TaskRabbit Launches Business Dashboard Aimed At Companies Looking For Temp Workers At SXSW

With a new corporate-minded COO in place, TaskRabbit is setting its sights on the business world.

The company, which runs an online marketplace to let people pay to outsource jobs and errands to background-checked individuals, today announced “TaskRabbit for business,” which is dedicated to helping companies source temporary workers for short-term jobs.

To kick off the concept, TaskRabbit is launching a business-focused web portal that will be available in Austin, Texas for the South By Southwest Interactive conference coming up in early March. TaskRabbit says that last year at SXSW just after it launched its service in Austin, a number of companies used TaskRabbit to find people for tasks such as street team marketing, supply delivery, and event staff. The new dashboard is aimed at making it much easier for companies attending SXSW to use TaskRabbit for such labor.

In terms of the competitive landscape, TaskRabbit says its business product is “more reliable than online classifieds and less costly than traditional temp agencies.”

Anyone who’s been to South By Southwest knows that it’s a huge conference that’s practically an industry in itself, with companies staffing up for lots of over-the-top marketing pushes. This seems like a smart way to get companies on board with the concept of using TaskRabbit to find temp workers that they could end up bringing home with them after SXSW is done.