 |
|
|
|||||
While home sales and remodeling rates remain low, Thumbtackwhich connects homeowners with professionals to do work on their housessays business is booming. In fiscal 2024, Thumbtack saw revenue of $400 million, up 27% from the previous year, with billions of dollars going to the roughly 300,000 small businesses that book work through the platform. Cofounder and CEO Marco Zappacosta attributes the companys success to more than 15 years of work helping users find the right, trustworthy professionaleven if theyre not entirely sure what they need to fix a problem in their homebolstered by recent advances in artificial intelligence. “You’ve got to remember this is, on average, a $1,000 purchase,” Zappacosta says. “It’s not something you do casually.” [Photo: Thumbtack] Zappacosta believes it’s inevitable that the vast majority of home maintenance and remodeling bookings will ultimately move online, similar to the travel and transportation industries. What sets this industry apart, however, is the sheer number of service typesThumbtack lists professionals in about 500 different categories, from ceramic tile installation to black mold remediation. To help users understand what’s available and how services match their needs, the company has offered an AI-powered search feature since last year. It allows users to describe home issues in plain language, rather than rely on keyword searches or Yellow Pages-style lookups for terms like “plumber” or “electrician.” Thumbtack is also testing an AI feature that lets users upload photos of home issues, such as a leak through the ceiling, to get help finding the right professional. As AI grows more powerful, it can help transform the experience of booking home services from a traditional internet search into something more like a conversation with a savvy neighbor, Zappacosta suggests. [Photo: Thumbtack] “The opportunity that AI creates for our business is at any point in the process, if you have a question or concern, or if you have to make a decision, we can arm you with the relevant context to help you evaluate that and confidently take action,” he says. Even before the rise of large language models, the company offered a collection of home project guides, including advice to help people decide when to tackle a task themselves and when to hire an expert. Alongside reminders of scheduled work and tools to rebook trusted pros, the Thumbtack app also provides customized guidance on when to perform various maintenance tasksguidance Zappacosta suggests will only improve as AI systems advance and the company gathers more data about users, their homes, and their needs. AI can also likely help professionals optimize their use of Thumbtack, Zappacosta says, enabling them to better configure platform features to find sales leads suited to their businesses. “The focus on pros is always how we can provide them more consistent value,” he says. [Photo: Thumbtack] Thumbtack’s technical edge, says Sequoia Capital partner and Thumbtack board member Bryan Schreier, gives the company a strong chance of becoming the go-to platform for home servicesakin to Uber for ride-hailing or DoorDash for delivery. “Owning a home is complex, and so I think it’s just taken a while to deliver the technical achievement that is required to become the Uber of the home services space, because it is so complex,” Schreier says. “In the last couple of years, in terms of its growth and profitability, I think the secret behind [Thumbtack’s] emergence is the fact that they have cracked the technological nut behind what had been holding back a company from becoming the Uber of the home services space until now.” In parallel with its AI efforts, Thumbtack has forged partnerships with other online platforms, including providing search results for home improvement-related terms on Nextdoor. The company was also recently featured in an Amazon preview of upcoming AI enhancements for Alexa, which would be able to book professionals on users behalf. These partnerships now account for 10% of Thumbtacks annual revenue and help deliver its services to users even if they dont visit the site directly. “Hiring pros and dealing with your home is a huge activityit happens in a ton of places on the internet,” says Zappacosta. “And increasingly, platforms are utilizing us as the best way to fulfill a homeowner’s hiring needs.”
Category:
E-Commerce
When the House of Cinema in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, was demolished in 2017, it was an architectural awakening for the city. A large circular concrete building completed in 1982, the House of Cinema was an instant cultural and architectural landmark in the city, then part of the Soviet Union. Its demolition, to make way for a controversial commercial development project, spurred many in the city to worry about which landmark would fall next. That led the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation to launch a citywide research project to document endangered buildings. Most were built between the late 1960s and early 1980s when the Soviet Union sought to frame its ambitions through civic architecture. Many buildings from this time embraced modernism, with swooping facades, inventive structural forms, and artful mosaic panels adorning interiors and exteriors. As public buildings, their fates were at the whims of government leaders eager to develop the city into a 21st century economic powerhouse, which is how the House of Cinema was destroyed. [Photo: Karel Balas/Tashkent: A Modernist Capital, Rizzoli New York/courtesy of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation] To try to stop others from falling, the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation funded a team of international researchers, historians, and architects to undertake Tashkent Modernism XX/XXI, a research project documenting the city’s modernist structures, and rallying for their preservation. [Photo: Karel Balas/Tashkent: A Modernist Capital, Rizzoli New York/courtesy of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation] The concentration of modernist architecture is very high in Tashkent, but what truly sets it apart is the remarkable number of well-planned, innovative, and elegantly designed public buildings, says architect Ekaterina Golovatyuk, one of the experts involved in the project and a co-founder of Grace Studio, a Milan-based architecture, design, and urbanism firm. Underway since 2018, the research project has documented 24 key modernist sites across the city. Of those, 21 have secured national heritage site status, along with 154 mosaic panels, protecting them from demolition. [Cover Image: Rizzoli] These buildings, and the ongoing effort to save them, is the subject of a pair of new books, Tashkent: A Modernist Capital, published by Rizzoli New York, and Tashkent Modernism XX/XXI, published by Lars Müller Publishers. The books reveal Tashkent as an under appreciated hotbed of modernist architecture, and a historical turning point for both Soviet and post-Soviet Central Asia. At one point the fourth largest city in the Soviet Union, Tashkent was chosen in the 1950s as a showcase of the Soviet Orient, which resulted in an architectural boom. The city was meant to demonstrate how well socialism could adapt to a different cultural context, Golovatyuk says. This initiated a very interesting search for local identity, contended between architects from Tashkent and Moscow. The result was a transformation of traditional architectural elements within the framework of a modernist language. State Museum of History [Photo: Karel Balas/Tashkent: A Modernist Capital, Rizzoli New York/courtesy of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation] This building spree took on new urgency in 1966 when a massive earthquake damaged much of the city. The city’s recovery coincided with a Soviet Union-wide emphasis on prefabricated building and new forms of construction, leaving Tashkent with a wide variety of inventive and modern buildings. Palace of Peoples’ Friendship [Photo: Karel Balas/Tashkent: A Modernist Capital, Rizzoli New York/courtesy of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation] The Tashkent Modernism XX/XXI research project has put this legacy under a new spotlight, helping to save many buildings from demolition while also underscoring their significance as the city grows. Some of these buildings are also being seen in a broader context. Golovatyuk and Giacomo Cantoni, co-founder of Grace Studio, were recently named curators of Uzbekistan’s national pavilion at the upcoming Venice Architecture Biennale. Their exhibition will focus on one project included in the research project, a large-scale scientific complex outside Tashkent known as the Sun Heliocomplex. Dedicated to studying solar energy, it was ahead of its time in both design and intention. Big Solar Furnace [Photo: Karel Balas/Tashkent: A Modernist Capital, Rizzoli New York/courtesy of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation] Golovatyuk says this project and others that are being saved through the Tashkent Modernism XX/XXI research project are finding new relevance, especially within Uzbekistan, where contemporary architects are building on their heritage. I think the search for national identity restarted almost from scratch when Uzbekistan gained independence in 1991, says Golovatyuk, who first visited Tashkent in 2006. Many buildings have sought to establish continuity with the pre-Soviet past through ornamentation, probably in a more exuberant manner than during the modernist period. Big Solar Furnace [Photo: Karel Balas/Tashkent: A Modernist Capital, Rizzoli New York/courtesy of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation] An emerging generation of young architects is taking particular inspiration from the buildings being preserved through the Tashkent Modernism XX/XXI research project, creating what Golovatyuk calls a more sophisticated dialogue with both tradition and the modernist past. Palace of Peoples’ Friendship [Photo: Karel Balas/Tashkent: A Modernist Capital, Rizzoli New York/courtesy of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation] The effort to save and recognize these buildings is city-specific for Tashkent, where modernism is now a kind of calling card. But it’s also a fight that exists in cities around the world, such as Philadelphia, where an internationally renowned police headquarters building is losing a long preservation battle, and Boston, where the government center complex is a perennial demolition target. Palace of Culture of Aviators [Photo: Karel Balas/Tashkent: A Modernist Capital, Rizzoli New York/courtesy of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation] A few of these buildings faced at least some risk of transformation, but I believe it is to be expected. The city has been undergoing rapid growth for the past eight years, there is significant pressure on all real estate, Golovatyuk says. This kind of pressure is the fate of modernism not only in Tashkent, but worldwide. The research project’s success in securing protected status for Tashkent’s modernist buildings could be a playbook for other cities to follow.
Category:
E-Commerce
The news has been something of a hellscape lately, and the urge to doomscroll is destined to worsen rising anxieties about tariffs and the cost of living. Luckily, theres a new website that you can turn to if you need a bit of a brain break, and its all about chickens. Chicken.pics is a site from the mind of Erika Hall, cofounder of the design consultancy Mule. In a new subsection on the site, called Clickens, users are presented with two paintings of chickens and asked to judge them based on a hyper-specific adjective: For example, one might have to choose which of two hens is more maladjusted, mephistophelean, or persnickety. All of the chickens are hand-painted by Hall, and there are over 200 of them, as well as more than 200 potential adjectives, which means the chicken show-down options are functionally infinite. Its a nostalgic concept that harkens back to an early 2010s era of the internet, when silly stunt websites were everywhereand its a reminder that sometimes, the internet can still be fun. [Photo: chicken.pics] Which chicken is more punk? The idea for Clickens hatched back in 2021, when Hall was on a sabbatical to write her book, Just Enough Research, and was, by her own admission, looking for ways to procrastinate. She took up painting with watercolors and gouache as a sufficiently distracting side-hobby, but soon found it difficult to imagine new things to paint. Chicken was top of mind at the time because Halls senior pug, Rupert, had begun preferring the meat over his usual canned food. [Photo: chicken.pics] I thought, You know what, if I have to cook all this chicken for my silly little dog, I need to do something for the chickens, because we take chickens for granted, Hall says. Like, there’s 33 billion of them on the planet, and we just turn them into nuggets and things. And I thought, I’m going to honor these chickens that I’m feeding to my dog by really trying to see chickens and help other people see chickens. So, Hall started painting chickensand just didnt stop. Soon, square profile pics of chickens were covering her kitchen walls. Last year, she set up Chicken.pics to as a gallery to display the works. [Photo: chicken.pics] I made this website last year called Chicken.picswhich is, like, the greatest domain everbecause the web has gotten all platformized, and there just aren’t fun, stupid websites anymore, Hall says. So I decided I was going to restart the web from first principles and just make a website. It’s not trying to sell you anything. It’s just got pictures of chickens. In the last week of February, a friend helped Hall add the Clickens feature to the website, which pits two random chickens against each other in a battle of adjectives, hot or not style, Hall says. In just over a month, more than 74,000 votes have been cast on the site. People need something to do that isn’t doom scrollingthat was the intention, Hall says. It’s just a silly thing for people to do.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||