the same. More generally, what are you learning or what are you saying about the next generation of Australian start ups coming through? 

Tim Fung: [00:32:08] You know, I did get some criticism on LinkedIn when I was kind of like I felt like for me the Australian start ups in really started to get some pace, probably like in about 2011. And yeah, I do want to acknowledge there was a lot going on before 2011 as well, I mean came in, but it definitely did seem like there was a bit of a step change in activity. Since then there weren't really any Australian VCs or there was like maybe one or two firms, there weren't co-working spaces and you're basically a bit weird if you were doing a start up because you know, you'd probably be paying yourself, you know, it's like not much money and you know, yeah, you know, living in your parents basement or something if you wanted to do that. But I think one of the really cool things now is that that has changed a lot, like the support infrastructure has time to change changes like tons of co-working spaces that run events to like bring people together. You know, there's a lot of advisors and like second time successful entrepreneurs who are like I guess helping people, you know, go through that, those early stage troubles. And then I think funding is really important, you know, like having the VCs and other, you know, super funds backing into the VCs and having a healthy angel investor community is like really, really important. I think there was too big a jump before to go from like, Hey, I'm working a great, safe corporate job to I'm going to earn 20 grand, move back in, my parents probably fail and then, you know, and so I think that's been been really bridged. And so there's that just way more smart people who are able to come into this space. And I think that risk bridge is probably a you know, it's a bit smaller now. And so, yeah, it's awesome to see that. I think one of the most, you know, the biggest differences is just seeing these like second time founders coming through, which is really exciting, like people who, you know, maybe back companies use that money to invest into Atlassian or Canva. And then those folks from Austin and Canberra are now coming out and investing into the next and starting their own stuff. Like I think that's that's probably the biggest I think that's the most important change and evolution that we're seeing is people have done it before, but the credibility and the experience passing that down the generations. 

Bryce: [00:34:19] So to me, you've been pretty public about one of your big PayPal mistakes, which was sending an old staff email to your ten employees enforcing a 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. working hours. What are some of the other watch outs or pieces of advice that you have for those budding entrepreneurs or Start-Up CEOs out there? 

Tim Fung: [00:34:39] Oh gosh. I reckon there's like so many mistakes that I've made along the way. I guess one of the most important things that I've been thinking about more recently is actually about like catching people doing the right thing and actually giving people positive feedback. I think one of the things is like when you're really passionate about an idea and you know you're pushing yourself hard and performing, you know, at a high level, it's easy to kind of like take other people for granted like that. You know, they join your company, they push themselves really hard as well. And you kind of like just like cool things, you know? And I think one of the things that I it's easy to do that because you always go like moving on to the next thing, moving on to the next thing. I think one of the most important lessons I've been learning recently is it is so powerful to just stop, think about what other people are doing, like acknowledge them and actually just going, you know, you don't have to like thank them, but just acknowledge good work. And so one of my biggest things right now is like catching people doing the right thing, which is like if you see something that's good, don't miss the opportunity. To like go over and talk to them and like reinforce it. It's actually way more powerful than catching people doing the wrong thing and, you know, nipping that in the bud. I mean, that's important, too. But certainly when you see like awesome behaviour, just the power of just going out to someone's house, that was awesome. It's great for for them. It's also really, really great for the culture and the business. 

Alec: [00:35:55] Mm hmm. Yeah, I can imagine that Bryce and I, before Equity Mates, both worked at large corporates. I don't want to speak to your experience, but I definitely know that at the large company you can often feel like Dean would say that. Yeah, like, doesn't matter. 

Tim Fung: [00:36:07] Yeah. Yeah. So I think, yeah, even when it's like a small thing, it was like, hey, the way you explained that was like super clear and precise also because people just don't know, you know, like, and it could be that the bosses and it's probable that the bosses in these big companies, they do they do think their work is awesome, you know, that they are watching other people, but they just don't have time to to stop and, you know, take note of it. 

Bryce: [00:36:31] No, I agree. I think certainly many instances in corporate world where the when it does happen, I just clearly remember the power of how it made the team feel. And I think it's something that we're conscious of here as we grow a team as well as celebrating those small things and yeah, making sure that the team feels like. 

Tim Fung: [00:36:50] That contribute totally. But yeah, the mistake about the email to all staff on the working hours, that's probably true. Slightly embarrassing. 

Bryce: [00:36:59] But why regret? Was there a big pushback or like. 

Tim Fung: [00:37:02] There's definitely pushback, but it's also just naive. Like when you think about like if you get told to do something and you're like a, you know, you're a software engineer or you're a data scientist, you can work at like 100 different places just like, you know, I'm kind of smart enough to know when I when I need to work and I'll let you know, you know, when. That's right. I think that if you do give people feedback, it's absolutely fine when you are trying to like pull people into line or like change behaviour, that's fine. But you got to show context. It's got to be like, Hey, I observed this and you agree on that? Yeah, you do. Cool. Then here's some feedback. But you know, it's just come out of nowhere and be like 99, 96, but it to be like, but I don't understand why like why is this important? It's like, why not 63, 63. Okay. You know, so I was just a bit bit naive and I think we just missed the point really. 

Alec: [00:37:54] Well, it obviously didn't hurt you in the long term because, you know, you've managed to grow the team beyond ten and scale a pretty amazing business and we're really excited to say what's next. We do like to turn, I guess, to the future to finish the interview. And so if you think short term, next 12 months or so, what does that what does it hold for to ask what's in the product pipeline? Obviously, there'll be things you can't tell us, but what can you tell us? 

Tim Fung: [00:38:21] We have really two buckets of strategic priorities at the moment. So starting with our home market, Australia are really going to be focussed on opening up new categories and segments. That's one flare integration of seven new team members into Airtasker and really addressing this let trades home improvement professional services space and then our contacts which you which we spoke about before which is like really unlocking the second transaction. So that's what we're focussed on in Australia where we've got network effects, we've got scale and we're really looking at those big S-curve opportunities to add on top of that. The second area for us, a second strategic focus for us is creating new marketplaces. And really what we're trying to do there is do exactly what we did in Australia and get them up to that level of scale. But to repeat that in the US and the UK, US like super, super early stage and so that's actually a lot of fun. The kinds of marketing tactics we do are there, but the UK is actually becoming like meaningful part of Airtasker. So, you know, that's that one's really growing up and you know, we've got to focus and be a bit more disciplined in that market. But you know, in the United States, we're still doing some pretty crazy stuff. We just bought the biggest billboard in Missouri and we put the poem Ogi on it, which is which is pretty cool too, to get some attention. But, you. 

Alec: [00:39:48] Know. 

Tim Fung: [00:39:49] Well, we want wanted to you know, it's got 700,000 people driving past it every day on the Kansas City Freeway. 

Alec: [00:39:56] Oh, you don't need to convince me on the billboard. Oh, yeah. 

Bryce: [00:39:59] Oh, yeah. 

Tim Fung: [00:40:00] Sorry. We wanted to, like, talk about like, you know, it's actually quite strategic in some sense because what we figured out in the U.S. is it's really highly competitive. If you're trying to tell people like, Hey, you use Airtasker for a plumber or for, you know, an electrician, because like there's lots of places you can find a plumber or an electrician. But Airtasker is the only place that can clean up your dog's poo in the yard. It's the only place you can get someone to clean your effing garage. So we've got the f an emoji on there as well. And it's the only place where you can find someone to like organise your own happy birthday party. So, you know, it was really about our competitive advantage is the long tail of services and what better way. To express that. I want to promote. 

Alec: [00:40:40] I like to. 

Bryce: [00:40:41] Write. That's great. Thinking about Airtasker right now. What's the biggest risk, do you think? 

Tim Fung: [00:40:47] I don't really think about. I don't really think about the world so much in terms of risk. But I guess like one of the downsides of all of the things that keep me up at night. I'd say it's definitely at the scale right now. It's like team stuff, you know, there's definitely a war for talent. We talked a little bit before about how the public markets, which we're in, have probably already kind of taken the valuation hit, but the private markets seem to be going swimmingly. And so you've got this dichotomy of like where hiring is, you know, going crazy in the private market, in the public markets. I think most tech and growth stocks are either like, oh, you know, we're going to be managing our cash burn and stuff. So I think it'd be like hiring, making sure we've got the best people in the team. We're creating a value prop for employees that is just like, you know, makes them want to come to work every day and serve the Airtasker mission. Yeah, there's just like so many things that could go wrong in that space. And that's why I spend a lot of my time. 

Alec: [00:41:40] I mean, I can't imagine how hard it is for you guys, especially with software engineers. We're trying to hire people in the media space, and we have trouble. 

Tim Fung: [00:41:47] Oh, yeah. And it's across everything, right? Yeah. 

Bryce: [00:41:50] It's hard to be looking for a job. 

Tim Fung: [00:41:52] I know we've got it on the, you know, two levels as well. Like on the Airtasker marketplace. Of course, you've got to look for supply and demand balances in labour, but also within the company is as well. So I think that will probably well, I would imagine that we'll see some turnaround in the markets at some point. But yeah, until then, it's definitely something to keep an eye on. 

Alec: [00:42:13] And then, Tim, final question again. We want to say thank you for joining us today. Our long term investors here at Equity Mates, we like to think about, you know, businesses changing over years and decades even. So, if you think about Airtasker in ten years, what does success look like? 

Tim Fung: [00:42:30] Oh, I think, you know, our mission and our task is to empower people to realise the full value of their skills. You know, in pursuit of that mission, what we're trying to do is create a way for people to have income opportunities no matter what skill that they have. And so if you kind of have a look at what's happened in like physical ecommerce for physical products, there's been, you know, there's kind of an evolution of eBay and Amazon. And now you've got Shopify, which is sort of doing like the distributed model. And at Airtasker we want to do all of that because I think all of that is in service of of people being able to make an income from their skills. 

Bryce: [00:43:04] Hmm. Awesome. Well, Tim, thank you so much for coming in, sharing your journey, the journey of Airtasker. It's been inspiring, motivating, and I've thoroughly enjoyed it and I'm probably speaking on behalf of friends as well. So I'm sure the community will have taken a lot of value from that and that's an open offer if you want to sit in the hot seat and get them to ask you some questions and that reporting time as well. So thank you so much for your time. We appreciate. 

Tim Fung: [00:43:26] Awesome. Thanks for having me.