IAG Firemark Ventures is IAG's $75M venture fund investing in emerging technologies with the potential to disrupt the value chain, create new pathways to market, and enhance customer understanding.
After a recent raise from IAG, assess whether Airtasker is a worth a follow investment by us and determine more synergies and commercialisation approaches with IAG products.
At this point in time, IAG’s core business was under growing challenge, so the exploration and investment to enhance or create new revenue streams was fundamental to the future of IAG.
IAG had already invested in Airtasker the year prior, so we were well across the space they operated and where they sat in market. Airtasker had attempted to expand their product into the UK, but it was not going as smoothly as they had forecasted. They were seeking a raise to continue their expansion.
We had to determine whether Airtasker had the right strategies in place to successfully expand into the UK despite the challenges they were facing. We spent time assessing their business strategy, product strategy, distribution strategy and their financials to determine where they were bleeding cash. After several workshops with the team and our deep dive analysis, we determined that the follow on investment was a good idea not only to be a good investor to our portfolio companies, but the extra capital would help catapult Airtasker to reach its objectives.
Whilst IAG was already running experiments and pilots with Airtasker, several more came out of our discussions. The synergies overall were for IAG:
Access to data about the cost of services (both trades and less skilled workers)
Access to an on-demand workforce that competes for work on both price and quality - with IAG placing business through the site at a discounted rate (e.g. when events occur, and for sub-excess claims)
New revenue opportunities, including:
- Increasing the insurance coverage currently provided by IAG to Airtasker
- Producing new products specifically targeting platform use (e.g. on demand insurance)
- Applying the learnings from Airtasker to insurance other parts of the Gig economy
- Marketing of existing IAG products on the platform
- Offering use of the Platform to IAG’s SME customers at a discounted rate to build engagement with IAG’s SME insurance customers
For Airtasker, we would help scale their product to our large customer base.
The follow-up investment in Airtasker was completed and we continued our experiments and pilots to leverage Airtasker with IAG's core products and Sharecover. Fast forward to 2021, Airtasker's valuation had doubled from our initial investment. Another great win.
"Saj worked with our ventures team on market scans and investment thesis docs. He's a good operator, thinks carefully about his work and delivers the goods. He's also a real pleasure to have around. Saj would be a solid addition to any team."
Charlie W - General Partner, Firemark Ventures IAG