Pickle Adds Social Element To Skills Marketplace

Pickle, a peer-to-peer mobile app that enables people to do jobs for each other, has splashed onto the scene in the growing share your skills marketplace, reported TechCrunch.

With the app, users say what they want or need and how much they will pay for it, and others with the skills or the ability answer and negotiate and accept the job. Payment is made via PayPal, and once the transaction is complete, both users rate each other. Pickle is looking to raise more funding via a seed round, noted the report.

To add a social element to the Android- and iOS-based app, users can dare each other to do things. Pickle’s founder, Daneh Westropp, told TechCrunch the app is targeted at Generation Z as well as young millennials who want to translate their interest into paying gigs. They typically pick up tasks that mesh with areas in which they have expertise or interest. The entrepreneur said the app has 90,000 users since launching January, all via word of mouth, potentially because of the social element of it. She argued in the report that Taskrabbit and Bizzby operate “inflexible business models, with long verification processes, limited tasks which translate into expensive and boring interactions with the consumer.”

The app, which includes Westropp, Bee Binitie and Dmitry Hans as founders, has two angel investors, Frederic Hofmann, who is a director at Anthemis group, and Nick Robbins, noted the report. To protect the security of the users of the app, Westropp said the company has several safety measures in place, including phone number verification, social network verification and ratings, among other things.