Tim Fung on the Super Store and the marketplace frame

Airtasker CEO Tim Fung on the Super Store launch, why the marketplace frame was always slightly wrong for what the company actually does, and what small Australian businesses actually need from a platform.

Tim Fung co-founded Airtasker in 2012. He spoke to the bureau in July 2020, around the launch of Airtasker Super Store, the verticalised offering aimed at small-business operators rather than household tasks.

"The word marketplace did a lot of work for us in the early years."

The word marketplace did a lot of work for us in the early years. It also did some harm. Marketplace implies two anonymous sides meeting briefly. What Airtasker actually does is closer to a relationship platform. People come back to the same tasker. The tasker comes back to the same client. The marketplace frame undersold what was happening.

Super Store was the response to that. If a small business is going to use the platform every week, the workflow has to be a small-business workflow, not a one-off task posting. The product followed the user behaviour, eventually.

Founders · Tim Fung · 13 July 2020 · Archived by Bridge Street Bureau