Thumbtack’s Product Strategy
I get to interview many talented people as part of my job at Thumbtack and one of the most common questions I get is about our product strategy and where we’re headed. It’s one of my favorite topics and after having answered the question hundreds of times, I thought it was time to put it down in writing.
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, we want to be 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 we’d 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.
It was a seemingly simple, but innovative solution to a difficult problem. To hire a local professional today, most people ask friends for a recommendation or search the web. They might get someone’s contact info, but it’s then on the customer to hunt down the pro — they’ll make a some phone calls, send a bunch of emails and in the end they might get no response or find out the pro their friend recommended can’t do the job. The old Thumbtack turned this model on its head. Customers just needed to have one “conversation” with Thumbtack and then it was on the pros to chase down the customer. This innovation led to rapid growth and built quite a large business. It’s not only a testament to the early Thumbtack team, but also speaks volumes to the size of this opportunity and how much customer demand already exists in this space.
Although the old Thumbtack solved problems for our customers and made it easier to hire a local professional, it wasn’t good enough. The manual quoting model made it hard to guarantee that there would be quotes for each and every customer request. While we had more paying pros than most of our competitors combined, the manual quoting model meant pros had to constantly monitor their phones. If you’re a busy pro who’s out on the job or managing your crew, it’s near impossible to constantly monitor your phone and jump on the right notification at the right time. Our product made it too difficult for pros to become successful and as a result many of our customers didn’t get the quotes they needed to make a purchase decision.
So in late 2016 we set out to build the new Thumbtack. We 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 we 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, we 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. We wanted to give this level of control to our pros across the hundreds of categories where we 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.
This transition also required us to change our monetization model. As I mentioned above, with the old Thumbtack, pros would pay us to quote and only then would they be visible to customers. But given that our number one issue was that customers weren’t getting enough quotes, charging to quote seemed like the wrong place to add friction. It made it more challenging to deliver a customer experience that would lead to more hires for our pros. Furthermore, Thumbtack’s incentives weren’t fully aligned with our pros in the pay-per-quote model. Thumbtack was incentivized to get as many quotes viewed as possible regardless of whether or not customers ended up contacting our pros. So in addition to the tools that automated quoting for pros, we also made it free to quote. Now we only charge pros when a customer chooses a particular pro and reaches out. Customers can schedule an appointment, message a pro or give them a call. Pros will only be charged when a customer chooses them and gives the pro permission to get in touch. This new monetization model encourages more quoting, which leads to more customers reaching out to hire pros. Thumbtack’s incentives are aligned with the pros because we only make money when we’ve delivered value.
These two changes together enable the new customer product we’re building. Instead of answering a series of questions and waiting (sometimes hours) to see a list of interested pros, customers can now search for DJs in San Francisco and get a list of qualified and interested pros instantly. They can apply the criteria for their specific job to find pros that are a perfect match, browse through starting prices, check out previous work, read reviews and reach out to a pro immediately to start the transaction. With the new Thumbtack, customers choose from the full set of interested pros rather than just the set of pros that happened to see a notification and had the time to quote. Customers choose a pro based on the quality of their profile and Thumbtack rewards pros for being responsive to customers who reach out. Because customers are making the choice and showing more purchase intent, we believe this will lead to more hires for our pros and better return on their spend.
We’re far from done, but I’m happy to report that the new Thumbtack is working well and growing. We see significantly more customer engagement with the new experience and pros who turn on the new bidding tools get many more customers.
If you want more details about how all of this is working and what comes next or you just want to chat about what you would do differently, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re hiring across all functions and I’m always happy to chat with talented people who can help make our ideas better.
