Leah Busque: Employment Impacts

So that is a very real thing. So the question is, are we really helping the unemployment percentages? And the truth is, yes, we are. So we have right now 30,000 TaskRabbits across the country that are active. I mean, how many companies, let alone startups, can say they found work for 30,000 people in the last five years? That's huge. Out of group, 10% of them are doing this full time. They're making all of their income from TaskRabbit. They're cashing out something like $5,000 a month. They're doing two to three jobs a day. 75% of the community relies on TaskRabbit in some way to make their monthly income. So it is a very real problem that we're solving. One of the little tidbits, I'll say, too, is early on in Boston, I thought, boston's a great college town. We're going to get all these college students that want to become taskrabbits, that want to make money. But that actually was my first big learning, because that was never the case. We had such a wide variety of people that wanted to become taskrabbits, that wanted to become involved in the community. I think, honestly, part of it was timing. I launched in September of 2008. I was getting teachers that had just been laid off, lawyers that had just been laid off, pharmacists. All these folks were looking for work to take them in between jobs, in between careers. But even as the job market has improved, our interest in becoming a taskrabbit in the supply side has only improved as well. So I also think there's this notion of empowering people to build out their own businesses on the platform, to be their own bosses, this idea of Micro Entrepreneurship. These TaskRabbits get to set their own prices, say who they want to work for, say what jobs they're good at. They really have control of their own destiny. And I think that flexibility is something that they really appreciate about the service as well. So I'm excited to continue to see what we can do to help unemployment in this country and many others around the globe as well.