Thumbtack Profile: Pandemic Layoffs, Business Model, and Current Status

Category: local commerce
Pandemic-layoff role: Additional sourced company
Last updated: 2026-09-26

Founders, executives and investors

Zappacosta was chief executive in 2020. Thumbtack had raised a $150 million round in 2019, TechCrunch reported.

Business before the pandemic

Thumbtack lists local service professionals, which it calls "pros," for customers who need a painter, a handyman, a DJ or a math tutor. Much of the work is done on site, like the sink replacement Zappacosta used as an example.

What the pandemic changed

Shelter-in-place orders stopped much of that work. On March 30, 2020, Zappacosta wrote on the company blog that the local services on Thumbtack were seeing anything from a "dramatic decline" to an "outright collapse." Nationwide, DJ jobs were down 82 percent, house cleaning 65 percent and interior painting 53 percent. Thumbtack's own revenue, he wrote, had "declined dramatically in recent weeks alongside that of our pros." "No business operates with enough of a buffer to sustain prolonged revenue declines of 40%+ without making radical changes," he wrote.

The layoffs were the third round of cuts. About two weeks earlier Thumbtack had reduced marketing spend, frozen hiring and cut internal programs for employees. On March 30 Zappacosta took no salary, his executive team cut their salaries by 25 percent, and staff at mid-senior level and above were asked to reduce their pay. The same day 250 employees were laid off, with severance packages "that include both cash and equity components." Neither the post nor TechCrunch's report said what share of the workforce the 250 were. California's WARN report lists a permanent layoff of 129 employees at Thumbtack, Inc. in San Francisco, with notice dated March 30, effective April 1 and received by the state on May 20.

For pros, the post offered features for remote work, "like video consults for a sink replacement that would typically be done onsite," and research on contact-free work. Zappacosta called that "only a drop in the bucket compared to what the government can and must do right now." On March 31 the company blog listed government relief for small businesses, among it the Paycheck Protection Program and refundable payroll tax credits for paid leave. On April 6 it asked customers to "Consider tipping or paying now for work that you've postponed." We found no 2020 Thumbtack post announcing a fee waiver or credit for pros.

Pandemic-relief role

Thumbtack did not lend or process relief. The May 6, 2020 letter from the five platforms went to Speaker Pelosi and Leaders McConnell, McCarthy and Schumer and was posted on Thumbtack's website; Etsy published a statement with it the same day. In the statement, the platforms said the self-employed were "prevented from applying for PPP loans until a full week after employer businesses applied (when the funding had nearly run out)," and that "the rules were written in a way that disadvantaged them relative to larger businesses." They called on Congress "to fix the programs they created through the CARES Act, and create new dedicated funding for our smallest entrepreneurs."

The letter noted that Congress had appropriated $659 billion to PPP. It asked Congress to set aside a share of new PPP money for loans of $100,000 or less and to fund grants of 30 percent of a business's 2019 gross receipts, up to $75,000. It also asked that banks be made to accept a range of documents from the self-employed, including "net or gross earnings and revenue statements issued by organizations like ours." That last request would have made the platforms' own statements acceptable loan documentation.

SBA's PPP loan data list no loan to a borrower named Thumbtack. Thumbtack did borrow in 2020, from Hercules Capital, a business development company that makes "senior secured loans to high-growth, innovative venture capital-backed companies." Hercules had owned a warrant for 190,953 Thumbtack common shares since May 2018. On March 31, 2020, Hercules valued that warrant at $219,000, down from $958,000 three months earlier, and listed no Thumbtack loan. At June 30 it listed a senior secured loan to Thumbtack with $25.04 million of principal, due September 2023. The rate was prime plus 3.45 percent with an 8.95 percent floor, plus 1.50 percent interest paid in kind and a 3.95 percent exit fee. Read together, the two schedules place the loan between April 1 and June 30, 2020, the quarter after the layoffs. Principal, which Hercules's footnote says includes accumulated paid-in-kind interest, stood at $25.23 million at the end of 2020 and $25.62 million at the end of 2021. At September 30, 2022, Hercules listed one Thumbtack loan, due April 2026, with $10.07 million drawn and a further $40 million committed but unfunded; the warrant then covered 267,225 shares.

In a July 28, 2020 post, Thumbtack said 65 percent of the close to 700 home-focused pros it had surveyed earlier that year reported lower revenue.

In September 2020 Thumbtack's blog described how some pros had adapted: a mobile bartender with no events for three months began selling delivered brunch baskets, a music teacher moved lessons online and said his student list had grown 350 percent since March, and a house cleaner who lost most of his vacation-rental clients added sanitizing services.

After 2020, by the company's account

On March 31, 2021, a year after moving to remote work, Thumbtack said it had achieved "the best business performance we've ever seen." In November 2021 it cited "900+ employees," and in January 2022 it said customers had started more than 7 million projects in 2021. Thumbtack, Inc. files no annual reports with the SEC: its EDGAR record lists three Form D notices, all filed September 28, 2012. In Thumbtack's 2022 survey of more than 2,800 small-business owners, the federal government got an F, down from a C+ the year before.

Founders, executives and investors

Business before the pandemic

What the pandemic changed

Pandemic-relief role

After 2020, by the company's account

Sources