[inthewoods]

I think it is pretty tough to see how this works on a such a low-margin service - in order to reach scale, they need to do a massive education of the ordinary consumer. Huge costs. Looks to me like they raised their money on that vision, but have found that $30m actually doesn't get you that far.

So it looks to me like they're shifting to the B2B side - which is smart but also difficult given the competition in that space. oDesk has been shifting their model away from the 10% commission on small account model to a more enterprise sale - I expect TaskRabbit to move that way as well.

[krilnon]

As an oDesk intern… is it really a shift so much as an expansion? It seems like we still do plenty of work on "small" accounts.

[inthewoods]

Good point - it is likely an expansion - I would ask this: what is management saying is the focus for this year? Enterprise or small accounts? My guess would they would say "Small accounts are still important and our core, but the enterprise is where our next stage of growth will come from." The reality is that small accounts don't provide the same kind of reoccurring revenue that VCs and Wall Street likes to see. And to grow beyond a certain point, you have to have a massive number of small accounts and acquisition to make up for the churn. Large enterprises, by contrast, are a longer sales cycle but more predictable revenue and generally, in my experience, lower churn.