People-hiring service TaskRabbit acquires service-auctioning site SkillSlate

TaskRabbit, a San Francisco-based startup that lets you hire people to do simple tasks like wait in line to pick up your dry cleaning, has acquired SkillSlate, a New York-based startup that lets you auction your skills, services and time.

It’s a match made in heaven, and we wish these crazy kids the best.

The two services, while complementary, are not identical, so bringing the SkillSlate product and team into the fold will also allow TaskRabbit to broaden its own product and release some new features.

In a blog post on the acquisition, TaskRabbit co-founder Leah Busque and CEO/co-founder Eric Grosse write,

SkillSlate crowdsources its network of service providers to help its customers with any task they need done or alternatively, provide instruction on a particular skill they’d like to develop. Sound familiar? SkillSlate is certainly similar to TaskRabbit, particularly in the sense that it’s a service marketplace. What makes SkillSlate unique, though, is its focus on skill-based and artistic tasks – including personal training, tutoring, DJing and even fire dancing. By integrating SkillSlate’s platform with TaskRabbit’s, we will be able to provide an even more enhanced service – one where folks can get help with practically anything.

While the teams couldn’t disclose the terms of the deal, a TaskRabbit spokesperson revealed in an email to VentureBeat that the entire SkillSlate team is planning to relocate to San Francisco.

“TaskRabbit launched in New York this past summer, and the area has already become our second largest market,’ the rep noetd. “Combining our user base with SkillSlate’s will surely bolster our presence and growth on both coasts.”

The conversations about an acquisition had been going on for several months, the rep told us.

“Both TaskRabbit and SkillSlate are First Round Capital portfolio companies, so we have known about each other for some time. When looking at our two services, merging the two makes perfect sense. As far as timing goes, the acquisition goes perfectly with our expansion strategy, though the announcement being right after our Series B was announced is coincidental.”

TaskRabbit’s $17.8 million round of funding was closed in December 2011. The deal was the startup’s second round of institutional funding; TaskRabbit also raised a $5 million round in May 2011. To date, TaskRabbit has raised a total of $24.7 million in venture capital and seed money.