Airtasker ready to get the big IPO job done

The online odd-jobs marketplace is set to list with a $227m valuation.

Airtasker CEO Tim Fung and chair James Spenceley. Picture: Ryan Osland

It was an otherwise unremarkable family trip to Bunnings in Sydney’s Northern Beaches on a Christmas Eve six years ago that sealed the deal for venture capitalist James Spenceley.

It was on whim that Spenceley, also a founder of Vocus, made an investment that would lead to an online marketplace worth $227m and the latest ASX tech hopeful.

“I’d promised my wife I’d clean up the garage over the Christmas break,” Spenceley says.

“I’d just purchased a storage cupboard, only it didn’t fit into my car. I downloaded and posted the task on Airtasker, to pick up a storage cupboard from Bunnings Balgowlah and deliver it to Mosman for $40, because I had no hope of hiring a ute, and Bunnings didn’t deliver.”

The former Young Richlister says he was driving home when someone accepted the task, and 20 minutes later the cupboard was in his garage. Spenceley says that for him, Airtasker was the classic example of finding a business either himself or that his family and kids are interested in, and investing in it. He puts his money into things he uses himself.

“It was at that point I knew I would use this platform for the rest of my life,” he says. ”I set about trying to get a hold of the founder and to try and invest, so I emailed the support queue to ask about meeting the founder, and luckily Airtasker was small enough that Tim was still reading and replying to most of the support tickets.

“I guess as they say the rest is history.”

Six years on Spenceley and Fung are ready to ring the ASX bell on Monday, for a company that will list with a market capitalisation of $226.9m, with the company debuting at 65c per share. Spenceley hopes Airtasker can follow in the footsteps of ASX tech success stories like Afterpay, Appen and Xero. The executive, who stepped down as Vocus CEO in 2016, is now Airtasker’s chairman and says the company is his main focus.

The Sydney-based Airtasker, which allows users to outsource tasks ranging from house cleaning to queuing up to buy a new iPhone, has become a household word in Australia and is eyeing Singapore and the US. The company is already up and running in the UK, New Zealand and Ireland.

The company is not only ramping up international growth but has also grown its average dollar value per task, from around $100 ten years ago to $159 for the 2020 financial year. According to its prospectus, it posted revenue of $19.3m for the 2020 financial year, and a loss of $5.2m, projected to grow to $6.2m next year.

Demand for shares from staff during the company’s initial public offering was 10 times what the company offered, Spenceley says, a sign of the internal enthusiasm surrounding the listing.

“Normally a Chairman’s List is kept for mates of the CEO, and you’d offer it to the top end of town to repay favours and the like,” he says. “Almost all our chairman’s shares went to internal staff, because we wanted to prioritise them. It reinforces how exciting this moment in time is.

“Someone must have leaked it on to Reddit, because we ended up with a bank account full of these funds which were way more than what we were expecting. When the brokers looked at it they said they’d have to send it back, because it was from people on a Reddit forum.”

Having excess funds from strangers in his bank account is still a strange concept for Tim Fung, who started Airtasker with good friend Jonathan Lui in 2011 when the pair were moving apartments, and trying to make ends meet. Fung had felt bad for asking his mates to lug his furniture between suburbs.

“We got talking and wondering why we always have to ask friends and family to do these kinds of things,” he says. ”We wanted to provide a way for people to connect with other people in the local economy, and provide them opportunities and create jobs.”

Fung and Lui worked at telco provider Amaysim, but believed in the Airtasker concept so much that they both quit their jobs.

“We launched Airtasker and it was that typical story of doing everything ourselves,” he says. ”And over the years it‘s been an incredible journey that I’d say happened slowly but fast as well. At the start I was handing out flyers myself for Airtasker, and doing a lot of the tasks myself, I did KFC deliveries, I did real estate letterbox drops, and I was just doing a lot.

“It‘s been the most profound and rewarding experience of my life getting us to where we are now and I’m ready for the next few years, we’re still the dog running after the rabbit.”

Concerns over the so-called gig economy have run rampant in recent years, with Uber for example this week reclassifying its 70,000 UK drivers as workers, and governments the world over grappling with how to best treat on-demand work.

Fung says Airtasker’s mission is centred around creating jobs – and providing simple solutions for customers – and that the company is on the same side as governments and regulators.

“We all want the same thing, which is to create really good high quality jobs for Australians, and people all across the world,” he says. ”Whether we‘re speaking to a union or a government regulator, the first thing we do is share our goals, and we quickly find that we’re on common ground and we want the same things.

“The way we make money and revenue is completely aligned with our Taskers, and our customers, and we only earn the revenue when a job is actually completed, and a Tasker earns income into their bank account, and a customer gets the job done to their satisfaction. And that differentiates us from some of the other platforms out there.”

Spenceley says that while good investing involves a lot of luck, ultimately his focus of backing things he or his kids use has held him in good stead.

“You need to get the entry price of an investment right, you need to make sure the team is capable and can execute. A great team with a bad idea isn’t investment worthy,” he says. ”So for me, after a lot of lessons along the way, I invest in fewer things. I start with a product I or my kids like to use, then if the rest checks out, I invest bigger and more in those few ideas that pass all those tests.

“Airtasker was one of the easiest, the liquidity back then allowed me to get my task done and it’s massively improved since then. The fact Airtasker has become a verb is an incredibly strong moat.”