TaskRabbit Would Like to Be Your New Temp Agency

TaskRabbit today is announcing a new tool for businesses that want to hire its workers for extended stints, which it says should serve as a more modern temp agency with lower fees.

TaskRabbit CRO Anne Raimondi said that 30 percent of TaskRabbit revenue already comes from small businesses, and many of them are trying to use the platform to do much more than posting simple one-off tasks like building Ikea furniture. For instance, companies have used TaskRabbit to find a temporary office manager while theirs is unavailable for a few weeks.

So, for organizations who want a “Rabbit” to do more than 15 hours of work per week, TaskRabbit will now handle W-2 forms for a fee of 26 percent (compared to its normal 20 percent, and compared to perhaps double that for a temp agency). And the process of finding an applicant will be significantly more transparent than it might be with an offline middleman.

TaskRabbit now has 11,000 prescreened workers in nine U.S. cities on its platform. It plans to open in London later this year. Some 10 percent of those workers earn all their income on TaskRabbit.