Temp agencies employ 2.6 million people a year in the US. It's fragmented and inefficient in a way that is mildly predatory to workers. My guess is that software could replace the temp agency middleman and help "employ" 1 million+ folks.
A website for US-based temps, "physical delivery" of employees, is interesting. I'm not aware of any service that does this. Like Uber for people!
If physical presence isn't required, Elance, Odesk and even Amazon Mechanical Turk exist. Drives cost of labor down to the $1/hour range (globally competitive) - probably not what Sam is getting at here.
It's also really interesting to see this idea. My initial read is that this sounds like a response to the common criticism that Silicon Valley destroys jobs in aggregate ("software eats the world.") Will be fascinating to see if something emerges here.
You are definitely onto something huge here [1]: you could be improving the livelihood of millions with an app to allow people to fill in on temp jobs at competitive wages with the click of a button. Talk of a massive impact...
The road ahead is steep, though. At first I thought Leah's TaskRabbit would eventually head that way, but to me it strikes me as if she's still massively underestimating the potential of her platform. Justin Kan's Exec and its postmortem doesn't bode too well, either (but it's still an insightful read) [2]. I'm pretty sure though you and AB have what it takes to figure it all out.
The propublica article opened my eyes to many things. It's a 134 billion dollar a year market that's highly fragmented - top 4 largest only account for 11% of the market. Sounds like a problem for software.
Taskrabbit is for tasks, which are great, but not in as much demand as weekly, monthly, or even daily stints. Think the local starbucks, a small business around the holiday hours, or even accounting (Robert Half is big on this).
Overall, it has the potential for a very large impact and massive business. Look at the jobs report today. If you could more efficiently help employ 1 million people the economy is improved. You're also looking at one of the largest workforces and businesses in the country.
btw, sounds like you know Andres and I. Can't tell who this is by your username. Feel free to drop me a line - j@jasonlbaptiste.com
