L.A.B. Unleashed

A year in the making, RunMyErrand finally switches over to TaskRabbit.  I’ve blogged a few times about wanting to change the name for many reasons.  Mostly because the word "errand" in RunMyErrand was much too narrowing.  I am thrilled with this fun, spunky, and hopefully memorable name – TaskRabbit.com. 

When I founded RunMyErrand almost two years ago, I knew the name would only take us so far.  The original vision of empowering a community to live smarter and more efficiently, remains true, and this evolution into TaskRabbit will support my core vision now and beyond.

There is one problem though.  Kobe really hates the bunny ears.

Today we launch a brand spanking new website with all kinds of hot new features.  These pieces of functionality are largely requests we’ve gotten from our members over the past 12 months.  Some of the ones I am most excited about are:

• Put a Task up out for bid.  Choose your Runner based on their profiles, ratings, and reviews.
• Schedules a task to occur every 1, 2, 4, or 6 weeks.  It will autopost for you – set it and forget it.
• Pay only when your Task is complete.  No need to pre-purchase credit packages.

In contrast with RunMyErrand.com where I did almost 100% of the development work, another major difference with TaskRabbit.com is that I did almost none of programming.  This is the strangest thing for me.  I used to know were every last piece of code and functionality lived and breathed.  Any little tweak or bug fix I needed to make, I could pin point in my head exactly where I needed to be.  With the new TaskRabbit.com, the inner workings of the site are foreign to me.  I’ve shifted my focus to running the company and building the business, and the surprising part is, I actually like the business side of things a smidgen more than the programming side. 

I’m grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to explore these new skill sets.  That was the whole purpose of breaking out of my previous engineering job at IBM.  I knew I had other skill sets I wanted to explore and use on a daily basis.  In that, I have succeeded, and 2 years later am so excited to see this company evolve into TaskRabbit.com.

Exactly 2 years ago today, the idea for RunMyErrand was born. You may have heard the story before, but it all started with a dog. A big yellow one. His name is Kobe, and 2 years later he is our CIO – "Chief Inspiration Officer".

It was a cold February evening in 2008, when we were out of dog food for Kobe, and came up with the plan for RunMyErrand. We were meeting my dear college friends at Masa in the South End – Brie, my roommate from Sweet Briar who I hadn’t seen in years, and Jen another SBC alum. I remember barely being able to contain my excitement over dinner and margaritas that night as I shared our idea with friends. They were the first to hear about RunMyErrand, and it was wonderful to have their support from the start.

I was still at IBM at the time, and I would have never guessed that two years later, this is where we would all be. A company launched, funded, with an amazing team (including advisors), behind us. My house in Charlestown sold – the one we were going to "settle down in" – with plans for a launch in the San Francisco market imminent. Not to mention a special dog food delivery partnership that solves the original problem that inspired RME! Craziness!

Reflecting back, I’m not sure I realized at the time, how fast two year would go, and how much work it would be to get to this point. I myself have learned a ton in this time, expanding my skill set beyond engineering, and finding a passion for entrepreneurship that I realize was always a part of me. I have never felt more alive.

I am so grateful to advisers, mentors, and new team members that have supported this company, and a very timely update to our team page was just pushed live yesterday featuring then entire RunMyErrand Crew, including our CIO – Kobe. A celebratory margarita will be made in the Busque house tonight – here’s to the next 2 years …

Tim Ferriss came to fbFund last Monday and gave a fabulous talk on creating a global phenomenon.  The author of the Four Hour Work Week (4HWW), a New York Times best seller, had some great insights about how to break into a market and secure earlyvangelists.  I was excited about this session, because I had read 4HWW on the plane the night before.  I read it in 3 hours instead of 6 using Tim’s speed reading techniques outlined in the book!   Actually I tried to read it faster, but didn’t quite double my speed.  I think it takes some practice. 

I can summarize the take aways from Tim’s talk in one word – optimization.  He shared great tips on the optimal time to post blog entries (7am / 6pm Tues, Thurs, & Sat), how to optimize the landing pages of a website for conversion metrics, how to launch a new product and being hyper focused about the initial target.  "What is the smallest meaningful number that will start a cascade effect?"

Also I enjoyed the excellent insights into naming companies.  You may remember that we thought long and hard about changing the name RunMyErrand.  To be honest, the name changing battle still haunts me on a daily basis, and I think that eventually we’ll have to make the switch.  I loved hearing about Tim’s very analytical approach to deciding on a name change, check out the description about 6 minutes into this video, and as we continue to obsess of this, we’ll absolutely follow his approach in making the final decision.

So I told my buddy back in Boston about the awesome talk, and you know what his response was?!  "OMG … I read the 4HWW back in college and was a total mess for the next 6 months … trying to start new companies left and right."  Made me laugh!

I have been here two weeks, and it feels pretty pathetic that this is the my first blog entry from the West Coast.  I apologize!  Even 14 days feels like a whirlwind trip … seriously.  Spending the first 1.5 weeks in Palo Alto and the end of the trip in San Francisco has been a nice way to break things up, yet the fast pace of my schedule has left me with wishing I could spend more time in both places.

The REV program at fbFund is in full effect.  The other companies are cranking away, boasting things like getting 3,000 users over one weekend, and closing substantial investment deals.  All very exciting, and the energy there is contagious.  I fit in well (I think anyway), because I tend to feed off this type of energy.  Get me plugged in and I am ready to roll. 

The sessions at fbFund were very high quality and extremely valuable.  Topics like metric driven SEO and how to improve user experience in your product by @hnshah, had a lot of substance and specific action items we could take away and apply to our own products.  In some sessions, we even got to submit our companies to be used as examples for analysis and recommendations.  There is nothing better than good free advice – even if they are ripping apart your product in a room full of fiesty entrepreneurs.  Fun stuff, and I might be exaggerating just a tad!

There was a great session on how to put together a founding team.  What to look for and how to recognize "red flags" early in the process.  One recommendation I thought was interesting was to ask early team members what their most challenging experience in life has been so far.  The thinking is, if someone has had everything handed to them, and hasn’t had to work for anything, they might not be ready to be part of a scrappy founding team.  Interesting.

Also great talk by Josh Kopelmen, on how an express train compares to the VC world.  Some companies may want to purchase that local ticket, with a lot of planned stops along the way, while others may decide that the VC route and express ticket is the right path for them.  I liked the analogy.

Networking opportunities flourished, and as I head back tonight, I’ve already got more meetings set up for the next time I am out here.  The fbFund REV program runs through the month of August, so I rented a cheap studio apartment 2 blocks from the office in Palo Alto.  This will allow me to bounce back and forth as much as possible and save some money in the process.  I am a bootstrapping entrepreneur after all!

Scott Kirsner’s article in the Boston Sunday Globe has prompted me to get back to the blog today.  He did a fantastic write up on the RunMyErrand story, covering all the ins and outs, including the genesis of the idea, and my decision to leave IBM to pursue it.  I can’t believe it has been just over a year since I left.  I still remember what a gut wrenching decision it was to leave, but in the end I knew this was the right path for me to pursue. 

I asked whether Busque had ever second-guessed her decision to leave IBM, especially as the economy continued to get worse through the end of 2008. “I did think around September, ‘Oh God, was this the right time?’ ’’ she acknowledged. “But one of the most fun parts of this past year has been networking and talking to people and getting their perspectives and input.’’

It’s a lot different, she says, from her old, somewhat solitary job of writing and debugging software code: “This is my idea, and I want to do this.’’

We are not joking.  Big promotion this week … your first errand on us.  Its better than FREE.  FREE would be if we were breaking even on your errand posting, but what we are actually offering you is to completely PAY for your first errand …. just keep it under $10 total!  You might be surprised what you can get done for $10 …. a lot of things!  Take a browse here.  And … if you don’t want to post your own errand, feel free to get in on one of our "Runs"!

To get your free errand, all you have to do is create an account and get sending.  That’s it.  No special codes.  No special hoops to jump through.  We’ve kept it as simple as possible.  All we ask is that you give it a try and we welcome feedback!  We ended up implementing the Kampyle feedback form, so it’s easy to drop us a note, from any page, using that tool.

Happy Sending!

This is a major feature that has been in the works for some time.  The "Runs" feature has been part of the original RUNmyERRAND vision from the beginning and we are thrilled to finally launch it this week!  Just as Senders can post errands, Runners can now post "Runs" … its kind of a mirror image of the current site.  Runs are generated by Runners and are planned trips.  We anticipate popular runs including trips to Target, IKEA, Costco, Goodwill, etc, but a Runner is free to post a Run to wherever they would like.  It is all part of our "errand sharing" model, which maximizes Runner’s profits, minimizes Sender’s expenses, and certainly has its green benefits!

We are starting the Runs feature this week with a trial group of Runners.  We don’t want to overload the system with an influx of Runs, so there will be handful of planned Runs generated by the same individuals for now.  Its nice to have a group of Runners that are really experienced on the site, and who I can immediately turn to when launching a feature like this.  They were eager to jump on board and give it a test drive.

Right now we’ve got a Target Run, Home Depot Run, and Wholefood Run open.  Senders can make requests, include a list of items, their location for delivery, and a Runner fee.  Just the same as a regular errand, a Runner can also counteroffer this fee, and Senders can pay with cash on delivery or reimburse their Runner with credit online.  We (the Ruby Ninja) leveraged a lot of the errand model code to implement this request concept, which makes it familiar to the end user with the same robust feature set. 

Just looking at these runs, I can already think of a few things I need from these places … and that’s the beauty of it.  We all need reminders, and if we know someone is making the trip anyway, why not get in on it!