Dec. 18, 2025

Some people need furniture assembled.

Or a TV mounted.

They’re looking for help with cleaning or yard work.

Or they’re in need of repair work.

With a few clicks, the idea is that those looking for help can find it from others nearby.

That’s the concept behind Taskrabbit, an online marketplace that launched in 2008 and expanded to Sioux Falls this year.

“Overall, we see continued growth in people who want to work more independently and not be tied to 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. jobs,” said Ania Smith, who came to Sioux Falls as a new American at age 12 and became CEO of Taskrabbit in 2020.

“This is in all skill sets. It’s not just for people helping around the home. It’s for designers and engineers and almost all industries. We see that people really want that flexibility and so are moving toward freelancing, especially as many of these platforms now exist and help connect them to clients.”

Smith has grown her own leadership career thanks to such platforms. Her resume includes leadership roles at Expedia, Walmart’s e-commerce operation, Airbnb and Uber. This year marked a full-circle moment as she saw Taskrabbit begin operating in Sioux Falls.

“I think it’s really fun to come back to my hometown and bring this service to people,” she said. “I have seen the benefits of it everywhere else, so it’s really exciting, and it means a lot to me.”

Climbing the ladder

Born in Poland, she came to Sioux Falls through an LSS program that resettled refugees in the Midwest.

“Often, it wasn’t in Manhattan and Chicago. It was usually in smaller places,” she said.

An Argus Leader clipping covered the story of Smith and her family moving to Sioux Falls.

Life as a new American growing up in Sioux Falls in the 1990s introduced Smith to a work ethic and entrepreneurial spirit that would manifest early on as a teen. Before her parents opened a restaurant, her father, Les Pietruszkiewicz, worked at John Morrell & Co. — now Smithfield Foods — and her mother, Agnes, worked at a factory making plastic bags and cleaning at the Holiday Inn City Centre. They later opened the Polish Plate restaurant.

“It’s a very typical immigrant story,” Smith said. “There was a lot of work involved and late nights, but it gave my mom opportunity to do something she loves, which is cooking, so it was a fun way for them to get into the community a bit more.”

At age 12, shortly after coming to Sioux Falls, Smith began waking up about 4 a.m. to deliver newspapers with her family and began growing her sales skills.

“It gave us an opportunity to sell and learn what it’s like to sell door-to-door, and as a kid, those kind of live with you forever because you have to learn what it’s like to take rejection and be resilient,” she said. “It was very motivating because we had nothing, and they were very smart in gamifying the process. If we sold X amount of subscriptions, you could … win things, and this concept of winning was very new to us and very exciting.”

As a student at O’Gorman High School, she was drawn to the political world, which led her to USD and a major in political science and economics.

“I wanted to work in government — I was really keen on trying to change the world,” she said.

A college internship in Washington, D.C., introduced her to the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. After graduation, she was hired by a contractor who did work for the agency and the World Bank.

She went back to school to earn an MBA at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, which “introduced me to a whole new world … of finance, which I knew nothing about, and strategic consulting,” she said. “That was really fun and very clear to me afterward that in order to pay back the student loans, I needed to go and get into the business world.”

Her timing coincided with the acceleration of online commerce, opening up opportunities everywhere, from travel platform Expedia to Walmart and then Airbnb in 2015, where she originally served as head of business operations for North America.

“I really enjoyed the whole concept of a marketplace and working on a platform where you are trying to connect, in this case, guests and hosts,” she said. “It’s very challenging because there are humans involved … and it didn’t exist before, so there was a lot to learn and a lot of really challenging problems to solve, and I really enjoyed the environment.”

It led to a similar opportunity with Uber, where she served as head of courier operations for its Uber Eats platform.

“I’d already spent several years on optimizing marketplaces, so from that perspective, it definitely made sense,” she said. “Both at Airbnb and Uber Eats, I worked on the supply side of the business — hosts and couriers — and I very much still have a soft spot for that part of the business, and that really comes from growing up in Sioux Falls as a refugee and really thinking how hard it was for my parents to make ends meet. These types of platforms did not exist back then, and (I) understand the type of lifeline they provide for people.”

‘One task at a time’

If you’ve ever tried to assemble furniture from Ikea, you might relate to the appeal of hiring someone to do it for you.

The value proposition was enough to attract the global retailer to acquire the startup that would become Taskrabbit in 2017. It was founded in 2008 in Boston as RunMyErrand when founder Leah Busque wanted to find someone to buy dog food in a snowstorm and was inspired to create a neighborhood marketplace for connecting people needing odd jobs done. It was rebranded to Taskrabbit two years later.

“Our growth rates are increasing,” Smith said. “Year over year, we’re up (over) 20 percent (in the number of taskers) … and we’re excited about the opportunity, especially coming out of COVID. I think a lot of people recognize how valuable their time is.”

Not only are users looking to maximize their time, but also they’re finding ways to accomplish things they don’t know how to do with the help of others, she said.

“I could never mount a TV. I have no idea how to do that or even fix a doorknob, but I’m very grateful there are people who do and are really good at that,” she said. “They’re not going to scratch your walls moving the couch out of your apartment.”

In Sioux Falls, Taskrabbit launched in late summer with hundreds of “taskers” registering. The number grew by 28 percent between October and November.

“They have to go through a process, which can sometimes take a little bit of time because they have to do a background check, but we have … taskers online, and we started slowly getting some jobs where people can book taskers to do really skillful work around the house,” Smith said.

For example, a recent search on Taskrabbit for Sioux Falls yielded people willing to help with furniture assembly, moving and painting, for example.

At a certain inflection point, “the market matures,” Smith continued. “In the early days, it’s about getting more and more people on both sides of the marketplace so they start experiencing it and start seeing the amazing benefit of it.”

Smith uniquely appreciates the flexibility such platforms provide for the people who offer services through them.

“My parents were trying to … do hourly jobs, and it was always about getting more hours,” she said. “How do we get more hours at two places and shifts that somewhat matched, yet they can still be raising a family, and that’s really hard. I know if we had the types of platforms we do now, life would have been much easier for my parents. This really makes me believe in our mission to transform lives one task at a time.”