Thumbtack are a market leader in connecting small business with customers in search of their services. They operate in all 50 U.S states, and offer access to over 1,000 service categories. Founded in 2008, they have developed iOS applications for their platform since 2014.

They provide two iOS applications: one for the small business owners, and the other for customers in search of services. Originally written in Objective-C, their applications are now over 85% converted to Swift. Both applications, along with 5 shared frameworks reside within a single Git repository. They use a single Xcode workspace to manage both applications, and CocoaPods for external dependency management.

Prior to Periphery, Thumbtack had been using the open-source fus tool to find some obvious cases of unused code. However, they found its analysis to be too limited, and false-positives an annoyance.
Thanks to their use of a single Xcode workspace, Periphery was able to analyze both applications and all shared frameworks as a single unit of code. In total they removed 4,156 lines of code, which equated to just under 3% of their total codebase.

In the near future Thumbtack plans to integrate Periphery into their Continuous Integration workflow

Business Model of Thumbtack

Thumbtack has a multi-sided business model, with two interdependent customer segments that are both needed in order to operate:
Consumers: Individuals seeking services from qualified local professionals
Service Providers: Individual professionals and small businesses seeking customers
Thumbtack is one of the pioneers who made a fantastic administration for an online marketplace stage that helped individuals to procure nearby experts in a nimble way. Thumbtack was the following huge advancement in the development of administration based business that was bound to the announcement sheets, telephone directories and online registries.

Advantages

• You definitely need not execute the usefulness yourself!
• Has most likely been tried by others and offers hearty features.
• Periodically libraries are upheld and kept up by group with updates and bug fixes.

The primary income age for thumbtack is accomplished by charging the experts when they purchase the credits. Thumbtack calls it a compensation for each quoted framework (10% at the most). These credits fluctuate starting with one expert then onto the next and furthermore shifts starting with one occupation then onto the next. They come in various bundle bargains. The experts utilize these credits to cite for the activity asked for by the buyers. Such is the framework of a thumbtack business model.

Basically, in Thumbtack the client on the other side needs to fill up details about the project he wants professionals on Thumbtack to complete for him. According to the details this task will call numerous experts to take care of your given assignment. Thumbtack cuts off a certain percentage of money from the one posting the job and then as the two (i.e. client and expert) connect the workflow is similar like that of any other business model.
Thumbtack is all about making it easier to get things done. Whether you’re looking for a piano teacher, a painter or a DJ for your wedding, the easiest way for you to find and hire the best local professionals for any job you need done. But to understand where the new Thumbtack is headed, it’s helpful to understand how the old Thumbtack worked.

Thumbtack used to work like a forum or Craigslist. Customers would come with a job they needed done and ask a series of questions to help them create a job request (similar to a new post in a forum). Those job requests would then get sent to our pros. Pros would filter through hundreds of requests a day in between their day-to-day work or in the evenings. They’d pick the jobs that seemed best for them, send a quote and would only get charged when a customer viewed their quote.

Benefits at Thumbtack

• Health insurance
• Dental insurance
• Vision insurance
• Equity incentive plan
• 401k Plan
• Work from home
• Vacation & Paid time off
• Paid holidays
• Paid sick days
• Volunteer Time Off
• Bereavement leave
• Employee discount
• Company social events
• Free lunch or snacks

Thumbtack started with the premise that customers should see quotes instantly. To illustrate why, imagine if the way you purchased airline tickets was to give Kayak your details then wait five minutes or five hours for the airlines to get back to you with options. That is, in fact, how it used to work and many fewer airline tickets were purchased. And that’s basically how the old Thumbtack worked. But Thumbtack know customers expect better. Customers want the experience of hiring local professionals to be just as easy as anything else they buy online.

To deliver on that expectation and show customers high quality quotes instantly, it had to first build a new product for our pros. With the new Thumbtack, our pros can tell us exactly what sorts of jobs they do, which jobs they don’t do, what sorts of customers they prefer, how far they want to travel and so on. Pros can build a storefront that includes their full catalog of services as well as a starting price for each of the different services they provide. A house cleaner can set one price for a four bedroom house, a different price for a two bedroom apartment and decide whether laundry is included or an additional cost. Thumbtack wanted to give this level of control to our pros across the hundreds of categories where Thumbtack do business — everything from interior painting to wedding photography to bouncy house rental. Once pros set up their preferences, we ask them how many customers they want per week and show them how much that would cost. Pros set their budget accordingly and then Thumbtack starts working on their behalf — matching pros with the sorts of customers they want most.

Thumbtack’s Values

Thumbtack has revolutionized the hiring model to give more power to Pros.Their website is full of Pro success videos and their marketplace model is built on the foundational idea that everyone has value to give. The process looks like this:

This makes sense because Thumbtack’s financial model is driven by Pros buying “credits” to send out quotes instead of taking a service fee, so Pros are their main revenue stream. It’s brilliant.

Thumbtrack offers three primary value propositions: accessibility, convenience, and brand/status.

The company creates accessibility for consumers by connecting them with local service providers who may not be listed in larger directories such as Yelp. Services are provided in over 1,100 project categories, from home services to wellness, and are available in all 50 states. Thumbtack creates access for the providers by identifying consumers who are seeking their specific types of services. Many of these providers are small-scale operations who may not have an online presence.

The company offers convenience by making its service easy to use. Consumers begin the process by answering a few quick questions about the type of professional they are looking for. Within a few hours, they receive a free listing of up to five options that fit their needs. Information provided includes the provider’s time availability and custom price quotes based on specific needs. They can then compare the quotes, as well as provider profiles and reviews, to choose the best one for them.

The company has established a strong brand as a result of its success. It bills itself as the world’s largest online and mobile marketplace for hiring local professionals. It hosts over 500,000 professionals, who earn over $1 billion a year. It oversees more than 160,000 customer request per week and over 7.1 million customer projects annually, submitted by 5.2 million customers.

The Goal

• Grow Total Number of Service Professionals in Thumbtack’s Marketplace
• Increase the Number of Professionals in New Cities Across the Country
• Build Up Supply of Professionals in Niche Services

How does Thumbtack make Money?

Thumbtack makes professionals buy credits, which they then spend on sending quotes to customers

Despite plenty of competition in the local services space, including TaskRabbit, Angie’s List, Yelp, eBay, Amazon and GoDaddy, it’s also a space that has been relying on the same search and browsing features for a long time.

Thumbtack, though, is attempting to upend the traditional way that people and professionals connect. Rather than having the customer search and browse through listings, they instead tell Thumbtack what they need. The company then takes that information to the professionals, who decide if the job is right for them.

The way the company makes money is by having professionals pay to contact customers through Thumbtack credits, which are used by professionals to send quotes to customers. They only pay to quote, and Thumbtack does not charge commission on jobs they complete or future jobs that they book with the same customer and their referrals.

SMS Alerts with Twilio

Until Thumbtack began using Twilio in Spring 2011, the company communicated with its customer base entirely through email. Bids and other feedback would come, but they would be much slower than Thumbtack wanted.

The company did some market research and realized that the average trade service provider listed on its site is dependent on text messages. These trade pros don’t have smartphones. They rely on feature phones as their primary means of communication, so email is simply not the best way to connect them to their customers.

How Thumbtack uses SMS alerts to generate its own leads

Thumbtack has more than 200,000 service providers spread across nearly every city across the country, but it has a database of millions more that aren’t yet Thumbtack members. When a bid comes in, Thumbtack not only alerts existing members, but sends messages to the appropriate businesses on that larger list, too. Non-members are then offered the opportunity to become members and place bids via the Thumbtack website.

Thumbtack says that using SMS alerts for new leads have brought a significant number of new service providers to its platform.

Thumbtack has quietly grown its multi-sided platform into one of the most valuable marketplace startups in the world. With that said, the company is almost a decade old and has yet to become profitable while continuing to encounter challenges that threaten to derail the business. It will be fascinating to see if Thumbtack, armed with enough cash to sustain itself for years to come, can effectively address the critical challenges that have baffled other marketplace platforms around them.

Channels

Thumbtack’s main channels are its website and mobile app. The company promotes its offering through its social media pages and participation in conferences.

Customer Relationships

Thumbtack’s customer relationship is primarily of a self-service nature. Customers utilize the service through its website and app while having limited interaction with employees.

The site provides a number of self-help resources, including cost estimates for specific services based on zip code, tips for hiring the right professional, house moving guides, and answers to frequently asked questions.
which Monrovia will direct its 8 million annual website users to Thumbtack for landscaping and related services.

Key Resources

Thumbtack’s main resources are its engineering employees, who maintain and update its platform for customers.
As a relatively new startup it has relied heavily on funding from outside parties, raising $273.2 million from 21 investors as of September 2015.

Cost Structure

Thumbtack has a cost-driven structure, aiming to minimize expenses through significant automation and low-price value propositions. Its biggest cost driver is likely marketing expenses, a fixed cost.
Other major drivers are in the areas of administration, product development and customer support/operations.