London Brief Interview #8: Tim Fung
Tim Fung, Founder and CEO of Airtasker, an Australian services marketplace allowing people to outsource chores and errands to people in the local neighbourhood community. Airtasker recently announced the close of its Series C round of $35 million led by Skyfield Capital. This funding will facilitate the UK launch in early 2018.
What are you working on at the moment?
Our mission at Airtasker is to empower people to realise the value of their skills. We’re a community marketplace that allows people and small businesses to connect with members of their local community to get tasks completed, whether it’s everyday tasks like cleaning and handyman work to small business jobs like graphic design and photography, or higher scale jobs for bigger businesses, e.g. IKEA furniture assembly.
Although I broadly need to be across most aspects of the business, as we’ve grown, the company has been able to hire a really strong team to head up our core work streams: product, engineering, operations, and growth. This has allowed me to focus on some of our longer-term initiatives like the way we work, brand and culture.
What/who inspires you?
From an achievement perspective, I’m inspired by Michael Schumacher because he really took his work to another level — ensuring he was, of course, doing a good job as an athlete, but also that he was surrounded by the best engineers, designers, sporting personnel, and management. He seemed to really understand the value of a team and what it took to be successful. He, of course, had his flaws — but I would say that most people who are really great at something are also really flawed when it comes to something else.
On a daily basis, I’m also really inspired by the Taskers of the Airtasker community, the guys who are putting themselves out there and giving new things a go every day. It takes real entrepreneurial spirit to pitch for work, and these people are doing it all the time every day!
Could you share your inspirational motto/quote?
A bird in the hand is worth one million in the bush!
What would you suggest to people who have just started out or are dreaming of becoming an entrepreneur?
Be prepared to “kiss a lot of frogs”. You will likely need to pitch your company a lot — whether it’s to potential customers, partners, or investors — and you will receive plenty of “no” responses. Getting a “no” doesn’t mean that you aren’t doing a good job, building a great product or working on an important mission — there are just always plenty more reasons for people to say “no” than “yes”. You need to be really resilient and keep pushing!
If you do pursue a model which requires external funding, start early and raise money when you don’t need it. In my experience, it’s pretty rare that people will invest the first time that they meet you so you need to give yourself the time to get to know each other and build a trusted relationship by doing what you say you will. It’s also really important to have other options for growth — you never want to be in a position in which you need investor money to survive.
