Fiverr's $30M funding shows that the TaskRabbit model is growing

Need someone to write your wedding thank you notes? Or to proofread your resume, or even just make you a video of a puppet show? Online marketplace Fiverr is where you’d get those needs met, and it seems to be going well for the startup.

Today, the company announced that it has raised $30 million in a third round of institutional funding to continue supporting the new version of its marketplace that it released today.

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Fiverr’s online marketplace enables people to either post tasks or jobs they’re available to do and for what price, taking its name from the original $5 gigs postings until it upped the maximum price to $500 last summer. The listings on Fiverr are usually in creative areas such as writing thank you notes or painting someone’s portrait, and most of them are things people can handle remotely. Fiverr lets the freelancers set their own price when posting their jobs.

In the new incarnation of Fiverr, it’s becoming even more like a true marketplace such as eBay or Amazon, with a new user interface with better and more refined search capabilities. The new interface will categorize jobs into categories and subcategories to make it faster to find what they’re looking for, as well as advanced search features. Fiverr’s goal is to make searching for and purchasing of services as easy as shopping for items online, especially since it’s seen a rise in businesses using Fiverr to get certain tasks done. It will begin with 10 categories of services as part of this interface update, and will extend it to the rest of its categories in the next few weeks.

“One of the many reasons Fiverr is so exciting is that it is the only service-based marketplace modeled on e-commerce platforms,” says Bessemer Venture Partners Adam Fisher in a statement. Bessemer participated in this round.

“Like eBay and Amazon, customers simply browse, search, and buy, selecting from more than 100 categories and millions of services. It’s as easy as buying a book online. Why hire someone to do something that is done thousands of times a day for a pricey sum and an unknown delivery date when you can order for next day delivery on Fiverr?”

Fiverr is part of the recent trend of marketplaces helping put more order and efficiency in the freelancer economy along with TaskRabbit, oDesk, Freelancer.

Along with Bessemer, Accel Partners, Qumra Capital, and other investors also participated in the round. This brings Fiverr’s total funding to $50 million.