courier services (aka postmates) is definitely difficult to scale in the 'burbs. And that's because of the distances, traffic etc. involved. Certain tasks on Taskrabbit could work in the suburbs, but not all. How many times do you see these kind of jobs on Craigslist ? Ikea delivery, assembling etc are fine -- but when instant gratification (Postmates, Zaarly etc.) is concerned, scaling to the suburbs will be extremely difficult.
My response to this was... essentially... "so what?" They do not need an instant gratification task runner available for every door to have scaled to a large, very profitable company.
This is no different than the scaling limits of many online media companies, in fact. 83% of the US population is in an urban center. 81% of the US population has access to broadband internet (and not all of them take advantage of that access). Netflix's addressable US market for streaming is smaller than TaskRabbit's for tasks.
Are you seriously comparing scaling these businesses with scaling online media companies ?
If dealing with logistics issues at scale would have been easy, your grocery store would have been able to deliver to your home. Do they ? No -- because its not cost efficient due to the logistics involved.
I don't think you're reading these comments in context. I'm arguing that even if they only reach the major urban areas, they'll still be a large, profitable company. You're responding that reaching beyond them is logistically difficult -- again, "so what?". If you want to answer my comment, you have to say something as to why TaskRabbit has to be available in the 'burbs to scale.
The purpose of the comparison to Netflix was to emphasize that the addressable market for your product or service need not be "every household in the nation" to be considered "at scale". It's OK for TaskRabbit to never offer all its services in every suburb -- because it's logistically difficult or impossible -- they still have the potential to be a large, profitable company without doing so. I never made a comparison between how easy or difficult it would be to grow.
When you sign up as a hiring person, they only have a few major cities you can sign up in. I don't reside in any of those cities, so despite having work for people, I have no use for the service, at least not yet.
