Elliot Moss
Welcome to the Jazz Shapers Podcast from Mishcon de Reya. What you are about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM however the music has been cut due to rights issues.
Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul and blues. My guest today is Tim Fung, all the way from the other side of the world – that’s Australia to you and me – Founder and CEO of Airtasker, a digital marketplace connecting people who need work done with trusted, local people who want to work. While Tim was working as a consulting talent agent in Sydney, his boss and mentor asked him to help develop a new business, the budget mobile network, Amaysim. The experience, Tim says, was “an MBA in how to grow a startup.” The idea for his own company came in 2001, needing help to move apartments, Tim asked a friend who ran a frozen chicken nugget business – we’re getting very precise here – if he could use his truck. Tim realised there was no fit for purpose to connect with people in your community who can help with these sorts of tasks but rather than using reluctant friends or family, what if you could outsource work to people looking to earn extra money. Tim and co-founder Jonathan Lui launched Airtasker in Australia in 2012 and it has since expanded into Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, the UK and the US. Their 5.7 million registered global users benefit from, as Tim says, their “infinitely horizontal model,” allowing for unlimited types of tasks such as graphic design, bike assembly, accounting, architecture and of course, the all-important, spider removal.
Tim Fung is my Business Shaper, we’ve flown him all the way especially here for a Jazz Shapers special from Australia to the UK and of course globally now, he’s the co-founder of Airtasker and you were hearing about them when I just spoke about that business. It’s great to have you here; a whistle-stop tour but I’ve got you. Frozen nuggets. It’s funny how things happen in your life that then prompt big thoughts. At the time, was it the natural thing, Tim that you went I’m going to fix this? Is that you? Are you a fixer?
Tim Fung
Well I think that you know when you are starting a company, it’s really good to start with a problem that you’ve perceived and you know it’s something that you’ve experienced and you want to fix. The reason why I think that’s good is because it holds you accountable to making sure there’s real value in the company that you are producing, you know you know that you’re fixing a problem and that was really important for us so, I think at the time, you know we were definitely, Jonno and myself were definitely looking for, you know what’s something that we could do to start a company. We wanted to start a company but you know having that problem for yourself is really important too.
Elliot Moss
I love that you wanted to start a company. Most people don’t want to start a company. Why did you, Tim, want to start a company and why did Jonno – I love it, we’re so Australian here – why did Jonno want to start a company as well? What is it about starting a company that appeals to you?
Tim Fung
I think starting a company is you know the manifestation of solving a problem and having an impact on the world; it’s one way to do that. There’s lots of other ways that you can shape the world, whether it’s doing something in the arts or you know playing sport or anything like that but I think starting a company, starting a business is something that really appealed to both Jonno and I and we had kind of done a start-up before with Amaysim, that was something where we got to learn, you know without the pressure of being the founders, where everything counted on us, it was a great place to learn and then we, we wanted to jump out and do it on our own.
Elliot Moss
But when you started work and I’ve read that you worked at Macquarie, asset manager, you’ve done this talent agent thing as well. I mean these are fun, these are very different things, Macquarie is a serious, serious business, talent agency, not so serious but fun, serious work goes behind the puff as it were of managing important and famous people and the like. Did you always know it was going to be your thing that you were going to have your own business or did it emerge once you’d said I don’t want to work for somebody else? And I need the truth, Tim.
Tim Fung
Yeah, no, I think, I think the truth is actually always the best way. So, certainly when I was working at Macquarie, didn’t even occur to me that people started their own business and that’s something that you did. I’d been to Uni, did a Commerce Degree at University of New South Wales and then went straight into a sort of graduate job in an investment bank and did that for five years so, that was kind of my norm and it’s interesting because I think we’re going through a bit of a financial crisis or economic crash at the moment and it was in the last crash that I left Macquarie, my whole team was redundant from Madcap Advisors, which was the department I worked for, and at that point I was like you know, do I want to continue working in banking or like do I want to go and do something interesting and so, that was the genesis for going to work for, for the modelling agency, Chic Management, and I think the interesting thing there was that I offered to work for them for no money, I was like hey, I’ll just come and do a bunch of work for you, give me a chance for a couple of months and I’ll show that I can do something for you and I was really fortunate that the founder of the agency was a woman named Ursula Hufnagl, who was one of the most famous eyes for talent in the world, she found Miranda Kerr and a bunch of other sort of Victoria Secret models and stuff like that, and so I got the opportunity to work with her but it was because I didn’t really care about making money and just wanted to learn something.
Elliot Moss
In your own words, tell me what Airtasker is, I kind of explained but I want you to.
Tim Fung
Airtasker is a marketplace for local services and really simply, we just connect people who need work done with people who want to work.
Elliot Moss
That is ridiculously simple. Within that, am I right in thinking that your own thought about how that’s going to work, because I’ve, we’ve all encountered businesses like that before and we’ve all had those issues with needing to move house or getting something fixed in the garden or whatever it might be. Am I right in thinking that the purpose now for this, in your own head, has become as much about, if not more about those people with skills looking to earn a living as it is for the person like me looking to have a problem solved because obviously, you said, I started my business, there was a problem to fix but if feels like it’s morphed a little bit in your own head at least.
Tim Fung
Yeah so, when we started the company, it was all about creating a convenience service to, you know, be able to connect with people and get some stuff done but then after a few years, we, we’re spending time in the Airtasker community, my Co-Founder Jonno and I, and we would meet people and they would tell us about how they were made redundant from their job and they were using Airtasker to make ends meet or that they were, you know, saving up to go through a University degree, using Airtasker to do that. And around about the same time, you know we were hearing about you know some of these ride sharing apps saying you know what, we want to automate the drivers, if we can get rid of the drivers, we just get rid of them tomorrow and that really made us stop and think about which side of the marketplace do we want to serve and we, at that point, reoriented the whole business around our new mission statement to empower people to realise the full value of their skills.
Elliot Moss
When was that, Tim?
Tim Fung
That was in about 2014.
Elliot Moss
Okay, so a couple of years afterwards because at that time, people were talking about the sharing economy, they were talking about technology as a platform, literally and metaphorically, as a place to bring people together. Did that help you stand out? Because then we’ll move to 2021 when you then float the business but is that do you think the driving force behind why Airtasker garnered investment and why it has become the platform it’s become?
Tim Fung
Yes, I think it totally is. To be there, to support workers and to be able to help workers be able to monetise their skills, is something that’s completely new I think to this space. One of the things that we believe at Airtasker is that literally every single person has unique skills and we want to be there to help them monetise their skills, be able to make an income from the skills that they have. By really aligning ourselves with the workers on our platform, it’s just taken away a lot of that sort of friction that you know has been felt before, where people are unhappy with the way companies have treated gig economy workers and things like that and we think about Airtasker as building a flexible labour economy. We’re genuinely saying all of our workers have skills, we want to help them be able to monetise those skills, they determine the work they’re going to do, they determine the price at which they’re going to do that work for and we’re here just to support them.
Elliot Moss
And how many people do support them? How many people are in the business now, working in the Airtasker team?
Tim Fung
So we have about 250 people in our organisation in a significant amount in our product design and engineering, a lot in customer service but what I think is interesting is that Airtasker is true embodiment of a marketplace. We connect customers directly with taskers on our platform and we don’t get in between and try to you know handle things or move things around, it’s truly a relationship build between a customer and a tasker and I think that’s really powerful.
Elliot Moss
He’s wearing an Airtasker t-shirt and Tim also comes bearing gifts with Airtasker bags, everything, obviously it’s you know, it’s a pretty important thing to you. The skills, you talked about everyone has their individual skills and you want to help them do what they do and earn money on their own terms. What would your 250 people say is Tim Fung’s super skill?
Tim Fung
I think they would say that I’m the eternal optimist in the company. So, you know, no matter how hard things get, whether it’s an economic crisis or whether it’s a labour shortage that we’ve just been through or whether it’s Covid, you know optimism and confidence is probably the thing that’s helped me to get through and you know, I use that to motivate and support our team to do their jobs.
Elliot Moss
And that sunny disposition? Where’s it from, Tim? Is this a mum, dad thing?
Tim Fung
My mother is probably the most optimistic person that you’ll ever meet. She’s never said a bad thing about anyone. She’s always looking at the positive and for that reason, you know when they asked me who wants to ring the bell at the ASX, you know, is it going to be your Board of Directors or other people that work in the company, I said can I get my mum to ring the bell? And the ASX, the Australian Stock Exchange, said yes and so, it was me and my mum ringing the bell a couple of years ago.
Elliot Moss
So this is, just to be clear for people that don’t know, when you go public, you literally, and they do it in the London Stock Exchange, while someone rings the bell when the company floats, when the company starts offering public shares, and that was your mum.
Tim Fung
That was my mum and so, you know she had the streamer canons and all of that on her, so that was a really, really good moment.
Elliot Moss
We need to post pictures of that. We need to find those. Brilliant stuff. Stay with me for much more from my guest today, it’s Tim Fung, Co-Founder of Airtasker and he brought his mum to ring the bell. Pretty good. We’ll be hearing a lot more from Tim in a couple of moments but first, we’re going to hear a clip from the Mishcon Academy Digital Sessions, they can be found on all the major podcast platforms. Mishcon de Reya’s Tom Grogan, he’s also CEO of MDRxTech, is talking about Web 3.0, the next iteration of the internet, I’m sure you know that, and what businesses and individuals need to be thinking about when formulating their Web3 strategies and pursuing valuable and impactful projects.
You can enjoy all our former Business Shapers on the Jazz Shapers podcast and indeed you can hear this very programme again if you pop Jazz Shapers into your podcast platform of choice or if you’ve got a smart speaker, use it, and ask it to play Jazz Shapers and there you’ll find a taste of our recent shows. But back to today, it’s Tim Fung, Co-Founder of Airtasker, a digital marketplace connecting people who need work done with trusted local people who want to work. I want to do your voiceovers, I think it feels like a, like an advert over here. It’s a long time, joking aside, to go from 2012 to launching 2014, a sharpening of the mission and you going hold on a minute, I think it’s for those people over there, offering the services as much as it to get them, to this thing called a float, to this thing called ringing the bell and your mum up there and all of that joy. How did you hold in there? How did you tuck in as the pack went through the bell at 400 metres with another 400 to go? What was it that kept you going, Tim?
Tim Fung
Well, I think the main thing is that, and I mean this in like the deepest possible way, which is I think it’s important to be building something that you believe is valuable or impactful to you know, to the community or you know to other people’s lives and the reason for that is because you’re going to go through crap, you know when you, when you lead a big company, there’s a lot of people issues, a lot of heartache, you know, hiring people, firing people, making decisions that impact people in a good way or a bad way and to be able to get up and do that consistently, I think it requires a fair bit of conviction in what you’re doing and so, I think it’s just important to be building something that you truly do believe in. And I know a lot of founders might say that entrepreneurs say that in these things, ah just do something you love, I think that is really, really true but it doesn’t necessarily mean that, you know, you sat on a mountain and it was the most important visionary thing, it’s more just like you know that you’re creating value and you’re doing something that’s good.
Elliot Moss
And when you’re creating value and doing something that’s good, obviously there are things, as you just implied, that you don’t like doing, like letting go of people. How have you squared those circles at the time because obviously it’s in the interests of the business, you will, you know that’s the position you’re going to take but I imagine you didn’t much like letting people go?
Tim Fung
Oh no, I think, I think if there’s one thing anyone would truly sort of fear or feel anxious about or stressed about in running a business, it’s the people issues and I think most importantly, are issues that impact people negatively, you know, whether it’s not being able to do salary rises that people want or not being able to give someone that promotion that they want or you know, the worst case scenario, having to let people go. Those are the, honestly, the hardest things and so, I definitely wouldn’t take away from the impact that people are feeling during layoffs and things like that but I can, I can just honestly say from the bottom of my heart, in both directions, the people who have to make those hard decisions, it really sucks for those people as well.
Elliot Moss
And the Tim Fung strategy for dealing with stuff like that?
Tim Fung
I think the main thing is to take your medicine, make sure that you actually follow through, do those hard things because if you don’t, if you don’t take that medicine and you try to push things, we call it like kicking the can down the road, that’s the worst thing you can do because although it might not be painful today, it’s going to create more problems further down the line and there’s nothing worse than that.
Elliot Moss
It’s really hard at the moment, as you’ve alluded to, with regard to people wanting to invest, with regard to technology businesses not making profits or not making big enough profits, what does success look like now, we always talk about metrics and obviously everyone wants to make profit, obviously everyone wants to grow and people talk about compound earning and your growth rate and that’s what your investors are going to be interested in, ah the cargo, yes, we’ve got to stick it up there at 15% and all those other things. But for you, how do you set realistic, because you strike me as a guy who tells the truth, how do you set realistic metrics and then how do you stick to them?
Tim Fung
Well I think the first thing is, in the current environment, I think you know we’ve gone from a crazy 2021, where it was probably over exuberants and I wasn’t even across all of this but you know some companies were getting valued at one hundred times revenue or like infinite times revenue basically, and we’ve gone from that to 2022 and ’23, where it’s the opposite and people are demanding, show me the free cashflow, you know you’re nothing if you don’t have cashflow and I think what’s really important is to not whipsaw back and forth between those two views because the world changes back and forth and I think what’s really important is to be steadfast on just building a company and doing what’s right for the underlying business that you’re building. So when it comes to metrics, I think we’ve definitely moved from hey, growth at all costs, you know, do whatever you want as long as it’s you know going to grow the top line but we haven’t whipsawed all the way to cut everything unless it makes a big profit because I don’t think that’s right either, we want to take a balanced approach and do what’s right for building the business. So, we’ve certainly been more disciplined in cost management, I’m certainly slowed down things like hiring but we don’t want to go all the way back into the hole and not be concerned about growth because I think whether it’s two years away or five years away, the world is going to want companies to grow again at some point in the future so, don’t want to, you know throw all of that away.
Elliot Moss
And in terms of your own growth, many people start businesses and then stuff happens and you’ve got those different phases that you’ve touched on the growing pains and obviously, to go from you know a small business in one, as a business with no turnover in 2012 to fighting for investment to then floating the business, how have you ensured that you’re the right guy to lead because we’ve read so many stories of that founder who just said well, being a public company is not for me, have you managed to square that circle?
Tim Fung
Yeah, I think that you know along the journey, you definitely have moments of self-doubt and you know definitely, you know, consider is this the right job for me? Like whether, do I love it? You know, also you tend to, as a CEO, get a lot of critical feedbacks, so that always makes you think as well, like oh jeez am I doing the right thing here? But I definitely you know teetered between full conviction and having self-doubt but I think that over the years, what I have found is, the most important thing is to be able to be adaptive and reflective of the situation and as far as I’ve come along this journey so far, I feel a pretty high conviction that I’m the right person to run the company but certainly that might change in the future.
Elliot Moss
But the self-doubt, it sounds like you’ve harnessed it, which is, we all have self-doubt and you just happen to be on the, in the firing line as it were because you’re now the CEO of a public listed company. How have you managed to harness that self-doubt because it’s, it’s that waking up in the morning at 4.30 or 5.00 going, well hold on a minute, this is pretty heavy stuff. How do you come through that the other side and still retain that positivity, which evidently you have?
Tim Fung
Well I think, yeah, I mentioned before about just believing in what you do and the mission and the impact that you can have on the community and users of your product. That’s the most important thing and I think for Airtasker, the fortunate thing is that it’s a really simple business model and so we see taskers and we meet taskers every day who tell you, “hey, this is the thing that I use to create an income.” One of the stats that you know shared with the company a few months ago was that Airtasker has now put over $428 million into the pockets of our taskers, that’s excluding our fees, that’s excluding you know the way we make money, that’s the money that’s gone in successfully to our taskers and that goes to, you know paying their rent, buying groceries, things like that and to me, that was kind of like mind-blowing kind of impact and that’s what we’re here to do.
Elliot Moss
Stay with me for my final chat with Tim Fung and we’ve also got some Snarky Puppy for you here on Jazz FM, that’s all coming up in just a moment, don’t go anywhere.
I am only with my guest today, Tim Fung, just for a few more minutes so I’ve got to use them wisely. The future, it’s a big old place Tim, it goes, stretches forever and ever, as far as you can see. What’s it going to look like for you, for the next three to five years and for Airtasker? What’s the hope?
Tim Fung
Oh gosh. You know we, as a company, we’re really investing more into our technology platform so, a lot of our investment goes into software engineering and product design, to just keep fine tuning the marketplace and the platform that we’ve built, particularly to make it more trusted and reliable, so we’re really trying to make it a trustworthy platform. On the sort of expansion side though, we’re also expanding internationally, so our marketplace here in London is in the early stages compared to Australia, it’s in that very early part, so we’re scaling here in the UK. I’m also spending a lot of time in the US and scaling first into Los Angeles in the US, so that’s pretty exciting too.
Elliot Moss
A fine city indeed. Lots of people. You like people things, don’t you, I mean it feels like all the things you’ve turned your hand to have been, had a consumer edge to them. It feels like this is, of course everyone needs a helping hand, so just thinking about the market receiving service. That can only get bigger, right? As people look for cost-effective ways of solving things and not buying new stuff. So, you must have wonderful trajectories in your head about where this business can go.
Tim Fung
Yeah, I think the reason why I like working in consumer and especially in a platform that enables other people to create the content and be able to do their thing, is that it’s much bigger than just yourself, so you know, it’s not me or anyone else at Airtasker coming up with how should we use this marketplace, it’s literally that we wake up every morning, we refresh the feed and we check out the tasks and we’re like oh my gosh, like, someone’s using Airtasker to find a Prince Harry lookalike for their party or someone’s using Airtasker to get a drone stuck out of a tree or remove a spider from their attic and so, I think it’s like really cool to see you know that it’s much bigger than just what it is that I could imagine or anyone of my product folks can imagine, genuinely empowering people to do their thing.
Elliot Moss
And obviously you still enjoy it, that was the other thing I, you know, you touched on it but is it as much fun as it was when you set this thing up?
Tim Fung
I think you’ve got to keep adjusting your role, like as a founder, you should know what you’re good at, what you’re not good at and generally, it’s fun to do the things that you’re good at and less fun to do the things that you’re bad at and so I think one of the, you know the privileges that you get as being a founder of a company or the CEO, is you can surround yourself with people to do the stuff that you’re not so good at and as long as you can hold them accountable and, you know, support them to do their jobs well, you don’t have to do it yourself. You know, I’ve got an incredible team around me who genuinely takes all the hard stuff off my plate and I think they enjoy doing the work it is because you know that’s the career that’ve pursued and so, bit of a win-win.
Elliot Moss
And pride, I imagine your mum is very proud of you.
Tim Fung
Yeah, my mum, my mum’s pretty stoked. Yeah, but I think she’d be kind of happy with whatever I was doing, you know, I mentioned she’s the eternal optimist so, you know she’d probably be happy if I was the garbage removalist or whether I was doing what I’m doing so, yeah, fortunate that way too.
Elliot Moss
It’s been great chatting to you. Good luck. Safe travels when you make your way back to the other side of the planet, I hope you go well. Just before I let you disappear there, what’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?
Tim Fung
I’ve chosen Charles Mingus, the Haitian Fight Song and the reason I chose it because it’s from Jerry Maguire, a movie that my wife and I love a lot because it’s about a guy following his passions and, you know, following a mission statement.
Elliot Moss
Charles Mingus Quintet there with Haitian Fight Song, the song choice of my Business Shaper today, Tim Fung. He talked about being the eternal optimist and that is exactly what he’s been over the last ten years since his business was born. He talked about taking your medicine and how over that journey it’s been really important to do the things he’s needed to do to ensure that the business doesn’t just survive but it thrives. And finally, that lovely thought that he is a person of conviction and that the business is a business of conviction, it believes in impact and how the focus and putting the lens on the providers of the service rather than just the receivers of the service has ensured that literally millions of pounds worth of value has been created for many, many, many people. Great stuff. That’s it from Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend.
We hope you enjoyed that edition of Jazz Shapers. You’ll find hundreds of more guests available for you to listen to in our archive, to find out more just search Jazz Shapers in iTunes or your favourite podcast platform or head over to Mishcon.com/JazzShapers.