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Thumbtack Secures $150 Million Growth Round Led by Sequoia to Further Transform Local Services MarketToday Thumbtack, the local services marketplace that connects consumers to professionals across every U.S. zip code, announced it raised $150 million in funding, valuing the company at $1.7 billion. The financing round was led by existing investor Sequoia Capital (News - Alert), with participation from current investor Baillie Gifford. "We're focused on bringing more customers to the backbone of the American economy - small businesses," said Marco Zappacosta, co-founder and CEO of Thumbtack. "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." Since launching in 2008, Thumbtack has been focused on enabling the future of work for hundreds of thousands of local service professionals across the country, simplifying the process of finding customers and enabling them to grow their businesses at speed and scale. In 2017, the company transformed the Thumbtack experience, rolling outa completely re-architected marketplace platform that delivers instant, real-time matches to both customers and local service professionals. Since this transition, over the last two years, mobile customer engagement has increased sixfold and the company experienced an annualized mobile growth rate of 125 percent. 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. In addition, as the company expands the role and reach of its platform, Thumbtack will be aggressively hiring in 2019. "Thumbtack has extended its lead in a massive market. The company's instant matching technology is a life saver for consumers looking for help with projects and local service professionals working to grow their business," said Bryan Schreier, partner at Sequoia and Thumbtack board member. "With their mobile-first approach, Thumbtack has created a one-stop shop for local services that consumers can access from anywhere." About Thumbtack Thumbtack was created to solve a seemingly simple problem: local professionals need customers so they can run and grow their business. Customers need local pros too, but have trouble finding the right ones. In 2008, the Thumbtack founders developed a marketplace bringing the two together. Since then, Thumbtack has 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. Thumbtack is headquartered in San Francisco. Learn more at www.thumbtack.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190722005414/en/ |
