Leah Busque founded the company in Boston as RunMyErrand, aiming to match local people who needed help with people willing to do short tasks for pay. This early model helped popularize app-mediated, on-demand local services as a distinct kind of marketplace.
In 2009, the company received early backing from Facebook’s startup incubator, fbFund. This support helped the startup develop its marketplace approach and expand beyond a small local experiment.
In 2010, RunMyErrand changed its name to TaskRabbit and relocated its headquarters to San Francisco. The rebrand and move positioned the company closer to major tech investors and the growing “on-demand” startup ecosystem.
In May 2011, TaskRabbit raised a $5 million Series A round. The financing supported growth of its two-sided platform (clients posting work and “Taskers” completing it), including expansion into additional cities and product development.
In July 2011, TaskRabbit launched an iPhone app, making it easier for clients to post tasks and for Taskers to accept them on the go. Mobile access supported faster matching and helped shift the service from a website concept toward real-time, local labor coordination.
In December 2011, TaskRabbit raised a $17.8 million Series B round. The larger funding round signaled investor confidence and enabled the company to scale marketplace operations, marketing, and city-level growth.
In July 2012, TaskRabbit announced a $13 million Series C round led by Founders Fund. The company described the funding as supporting hiring and expansion, as it tried to grow beyond a novelty errand service into a larger labor marketplace.
In July 2013, TaskRabbit confirmed layoffs as part of a restructuring. The company said it was realigning toward key opportunities like mobile, geographic expansion, and business services—showing the pressure on early gig platforms to find sustainable demand and margins.
TaskRabbit launched in London in November 2013, its first market outside the United States. In London, it tested a model where Taskers set rates and schedules and quickly claimed tasks—an approach that influenced later platform redesign decisions.
In mid-2014, TaskRabbit began implementing a major redesign across markets, moving away from the earlier bidding-style marketplace toward quicker, profile-based matching and booking. The change improved some marketplace metrics but also drew significant backlash from parts of the Tasker community, highlighting a core platform tension: efficiency versus worker control.
In January 2015, TaskRabbit launched an updated version of its app after feedback on the redesigned system. This period showed how platform rules (like who sees jobs first and how prices are set) can quickly reshape worker earnings and user experience.
In mid-2016, Stacy Brown-Philpot became CEO and founder Leah Busque became executive chairwoman. The leadership transition came as the company focused on scaling a more standardized marketplace model and preparing for longer-term partnerships.
In late 2016, TaskRabbit changed its fee approach, including discontinuing a discounted service fee for repeat customers and applying higher fees more uniformly across tasks. The changes reflected a push for predictable revenue, but also reinforced ongoing debates about platform “take rates” (the share kept by the platform) and worker-client disintermediation (moving off-app).
In September 2017, IKEA Group signed an agreement to acquire 100% of TaskRabbit, stating that TaskRabbit would continue operating as an independent company within IKEA. The deal tied TaskRabbit’s on-demand labor network to a global retailer’s customer-service needs—especially furniture assembly—marking a major “platform-to-retail” consolidation outcome for this phase of the gig economy.
TaskRabbit's Platform Model, Regulators, and Acquisition (2008-2017)