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Marco Zappacosta, co-founder and CEO of Thumbtack, joins NEW ECONOMIES to explain why Google search volume has reaccelerated to an all-time high post-ChatGPT, why the customers now converting through AI chat are more qualified and further into their decision than any channel Thumbtack has seen before, and why marketplaces for hiring humans, unlike commodity marketplaces such as Uber or food delivery, are mediated by certainty and confidence rather than speed and price.
About Thumbtack
Thumbtack is a technology company helping millions of people confidently care for and improve their homes. Every day in every county of the U.S., people turn to Thumbtack to complete small fixes, routine maintenance, and major improvements. With over 12 million 5-star projects and counting, they help homeowners and home professionals accomplish more.
Watch Now: Marco Zappacosta - co-founder of Thumbtack
We also cover why word of mouth, not a competitor, is Thumbtack’s biggest threat, capturing 80% of home-services demand through calls to neighbors and posts in group chats, and how LLMs are finally solving a personalization problem Thumbtack couldn’t crack in 20 years, replacing one generic question set per category with fully bespoke, project-specific questioning, using Marco’s own Murphy bed installation as the test case. We get into why almost no startup has survived in a marketplace category with close to a trillion dollars of spend, and what half the Thumbtack product team is now rebuilding around AI.
We close on the interface shift Marco almost missed, voice, not text, the board seat he still wants to fill, and where he expects human-capital marketplaces to go over the next 20 years.
This was a fascinating episode! Available everywhere you listen to podcasts.
Watch or listen now across YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and X
Download the transcript 👇
Timestamps
(0:00) Meet Marco Zappacosta
(1:57) Thumbtack Turns Nearly 20
(3:00) Why Marketplaces Are Challenging
(6:30) Thumbtack's First 12 Months
(8:57) How Thumbtack Uses AI Today
(17:34) The Ideal Customer Profile
(19:18) How Homeownership Is Changing
(24:09) Why Experts Have High Expectations
(26:55) Building Trust With Users in Today's Environment
(29:03) Experts Communicating Offline
(30:54) Tensions With Marketplaces
(33:12) Integrating AI Into Thumbtack's Complex Stack
(38:42) Where and How to Place Bets
(42:04) The Next Big Opportunity
(44:29) How Marco Runs Thumbtack
(51:02) What Is Still Yet to Be Achieved?
(52:14) Rapid Fire
Our notes from this conversation
1. AI customers convert better than search customers ever did.
Post-ChatGPT, Google search volume for Thumbtack-relevant categories has reaccelerated to its highest point ever, but the more telling shift is on the AI side: users arriving via ChatGPT or Claude are more qualified, more motivated, and further into the decision than a typical search customer. Volume is still low, but Marco is treating it as the leading indicator for how discovery gets rebuilt.
2. Word of mouth, not a competitor, is Thumbtack’s real adversary.
80% of home-services demand still flows through a call to a neighbor or a post in a group chat. Marco sees the AI moment as the first real chance to intercept that demand before it disappears into an informal network Thumbtack can’t see or monetize.
3. Hiring a human is not a commodity purchase.
Marketplaces like Uber and food delivery compete on speed and price because the average basket is under $50. Home services average around $1,000 per purchase with real consequences for getting it wrong, so the decision is mediated by certainty and peace of mind, not convenience.
4. Marketplaces are brutal to bootstrap — and that difficulty is the moat.
Despite near-trillion-dollar category spend, almost no home-services startup has survived alongside incumbents like Angi and Yelp. The same friction that kills most entrants is what protects the few that break through to compounding scale.
5. LLMs are solving a 20-year personalization problem overnight.
Thumbtack historically applied one generic question set per project category, fine for common jobs, useless for anything niche. Marco’s own Murphy bed installation became the test case: an LLM asked the right follow-up questions instantly, something no static form could match at that level of specificity.
6. Half the product team is now rebuilding around AI.
Marco describes the integration as touching everything, core matching, the customer and pro experience, pricing, refunds, monetization. It’s a ground-up rebuild, not a feature bolted on top.
7. Voice is the interface shift he almost missed.
Asked what he’s changed his mind on in the past year, Marco points to voice as input and output, not because it’s novel, but because it removes typing entirely for how his kids and Thumbtack’s pros interact with technology. He doesn’t think it kills the keyboard, but expects it to sit alongside it as a default mode.
The board seat he still wants to fill: a technologist.
His current board covers CFO, CEO, and COO backgrounds, but he’s missing a product-obsessed technologist, someone in the mold of Snap’s Evan Spiegel, to pressure-test where AI takes the product next.
Links
Follow Ollie on X - https://x.com/ollieforsyth.
Follow Marco on X - https://x.com/mlz.
Visit Thumbtack - http://thumbtack.com.
Partnership: Harmonic is the go-to startup database - https://harmonic.ai.
Partnership: Hostinger is as a go-to tool for builders. Subscribers receive 10% off here - https://hostinger.com/neweconomies.
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