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February 26, 2017

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Cleaning Startup Homejoy Opens An Office In New York City

Homejoy offers its home cleaning services in more than 30 North American markets , but it managed to expand without opening any offices outside of its San Francisco headquarters — until January, when it opened an office in New York City’s financial district. It’s been almost exactly a year since Homejoy launched its services in the Big Apple , following the same system it has used in other geographies — a network of contract cleaners overseen by on-the-ground city and regional managers. That approach makes for “an effective business model” by keeping costs relatively low, said Danny Rueda, the company’s northeast regional manager. However, this presents challenges when it comes to giving those managers “a connection to HQ, a connection to the company.” So one of the main purposes of the New York office is create “a hub” where Homejoy city managers across the northeast can meet up and share tips and experiences. In addition, Rueda said he’s hiring small teams for customer service and d

Walgreens Taps TaskRabbit to Deliver Cold Medicine to Shut-Ins

Walgreens is reaching out to consumers who are so walloped with a cold or flu that a trip to the corner drugstore seems an insurmountable obstacle The national drug chain is partnering with TaskRabbit , the online mobile marketplace, to allow deliveries of over-the-counter cold medicine in any of the 19 cities in which TaskRabbit is available. Such deliveries can be made via TaskRabbit's iOS app or on its website. Standard TaskRabbit rates apply including a 20% service charge and a runner's fee. So if a runner's fee is $10, you would pay an additional $12 plus the cost of your cold medicine, to get the delivery. Read more... More about Marketing , Taskrabbit , Business , and Walgreens

Meet The New Serfs, Same As The Old Serfs

Once upon a time there were things called jobs , and they were well understood. People went to work for companies, in offices or in factories. There were exceptions — artists, aristocrats, entrepeneurs — but they were rare. Laws, regulations, and statistics were based on this assumption; but, increasingly, what people do today doesn’t fit neatly into that anachronistic 1950s rubric. I’ve had the pleasure of trying to explain to border officials that my “job” consisted of contracting in Country A for a client in Country B, while also writing books and selling apps. I don’t recommend it. This disconnect will just keep getting worse. The so-called “sharing economy” mediated by sites and apps like Lyft , TaskRabbit , Thumbtack , Postmates , Mechanical Turk, etc etc etc., replaces “consistent work for a single employer” with “an agglomeration of short-term/one-time gigs.” That doesn’t really map to the old-economy assumptions at all. And even relatively high-skill professions are now being

The TechCrunch ‘Lean In' Roundtable: Full Video And Transcript

This past week, TechCrunch TV was honored to host an intimate roundtable discussion of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s new best-selling book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. The idea behind this was that while there has been a lot of buzz about the book and the larger movement being born out of it, much of it has come from established women in Sandberg’s generation and above. While that’s been valuable, we at TechCrunch wanted to find a different perspective. So we pulled together a small group of Generation Y women who are part of the Silicon Valley’s rising new guard: Leah Busque , the former IBM engineer who is now the founder and CEO of TaskRabbit , the startup that has built a platform for outsourcing errands, tasks, and deliveries; Ashley Mayer , the senior director of communications for cloud-based enterprise storage technology firm Box ; Megan Quinn , the Google and Square alum who last year made the leap into the venture capital world as a partner at Klein

TaskRabbit Debuts Tools For Hiring Ongoing Temp Work As It Further Homes In On Business Users

TaskRabbit , the San Francisco startup that has made a name for itself by helping people connect with odd jobs, is now a place where you can find a real job too. Today TaskRabbit is launching a new set of tools in its three-month-old TaskRabbit for Business portal that are designed to help companies hire ongoing temporary workers. The tools will let businesses use TaskRabbit to find temporary hires for temp jobs that will span over multiple days, weeks, or months. The TaskRabbit for Business portal launched in early March at South By Southwest , with the aim of helping companies there bring on staffers to help out over the course of the several-week festival. Since then, TaskRabbit for Business ahs emerged as the company’s fastest-growing segment of users, chief revenue officer Anne Raimondi told me in an interview this week, with 16,000 businesses signing up since it was announced in February. With the newly expanded features, now businesses in all nine markets throughout the US wh

Task Marketplace Mila Partners With Swisscom To Break Euro Fear Of Share Economy

In the wake of news that a potentially aggressive and well-tooled played is about to end the market for itinerant, time-based tasks ( prompt.ly ), and with TaskRabbit rolling out internationally to significant markets like the UK and existing players like BookingBug ramping up, this whole arena is getting hotter. But one of the missing pieces of the pie is trust and scalability. Many ordinary citizens – especially in Europe – simply don't trust these new platforms to deliver someone who can do a task. One way to solve this inherent mistrust of the ‘sharing economy' would be to partner up with a big player that people trust, giving instant validation and footprint. And that is exactly what Mila , a European mobile and online task marketplace startup, is doing today. It's partnered with Switzerland's leading telecom provider Swisscom to launch “Swisscom Neighborhood”. Now, before you lay the charge that is is small beer, note that Swisscom has 5 million residential custo

Fancy Hands Now Has An iPhone App, So You Can Book A Personal Assistant Anytime

Sometimes the smallest, most mundane tasks are the things you really dread — and put off for weeks. Like booking an oil change for your car, or finding a nice play for an anniversary date and buying tickets, or finding a good dentist in a new city and scheduling an appointment. It’s stuff that any patient person with internet access and a cell phone can do, but takes up just enough time and mental energy that it can be a huge drag. That’s why wealthy people have personal assistants. And lately, that’s why I’ve been using Fancy Hands . As we’ve written before , Fancy Hands is a three-year-old NYC-based startup that lets you book a personal assistant to complete tasks for a flat fee, ranging from $25 for 5 tasks a month, to $65 for 25 requests per month. Unlike TaskRabbit and Exec , Fancy Hands isn’t for tasks that need to be completed in person, like picking up dry cleaning. Its team of personal assistants are all based in the United States, but distributed throughout the country — ar

New Zealand hit by second earthquake in two days

New Zealand’s capital shook for a second consecutive day on Tuesday after a magnitude 5.2 magnitude earthquake hit Wellington, data from monitor GeoNet showed. There were no initial reports of damage, according to news reports and a Reuters witness. A slightly stronger 5.8 magnitude quake struck the capital on Monday while Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was doing a live TV interview. She calmly continued with the program and later confirmed there had been no damage. New Zealand lies on the seismically active “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanoes and ocean trenches girdling much of the Pacific Ocean. The city of Christchurch is still recovering from a 6.3 magnitude quake in 2011 that killed 185 people. – The Jerusalem Post

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The Extinction Protocol News on Twitter

The red dot that never sleeps…

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