Thumbtack: $150 Million Funding, $1.7 Billion Valuation, Thousands Of Skilled Workers Helped

By Annie Baker ● Jul 26, 2019
  • Thumbtack — a local services marketplace known for connecting consumers to professionals across the U.S. — announced it raised $150 million at a $1.7 billion valuation

Thumbtack — a local services marketplace that connects consumers to professionals across every U.S. zip code — announced it raised $150 million in funding at a valuation of $1.7 billion. This round of funding was led by existing investor Sequoia Capital with participation from current investor Baillie Gifford.

“We’re focused on bringing more customers to the backbone of the American economy – small businesses,” said Thumbtack co-founder and CEO Marco Zappacosta. “Today’s investment will allow us to accelerate our efforts to create the tools and infrastructure needed to empower small businesses to run and grow their businesses.”

Ever since Thumbtack launched in 2008, it has been focused on enabling the future of work for hundreds of thousands of local service professionals across the country thus simplifying the process of finding customers and enabling them to grow their businesses at speed and scale.

Back in 2017, the company transformed the Thumbtack experience by rolling out a completely re-architected marketplace platform that delivers instant and real-time matches to both customers and local service professionals. Ever since the transition took place over the last two years, mobile customer engagement has increased sixfold and the company experienced an annualized mobile growth rate of 125%.

And this most recent financing will enable Thumbtack to continue to invest in growth, accelerating the expansion of its platform and investing in products and pro tools such as offering deeper scheduling and payment integrations to help local services professionals instantaneously find customers, scale and market their businesses. As the company expands the role and reach of its platform, Thumbtack is also going to aggressively hire in 2019.

“Thumbtack has extended its lead in a massive market. The company’s instant matching technology is a lifesaver for consumers looking for help with projects and local service professionals working to grow their business,” added Bryan Schreier — the partner at Sequoia and a Thumbtack board member. “With their mobile-first approach, Thumbtack has created a one-stop-shop for local services that consumers can access from anywhere.”

Essentially, Thumbtack was created to solve a simple problem: local professionals need customers in order to run and grow their business. And potential customers need help from local professionals, but often have trouble finding the right ones.

Thumbtack’s founders Zappacosta, Sander Daniels, executive chairman Jonathan Swanson, and Jeremy Tunnell (now a self-employed investor) started out the company in 2008. Ever since then, Thumbtack helped hundreds of thousands of skilled professionals build successful businesses and millions of customers each year with everything from plumbing, to catering, to personal training to math tutoring.