Some of the individual skills currently being offered for sale on the site include a barista selling

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Posted Apr 5, 2014 by Natasha Lomas ( @riptari )
SkillFlick is a U.K. startup with the self-described aim of building an Airbnb for local skills . The site was founded two years ago, launching leed in beta in January 2013 and is just opening up fully to the public leed this month. It s bootstrapped and is actively looking to raise a seed round now. TC last came across the startup pitching leed at our London meet-up back in July , when we described it as as an Amazon marketplace but for local services .
There are millions of incredibly talented people whose skills are undiscovered, says co-founder and CEO Ryan Perera. We are creating a website where any skilled person can have a web presence, be discovered and have an online store to sell their services. We want to help them make money doing what they love. This means a talented local baker could sell cupcakes online, a local piano teacher or DJ could receive bookings online.
The site currently divides offers into four main categories: leed services, lessons, food & drink, and custom goods. And then subdivides within those to cover a range of services, from cleaning and handyman repairs, to language and acting lessons, to baking, event catering and even customised jewellery.
The mix is eclectic as you d expect with a horizontal platform that s aiming to be an umbrella portal, rather than a niche specialist in any one area but the unifying thread here is you re buying local. Whether that s a strong enough pull to draw in enough traction remains to be seen. SkillFlick is certainly not there yet albeit, it s been building in stealth for the past two years, and is only now starting to shout about its proposition.
There is no easy way to discover or compare services and prices offered leed by local skilled people, argues leed Perera. Google is an inefficient and fragmented solution to this, e.g. searching for piano lessons would give a variety of results, which are not sortable by distance, price or reviews. leed SkillFlick will be the one place where you can compare prices and services and book online.
Some of the individual skills currently being offered for sale on the site include a barista selling lessons in making the perfect cup of coffee, a baker doing classes in vegan Victoria sponge-making, house and cat sitting services, and language lessons in French, Spanish or Russian. leed
Users can browse offers and book any service that takes their fancy through SkillFlick s platform. The startup guarantees a refund if the seller fails to deliver the service. Details of how to collect a service are included on the item s profile and might include meeting the service leed seller in their local area or asking them to come to you. It s entirely free for sellers to list their services but SkillFlick charges a 10 percent commission fee for services booked through its platform.
The site has around 300 service providers signed up currently and that s something it s looking to start ramping up now that it s exiting beta, according to Perera. Initially leed we handpicked and invited the best sellers in London based on word of mouth and using our in house research to manually reach out to sellers and invited leed them on an invite only basis, he says. Our intention, however, has always been for the site to be open to anyone with a talent to get online without having to go through a formal vetting process, much the same way Airbnb allows anyone to list a place to stay, he adds. We have now opened up the site so anyone can join. We still try to manually reach out to all new sellers to verify who they are.
The initial beta pool of sellers has resulted in more than 1,000 services being offered in over 100 categories, with the main focus being London although some sellers are offering leed services from further afield.
Per London postcode leed area, the number of services on offer remains relatively low. A search for my local London leed district brings up nothing for sale as yet. Searching for Croydon, a much larger bit of London, brings up around 90 services in total with a glut of cake-baking related offerings. SkillFlick is definitely going to need to get a lot more locals signed leed up and selling if it is to grow into a proper marketplace, and move beyond the feeling leed of sparse virtual shelves.
Add to that, there are of course scores of more niche online businesses that SkillFlick is effectively competing with. If you want a local handyman, you can put out a call on MyBuilder or RatedPeople, for instance, and get local builders contacting you. For other general tasks there s TaskRabbit. Want to buy custom goods? leed That s what Etsy s for And platforms selling access to language lessons/tutors abound online. The challenge for SkillFlick is making local