Fabian Geyrhalter:
Welcome to the show, Marco.

Marco Zappacosta:
Thank you for having me, Fabian. Excited to be here.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
It’s a huge pleasure to have you here. You started Thumbtack quite a while ago. It was back in 2008. So that was pretty much right after you graduated college. And then next thing you know, because, you know, that’s how we like to say it, even though there’s like, tons of hustling in between. But next thing you know, Jason Calacanis became the first person to invest in the company. That’s huge. I’m an advisory board member at a company he co-founded. So I know what a score it is to have his blessing, especially so early on.

Marco Zappacosta:
Big time.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah, big time. Fast forward to 2021 and you had a $3.2 billion valuation. You had the highest number of professional listings followed by Yelp. So you launched into a world of not only Yelp, which was founded four years before you guys showed up, but the Angie’s list, which now is Angie, because there’s no more list. And I think they launched back in 95. And of course, Google and a lot of others. What made you confident back in 2008 that there was room for one more player?

Marco Zappacosta:
Yeah, it’s a good question. The short of it is that it still seemed so broken. And, you know, 2008 was now a time where e-commerce was a thing and you could shop for stuff and, you know, a couple of clicks and a couple of days and you could get anything you wanted. That was the future. In this category in sort of local and home services, it was, you know, still the 20th century. Yes you were now using some digital directory to find names and numbers but at that point, you were on your own and you were in the same place you were when you just had the yellow pages of dialing down that list and saying, hey, can you do this? How much? Are you free? And we just, we knew that wasn’t the answer. That could not be the end of history when it came to this industry. And so while we didn’t know what the answer would be or could be, we felt very certain that no one was currently chasing it and in fact, the sort of market leading companies were nowhere near that. So that gave us, I don’t say the confidence, but it gave us the motivation to go find that answer and to go fill that void.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Well, and it’s actually interesting when in the intro, I said Angie’s List, which is now Angie, which of course it was just a list, like you said, it was nothing else. It was just let’s take the old stuff and put it on the interweb. And that was it.

Marco Zappacosta:
And I would go further. I mean, I’d say all of the Web 1.0 properties were online versions of offline products. So Angie’s List and Yelp were directories or yellow pages. Then Craigslist obviously was replacing the classifieds. And while both of these products online were better than their offline equivalents, they were not reimagined for the digital world that we were now in. And so, for example, in our in our categories, you had this reality where on classifieds you have to relist every few days because in the offline world, you know, the newspaper is published and then republished, etcetera, and they carry that over to the digital realm and there’s some value in that. It means that everything you see is fresh and current and genuine, but the counter is the challenge for our pros who are a plumber this week, next week and next year. And it’s very frustrating to have to repost. And it also means they can’t accrue reputation to a sort of permanent profile. So that’s really what we saw as the opportunity. Like, hey, these products are online versions of their offline counterparts. No one has reimagined what this experience could and should be, given that we’re now in this kind of digital realm.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
So you started with and I heard that, I heard you talk about this on another interview. It was basically you and a couple of friends that just said we got to start something.

Marco Zappacosta:
Mhmm.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
You know, it wasn’t. Oh, good. So you’re a developer, you’re this, you’re this like, let’s get together and we have the perfect you know, the perfect traits. No, it was really we got to do something. Where’s a pain point? And so you really started with just one day saying that’s a pain point, no clue how we can compete and how we can fix this, but it’s got to be better because currently it’s just silly.

Marco Zappacosta:
Yeah, I mean, the heuristic we used in some sense was what is both broken and badly broken and yet seemingly inevitably going to be solved by technology. You could imagine lots of broken things that you might say, ooh, I’m not sure technology is ever going to fix that. That’s scary. But this was one where it’s like, no, there has to be a way. You know, the internet is too good at helping sort of the long tail come together to not also solve this problem.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Totally, totally. And, you come from an entrepreneurial family. Your father co-founded Logitech. And I mean, so 15 years ago, you started Thumbtack. You’re still running it as a CEO day in, day out, something that is almost unheard of these days for any venture funded tech company. Running a business seems to be running in your veins. Did you did you always want to be an entrepreneur? So when you guys got out of college and you’re just like, I got to start something, we got it. We can’t work for someone.

Marco Zappacosta:
Yeah, it’s interesting. So you’re absolutely right. I did grow up in an entrepreneurial family. Both of my parents were entrepreneurs and I really saw them do that their whole careers. And that’s what they talked about at dinner and that’s what sort of animated them. And I feel lucky in a couple of ways, in many ways. But on this specific dimension, because they set the example for how long it can take. So my father was at Logitech for 20 years. My mother was working on her startup for almost 17, 16 years. And so I think I had the perspective that this stuff is a, possible and that’s incredibly fortunate to appreciate and see.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah.

Marco Zappacosta:
And I just saw my family do it. But also it takes a long time. In fact, it takes decades and yet in decades you can make probably more progress than you were ever expecting if you really stick to it. So yeah, I feel very lucky for them sort of setting that example. I will say it’s not what I intended to do. They never kind of encouraged it or pushed it. I thought I was going to go be a researcher. I went and studied neuroscience as an undergrad. I loved it. And then I went and worked in the lab the summer after my freshman year and I did not love it, so it was clearly not a fit with me, my personality. And so I was sort of lost. I didn’t know what I wanted to do or, you know, my story that I told myself kind of disappeared. And so then I randomly pursued passions. And again, I know that’s not normal, but one of those passions was pension reform. You know, as a 20 year old, I got really passionate about pension reform. Typical, typical. And, you know, the funny thing is I wrote this op ed for my student newspaper about it.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
You we the number one nerd.

Marco Zappacosta:
Number one. Yeah. Unbeknownst to me, though, there was someone who was equally or in some sense more passionate about this because he had started this student advocacy group. And so I ended up actually taking a semester off from college and working with this group that then really became the nucleus of who we started the company with. So it wasn’t a tech startup, but it was very much a startup. We raised our own money. We attracted these students all around the country and it was that experience, I think that really taught me, I think most of all how much fun it is to chase a dream and a vision with like minded, passionate people like that is just really, really fun and it’s still fun. So yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Totally. That’s where, that’s where you, that’s where you caught that wave. And, you know, too bad because if you would have just not started Thumbtack, we would have had a completely revolutionary Social Security system here in the US by now so bummer.

Marco Zappacosta:
One day. That one was too hard.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah. Right. Back to, you know, back to Thumbtack in the early days and also, you know, kind of in parallel with what you said about how entrepreneurship doesn’t happen overnight. I mean, it’s a long journey when you want to build something the right way. You entered the dual marketplace so without the contractors or the pros, there cannot be any customers. But without the customers, no contractors would find it in any way attractive to join right. How did you solve this typical dual marketplace chicken egg dilemma in the first months or the first years of the company?

Marco Zappacosta:
You steal chickens and you build a chicken farm. That’s how you solve. That’s the answer. And you know, I say that joking, but there is some truth to it. When you look at the history of a lot of marketplaces, they often get their start by inducing the suppliers to join and engage for some value to them before there’s a network to benefit from. And you know, we call that network independent value critics. And later had this blog post that had a much catchier title, which is come for the tool and stay for the network. But the point is quite right. And in our case, the tool was we offered pros a way to easily repost their Thumbtack profiles on to Craigslist. You know, solving that problem I had mentioned that the folks had to repost every three days and most of them weren’t using sort of markup to bring in sort of pictures and reviews, etc so we gave them these pretty HTML profiles that they could add a reminder to post them on to Craigslist

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Like widgets basically.

Marco Zappacosta:
Yeah, yeah. It’s just what motivated them to sign up and to create great content and great profiles. And that content then attracted customers via SEO and Google Search. And then it was ultimately at that point that we had this flywheel going and from there we could really refine the experience and ultimately learn had a really drive loyalty and sort of direct traffic to us.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
So smart. That is awesome. I absolutely love that. How, when you guys started it off, how did, how and when did the name Thumbtack come about? Like was that, because usually naming is such a nightmare. I mean, it just takes forever. And then finally the dot com and then you’re like, well, this doesn’t work. So Thumbtack, it’s an interesting name. It makes a lot of sense. You create lists so it has something, you know, a little bit. But tell us like, how did it come about and how did you decide on it? If you remember, it’s a long time ago.

Marco Zappacosta:
Oh, yeah. Oh, I remember. And it’s as you said, it’s much less inspiration and much more perspiration than people imagine. And I have I’m sure today the spreadsheet somewhere in my drive of just names and names and synonyms. And then you have to go look it up. And most of them have something built around it. Then you look at sort of like adjacent misspellings and on and on. So we just had a lot of names. And then my girlfriend, at the time, now wife, came up with Thumbtack, and it was by far the best name we had come up with. We really liked it. The only problem was the owner wanted $40,000 for it, and we had all of $100,000 to start the company with.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
For everything.

Marco Zappacosta:
Yeah, for everything. And so it’s actually probably the first real debate between us founders. And, you know, I think my very practical, sensible founders thought it was ludicrous to spend this much money, and I think there is truth to that. So the solution, but I was, I got very attached and excited about it. So the solution was to finance it. So we paid a third upfront. We got the price.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
I thought you would do that. Yeah, that’s the logical next thing.

Marco Zappacosta:
Yeah, we paid 12 upfront and we had to pay off the rest in whatever, 18 months and we figured, all right, we can part with 12 and hopefully in 12 or 18 months we’ll have the confidence and the money to buy the rest of our name. So yeah, it was financed to make it happen.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Awesome. I love that story. Thumbtack by its sheer nature is all about people, right? You’re basically a matchmaking site in a way.

Marco Zappacosta:
Yes.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
How important is community to Thumbtack and I don’t necessarily mean culture internally because that is very important too but you know, community overall, you even have a place on your website dedicated to kind of like the pro community. Tell us a little bit about community.

Marco Zappacosta:
Yeah. So, you know, I think it means different things to our two different audiences. To pros, one of the things that we realized was it can be lonely being a service professional and being a small business owner. You’re tasked with doing, you know, just about everything. There’s not enough hours in the day. And while they often have sort of a mentor or a friend or someone that they can talk to, they typically don’t have a go to community of entrepreneurs and business owners. And so in recognizing that we’ve sort of invested in that and created that space and it’s almost like it’s not even for them to talk to us, it’s for them to talk to each other and for, excuse me, for customers, I think it means something different. You know, when you think about hiring a professional into your home, a plumber or a carpenter or somebody like that, it’s very intimate. A they’re coming into your home where your family is. Two you’re also spending a lot of money. And so you’re very discerning about that. And they’re building a physical thing that you’re going to live in and a part of. And so, not surprisingly, given the high cost and the intimacy people care a lot about what their neighbors and their community has to say about these pros. And so we’ve really worked hard to pull in that social proof, but pull it in in a way that is, again, richer, deeper, not simply a drive by review on the internet, but an accounting of what that pro did for that customer. And through that, how that customer perceived the quality and professionalism and punctuality, etcetera. So yeah, I think, you know, customers come to us for that sort of insight and I think it comes from the community, even if it’s not an active conversation. And then for pros, they do seek that sort of true community and we’ve tried to create space for it.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Very cool. And I saw a little bit of that yesterday when I when I used Thumbtack to look for, to look for someone for a project that we have going on, you know, 100 projects we usually have going on in the house here. But for one of them and I did, I did notice that what I was searching for that the first quote of someone giving a review was almost, almost eerily perfect for what I tried to hire that person for. Right. So if I looked for someone who put up, who install cabinets. Right. The first quote of someone said, you know, I had five cabinets that needed to be installed. Amazing job. I’m like, whoa. So that obviously brings up the next question. What role does A.I. play for you as a company, because a lot of that, but then I guess the second question is and what is it, what role does it play for your community? Because some of them might be facing challenging times.

Marco Zappacosta:
Yeah, look, when you were sort of saying that, you know, I was just thinking machine learning is a beautiful thing because, you know, you’re giving us insight into your query by telling us what your need is, what your request is. We use that to think about not simply who are the right pros, which is very important, but also what data do you then need to evaluate about that pro to be confident that they’re the right one for you? And not surprisingly, one of the things we’ve learned is that customers don’t simply want to see high quality reviews. So that’s important first step. They really want to see someone who has done this type of project in their community that is ultimately the most confidence inspiring thing, and it makes sense. It’s like hey, if you did this job for somebody who lives nearby, I’m pretty sure you’re going to do a good, and you did a good job for them then.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah.

Marco Zappacosta:
You’ll probably do a good job for me. It’s sort of simple human nature. And so the tension and challenge for us is doing it across, you know, 500 different categories, every city and county in the United States and just sort of reflecting the reality that these searches are very fine grained. You know, you’re not just typing in, you know, I’m looking for movie tickets and, you know, this is the movie I’m looking for. And you’re done. It’s a really specific I’ve got this, you know, I’m looking for cabinets. It’s this many square foot. I want, you know, stain, not painted. I’m looking for lights and on and on and on. Those are all search parameters. And it means that the matchmaking has to be really fine grained and subtle. And that’s something that’s sort of what used to be called machine learning or what we call A.I. now is amazingly good at. Now with like generative A.I. and LLMs, I think there’s even more opportunity for us to leverage these technologies. But we have a long term big, big effort into these technologies because they are really good at matching and relevancy and, you know, the things that we need to be great at to deliver you a great experience. And then the last thing your question was sort of do our pros have any anxiety about sort of A.I. and what that might mean for them? No, they don’t. And nor do I think they should. Open A.I. actually published a paper when they released Chat GPT4 that talked about sort of the implications of this technology. And inside of that, it looked at industries which were sort of most at risk and least at risk of being disrupted by these technologies. And if you look down the list, the list of industries that are not at risk, what you see is, you know, like mining, you know, Earth moving, Earth removal.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Super tactile. Yeah, yeah.

Marco Zappacosta:
And then, you know, your masons, your carpenters, your electricians, your plumbers. Not surprisingly, because the stuff is both really bespoke, but it’s incredibly physical. And so, no, I think these tools should only benefit this group, this industry, and I think it should make their jobs better. And ultimately, yeah, more profitable for them too.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Sure. No, absolutely. And I was, I was more referring to a small portion of a subset like headshot photographers or writers. Right. And that actually leads me to another question, because becoming the site and the app known by homeowners for everything home, home repair, home cleaning, inspection, improvement, etc., it must have taken you years as a brand to become known for that. But now you kind of ventured out so people can hire psychics. They can hire cute clowns, which is a category. They can hire software developers, etc. via Thumbtack. How did that come about? Like, how do you stay true to your brand’s heart and soul to its core, right, which we know that’s the core of the business. And then, why do you decide to still venture out into some of these like lesser important categories?

Marco Zappacosta:
So interestingly, we went the other way. We historically and at our start were totally broad. In fact, we had no categories.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Interesting.

Marco Zappacosta:
And so there was no ontology to keep you within. And that only came later. And it came because of a very frustrating reality and learning, which was that consumers had no conception really of what local services were as a category. They have never walked into a local services store, unlike grocery stores, department stores, clothing stores, etc. where if you move that concept online and say, hey, we’re an online grocer, people know exactly what you have there. That you have milk and bananas and bread, etc. But we created this online store for local services and people didn’t know what was inside of it. And so what would happen was if you came looking for a photographer, it was easy to think we had a bartender. And if you came in looking for an electrician, it was easy to think we had a plumber, but we saw no cross category purchases. And so to build that understanding and help people appreciate what we offer, we actually opted to narrow ourselves into home services. We still have this sort of long tail and it is a tension. It is a brand tension. We think that ultimately we will come back to a lot of that work, but the focus is really on the home and that is because when I tell you, hey, we help you with finding and hiring home services, you know exactly who we’re talking about. That’s a plumber, an electrician, a carpenter, etc. so that sort of merchandising is intuitive in a way that originally it was not at all.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Super interesting. And thanks for correcting me on that because that makes so much more sense that you just niche down and niche is a big, it’s a pretty, pretty big niche.

Marco Zappacosta:
Yes. It’s an extremely big niche. Exactly.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
And you know, talking about, talking about what you learned from your customers and that metaphor of like you can walk into that store and now you can walk in to it online. And if it doesn’t exist offline, it’s hard to start creating that online. Was there ever customer data that you saw and you made a gutsy move saying, you know what, we’re totally going against that because our instinct tells us they want faster horses, right?

Marco Zappacosta:
Mhm.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Let’s go against the customer’s data and actually go somewhere else because we think that that’s where the future is. Was there anything like that. I mean, I’m you’re a data driven company, so I think it’s interesting to see if sometimes the gut instinct takes over the data.

Marco Zappacosta:
Yeah. No, it’s there’s definitely been those moments. You know, I think the biggest is when we evolved the marketplace from being this request for quote system to being the search browse and sort of book concept you see today, and this was despite our pros in particular, not asking for it, in fact saying they did not want it and they thought that it was not possible. And so, you know, the tension that we were in was that we saw a future that was better for everybody, but it meant sort of moving backwards before we could go and get there. And so that, you really have to believe because you know you’re going to, it’s going to be hard work and you’re going to have to upset some people and upset some of your best customers to get there. And so, yeah, that transition and really the pro side of evolution, I think was tough, but it was sort of motivated by this belief that we were in the matchmaking business, that we help customers accomplish more and through that get things done. And if we want to serve that need and deliver that solution, we need to evolve from what we have today, what we had to what we have now. So yeah, that was, that was hard. That was scary. And then, you know, you have a lot of people who are very invested in serving these, these customers internally very well. And when they see the company, you know, make a move that is not in line with what this customer is asking for, that’s tough. There’s real tension in that for folks.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Well and don’t you now have some sort of kind of like a pro group that’s almost like an advisory board that that you can, that you bring together. I think that’s super interesting because I know some Fortune 5000s do that, right. And they bring in what they call focus groups. Right. But for you, it’s really more like an inner circle of pros that you invite to give feedback. Right.

Marco Zappacosta:
Exactly. We have a pro advisory council and it’s really this sort of brain trust that, of pros. They span, you know, a bunch of different industries. They are sort of in different stages of their own kind of careers and growth. And it’s kind of who we can go to very quickly and without our own ideas fully baked to get a reaction to yeah have something that they can sort of give us feedback. It just accelerates things because, you know, building products and shipping it is very expensive. You’re laying a lot of concrete to make that happen. And you better be right or close to right. And you know, that means really honing things in the prototype phase. And that’s where pro feedback and this pro counsel has been really invaluable.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Brilliant. Yeah, brilliant move. I think for most companies should have something like that. I’m running a startup and the first thing that I did is I created an advisory board where, where it’s basically like people from the industry and all the ones that are much smarter than me that are actually in it, you know, just having a monthly call. And it was so tremendously important for the success of it. So it’s fantastic.

Marco Zappacosta:
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
What was, when you look back at Thumbtack as you grew from idea into solution, into one day where you felt like, you know what, this is no longer a startup as a brand, we actually turned into a brand. People know it, people love us. This is it. Was there, I know there are thousands of of micro moments, right? But was there one big breakthrough moment where all of you said, wow. This is it.

Marco Zappacosta:
The one that comes to mind, you know, it was a specific but powerful moment for me. You know, I had always said success is when we become a verb, when somebody thinks of us as the way to solve this problem.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah.

Marco Zappacosta:
And I don’t think we have fully become a verb. But I remember the first time I heard somebody say that in the wild. I was at a wedding and it was just sort of somebody talking at the dinner table. And yeah, that really struck me because, you know, that had been the sort of marker of success.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
So someone said, you got to Thumbtack that?

Marco Zappacosta:
Yeah. Yeah, she was talking to a neighbor about some home project and her sort of solution to this friend was hey, you should just Thumbtack it. And that was very beautiful for me to hear. Now, I’ll tell you, I’d love to hear a whole lot more than I do. So I don’t think we’re done. I don’t think everybody thinks of us that way. But that first time was very gratifying.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
That’s super cool, I think. I don’t know if it was Stacy of Stacy’s Pita chips. I think it was. She said, she said her biggest breakthrough was when she saw the first littered bag, when she saw a bag on a marathon and it was on the floor trash. And she’s like, oh my God, I’m going to frame this. It’s that kind of moment. So no that’s, that’s very cool. On the flip side, you know, when you create a brand, things happen. A lot of things happen. Some are not good. You know where I’m heading with this. From the biggest success, what was like a big brand fail you went through. Something where you feel like someone can learn from it. Or it’s just like so embarrassing that it’s kind of fun.

Marco Zappacosta:
You know, I think our failure to merchandise our store, to get people to understand what we offered, I am sure holds lessons for others. And my big takeaway is you can’t swim upstream on kind of the mental models, especially consumers have for what they’re looking for and how they’re shopping. Sure, over time those can evolve. But you kind of have to fit inside or next to or sort of connected with their mental model for what they’re looking for and how they’re shopping. And we didn’t do that. And, you know, I think we, you know, being very young and very sort of like we were trying to be very bold in this, we sort of like that at first. And it took time to realize, actually, no, that’s a problem. That’s getting in our way. So that I think, was a big learning and one that we learned the hard way. Yeah, I think the other thing is, so it’s not so much a failure, but it’s just the power of this work. You know, I remember the first time we did this positioning work and, you know, we were probably four, maybe five years into the business. So still pretty early on. But we had started to achieve some scale and some momentum. And I’ll admit I was attracted to the concept. But, you know, having never worked anywhere else, I didn’t really know what it was going to bring and the value that it would create. And I was blown away at the power. And I think when people think and talk about branding, they often over index on the creative and the fidelity of the implementation, which obviously is incredibly important, but to me, what I saw create the most value was actually the ideas, the concept, because in some sense it serves as the strategic center of everything, of the product development, goals, of the storytelling that marketing is trying to do and that collectively serves to build the brand. But if you don’t have that sort of center of the bull’s eye, it’s impossible to create something that showcases that feeling, that sort of communicate something crisply. And so I was really blown away at how powerful it was. Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
That’s awesome. Yeah. I mean, I mean, obviously this is what I do and this is what I love doing and that this is exactly the reason why I love doing it. And I said previously, you know, it’s the idea that you have to create the word before you can spread the gospel and that’s it. And once you know the word, you’re like, oh my God, like let’s have everyone sing it. Like, let’s go company. This is it, right? So this kind of answers a little bit of another question that I had that my listeners always know I will ask, which is what does branding mean to you? And I think you already started hinting at that idea of, you know, that it is so much bigger than what people assume it is when they think about the visual part of it.

Marco Zappacosta:
To me it’s the essence of who we are and how we want to be known and remembered by our customers and the world. And I think you have to appreciate that people remember very little and they remember feelings, not facts. And so what is that feeling, that thought, that inspiration that we want everything that we do to exude so that when you interface with us, you can’t help but feel that such that when you leave, it’s how you remember us and talk about us. And yeah, that’s, that’s what branding is to me.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Absolutely. And if you, if you would take the Thumbtack brand and you would put it through a funnel and out comes one word. So let’s say Coca Cola on the one hand would be happiness and Liquid Death on the other hand would be mischief, right? Like what is one word that can describe Thumbtack as a brand?

Marco Zappacosta:
Yeah. So we’ve had two in our, in our sort of long history. The first was accomplishment. And accomplishment to me is the pride that comes from a job well done. Yeah, that’s right.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah. On both sides. Pro and consumer.

Marco Zappacosta:
You got it. And so accomplishment really has spoken to the kind of transactional vision that we had and have. And I would love to empower our customers and pros to accomplish anything. Right? That is incredibly motivating. But interestingly, despite that being kind of the bedrock of our focus for, you know, 10, 15 years, over the last few, we begun to evolve it because we think that it is a piece, but not all of what we want to be known for, because accomplishment speaks to getting things done but there’s this reality that it’s not just the convenience of getting to done, that it’s keeping you from doing things. It’s often the clarity of knowing what to do, the certainty and confidence of getting it done in the way that you want. And so the word that we are now going for and I’m cheating, it’s not one word, but it is a concept, is peace of mind. If we do our jobs right, everything that you interface with on Thumbtack, all of the stories you hear about us, will be about how we bring peace of mind to home ownership by providing certainty and confidence about what you can do and should do. And then, yes, make it easy to get it done and accomplish more. But at the core it’s to leave you with this feeling of peace of mind.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
And, you know, you know, it’s what is it? Is it All State like a good neighbor we’re there for you.

Marco Zappacosta:
Right.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
It’s that kind of idea that came from back in the seventies and eighties when you asked your neighbors for like, hey, do you have a good plumber? Right. That is peace of mind that you can trust the app, you can trust the site, like you said, accomplishment, even though it’s a huge component of it, it’s just one component of it. So makes tons of sense. As we as we slowly wrap things up. I listened to a TechCrunch interview the other day where you said optimists invent the future, which is a sentiment, it’s a sentiment that many will agree with. I definitely, definitely do. And I see myself amongst that group, even though it’s a hard grind being at the start. But if you’re not an optimist, like, you know, it’s really, really hard to power through. Besides relentless optimism, what is, what are some other, you know, just random advice as we wrap up that you can think about for founders who are currently in midst of building their own startups, their own companies, their own brands.

Marco Zappacosta:
You know, one thing I have observed and having kind of a longer time horizon now is that people who get into business or start something because they’re passionate about a technology or even a problem tend to run out of steam at some point, you know, at some point there’s a new technology that maybe is more interesting or a new problem that is shinier and harder. And I’ve seen what is most enduring for folks that sort of truly keeps them motivated and engaged over the long term is being kind of obsessed with the impact, you know, the output of what they are creating on the world. And that seems like something that, like a well that doesn’t run as dry. It’s not about novelty, it’s about area under the curve. And again, many reasons to be motivated to start something but I think the one that I’ve seen provide the most endurance is people who are just obsessed with the impact they can have through the business and platform they’re creating.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
It’s purpose driven but not purpose in the way of saving the world, but just that purpose at the heart of what they’re trying to solve and how it will impact the world, I think absolutely.

Marco Zappacosta:
I think, yeah, it’s you know, it gets wrapped up in this, with The New York Times. But, you know, I think of it, it’s almost more simple. Like, I want to know that the work I do matters.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah. Legacy right?

Marco Zappacosta:
No, no, not even like it. Like, because nobody’s going to remember our names. Like legacy is made up. It’s something we talk to ourselves about, literally. I’m working hard. And if I do a good job and work hard, that can lead to an impact in the world that I’m proud of. And that is very sustaining to me. And it feels like it gives me agency to try and make the world a little bit better and to feel like, yeah, you know, I put in what I could and hopefully made things a little bit better on my end, but not for legacy. Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
That’s exactly, that’s exactly what legacy means. But we’re not going to use the word.

Marco Zappacosta:
But like, how many people do you remember that were alive 100 years ago? Like a handful. How many do you remember that were alive 1000 years ago? Like three. It’s like, you know, humanity has a short term memory.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
You know, but that’s interesting. You know, not to go down that rabbit hole, but, you know, so it doesn’t necessarily mean to me that it needs to be that person. It’s more the legacy that that person leaves. Right. So if you guys and you might be totally nameless guys in 50 years from now, but if you completely reinvented how people actually get peace of mind, you know, with home ownership, then they will remember the brand and say, oh yeah, it was Thumbtack that totally changed that. Because of Thumbtack we can do this now. It might not be Marco.

Marco Zappacosta:
Yeah, well that’s not what gets me out of bed. I see that and I recognize that. But that is not what gets me out of bed. You know I hope to get to the point, what would truly satisfy me is if people would be like, wait, how did this even happen without Thumbtack? Like, I remember thinking about that. You know, looking for an apartment in my twenties. It’s like, wait, how did people find apartments before Craigslist? How do people search for stuff before Google like I am of a generation where I literally can’t think of the alternative. I don’t know what it is or how it worked. And I hope at some point there is a generation that has that thought with hiring a pro like oh, it’s easy, just Thumbtack it.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Totally love that. What’s next for Thumbtack? What’s next for the brand? What are you excited about in the next, in the next six months or so.

Marco Zappacosta:
Look, we’re really focused on making Thumbtack synonymous with peace of mind at home, and we want to give people the confidence and certainty that we can help take care of their most important asset. And so that is something that you’re going to see us go after in a big way and in the spring, we’re going to have more to share. But yeah, I’m really excited about how Thumbtack is going to continue to evolve to deliver this piece of mind that I know homeowners want and need.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
I love that. I love seeing that kind of like reset on the DNA and opening it up to that wider, to that wider positioning in that, in that sense, it’s going to be super exciting to see. Good luck with everything. How can people follow you personally or obviously we know where to find Thumbtack, you’ve got the dot com since 2008.

Marco Zappacosta:
We do have the dot com that’s right. But you can download the app. It’s best way to use us and you can follow me on Twitter at MLZ.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
On the X because you can’t tweet anymore.

Marco Zappacosta:
Sorry.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Because that beautiful verb of tweeting is gone. All right, Marco, this was really, really awesome. Thank you so much for spending almost an hour with us today.

Marco Zappacosta:
Thanks, Fabian. This was a blast.