TaskRabbit’s Easter Eggs About “The Human Cloud”
HOFFMAN: What happened to Stacy is a classic mistake. One that many of you listening have probably also made. And if you haven’t — listen closely. It could save you some serious pain. Stacy had implemented an objectively positive program at TaskRabbit — one that she knew would change the Taskers lives for the better, and make her customers more happy too. But she forgot to tell them about it. And by letting them learn about the news in the press, she undermined their sense of investment. TaskRabbit isn’t just a company, it’s a community, where people feel a sense of ownership. And when people feel ownership, they expect to have input… or at least learn about the news before they read it online. And this isn’t just true of online communities. With all products and services, there’s a spectrum between “I’m a consumer” and “I’m an owner.” — Reid Hoffman in the Masters of Scale Podcast Episode “Keep Humans In The Equation”.
“Never Underestimate Your First Idea”
In an earlier Masters of Scale episode, host Reid Hoffman discussed the idea that you shouldn’t underestimate your first idea. In listening to this episode, I heard similar logic in the way that Task Rabbit used it’s previous mistake to actually help the company grow.
The logic I detected is how your original idea compounds itself. Ev Williams has carved out his career by building from his instruction video on the internet to the Medium network.
TaskRabbit capitalized on their “mistakes” in a similar fashion. When I say mistake I mean lessons learned after the fact, that would have helped the company to know before adjusting their strategy.
Unless Stacy and the rest of the company knew ahead of time that keeping the information about the transition to specific task categories a secret from its main online community was a mistake, they couldn’t have foreseen the effect that the change would cause in the U.S.
Task Rabbit‘s business provides the company with Easter eggs to it’s own success. The idea that the company was built upon allows itself to grow. They build on their own mistakes by staying on the cutting edge and being innovative.
Their mistakes are springboards to the next level in the same way Nancy Lublin spun problems into solutions in Dress for Success (another episode I strongly recommend).
And those mistakes are kind of like this guy hitting his head on the brick above to get coins and “power ups”.
You can’t power up unless you hit your head.
In listening to this first episode from Season 3 of Masters of Scale, in particular, hearing this discussion about the transformation of Task Rabbit to introduce new types of tasks. . .
“The types of tasks people could offer were narrowed to four categories: handyman work, home cleaning, moving help, and personal assistant. Taskers could set when, and where, and how they wanted to work. They could specify their hourly rates.”
I asked myself a question:
Would the community have begun teaching each other how to improve their earning potential if they had not first been uprooted by the company’s decision to change to the above categories of tasks?
or put differently. . .
Was the community teaching each other a result of the anger from the transition, or would they have naturally started teaching each other?
It’s a question where the answer lies rooted in TaskRabbit’s ability to be “built for scale.” I believe the premise of being built for scale is that the structure of the company in the beginning dictates that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
I also think the answer lies in the fact that “imperfect is perfect.” I’m still mulling over the answer to these questions but it is an important point to think about.
Update: July 22
This article from Ev Williams paints an even clearer picture. Task Rabbit is capturing value that they created “moving up the value stack”
This article also describes it more in depth
