Business Models: (1) Demand Aggregation

A trend I’ve been noticing a lot lately in consumer-facing marketplace startups that appear to be growing quickly is that they efficiently aggregate demand in long-tailed, inefficient markets. A few examples:

Mobile “Only” Experience:
Uber — taxi/transportation (the value Uber brings to consumers is a bit different…it’s more about transparency, consistency and comfort; also innovated on supply type, like AirBnB)
Instacart — grocery shopping (also innovated on supply type, like AirBnB)
Drizly — alcohol purchasing/delivery

Mobile Primarily Used for Consumer Retention:
Handy — home cleaning
Classpass — exercise classes

Mobile that isn’t as core to the experience:
DogVacay — kennel/boarding (also innovated on supply type, like AirBnB)
Care.com — babysitting
Angie’s List — home care/improvement
Coachup — Private sports coaches
ZocDoc — physicians

*I noted how mobile plays a role partly because it’s interesting and also because there’s a relationship between a consumer’s frequency of use/need and value as a mobile-only approach (more frequent=mobile is better).

Before these marketplaces, it was incredibly difficult for local service providers to sustainably acquire new customers. To the consumers, the value the marketplaces provide is to be a single destination that people with similar problems/interests in different locations can go to find a solution. To the local businesses, the value the marketplaces provide is a low-effort way to acquire and maintain customers — they connect local supply to local demand more efficiently than the local supplier can.

Many local suppliers, who are also small business owners, are not marketers and don’t know how to efficiently acquire customers. These platforms eliminate that problem, thereby justifying their match-making fee, and are able to remove local competition from acquiring consumers so the platform can aggregate all of the demand for themselves.

I believe will be difficult for one platform to rule them all, such as Thumbtack. While they are doing exceptionally well, I get the feeling it will be impossible for someone to meaningfully reverse the “Craigslist unbundling” effect and build a platform that connects consumers to multiple service provider types and maintain strong recognition/consumer loyalty (see: Taskrabbit).

Some industries that I haven’t seen tremendous demand aggregation platforms, at least in the US are:

• Mechanics — YourMechanic is trying to do this but I don’t know how well it’s going. Perhaps mechanic demand is frequent enough for a dedicated platform above and beyond Yelp?
• Dog walking — Care.com offers this but I think they are better known for babysitting and there’s an opportunity here with a more mobile-focused, dog-centric solution
• Electricians — Angie’s List has a lot of options here, but I think they try to provide too much and their technology is dated
• Pool cleaning
• Landscaping/Lawnmowing — Plowz&Mowz appears to be trying to do this and snowplowing. Mowdo is another one — both are mobile only though I’m not convinced frequency is high enough to justify that approach
• Tutors — education is moving online though there’s value in one-on-one, in-person learning.

I’m trying to think of more local service providers that occupy at least 5% of someone’s monthly income (or commensurate amount of time/effort), are used by consumers at least 6 months out of the year and aren’t super simple to find/buy/do. The reason for this inputs is Nir Eyal’s model of building habit…having a hook pattern with enough frequency that it will stick.

Can anyone think of any other disaggregated local service categories that might work?