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We are thrilled to welcome First Round Capital to the TaskRabbit Team.  They’re joining existing all-star investors FLOODGATE Fund (formerly Maples Investments) and Baseline Ventures, who have teamed up before with much success, and we are honored to be supported by this prestigious group of smart and savvy investors.

Invaluable help from Ann Miura-Ko of FLOODGATE and Steve Anderson from Baseline has been crucial to our growth in Boston and recent launch in San Francisco.   With the inclusion of the partners from First Round Capital we are set up to expand even farther, even faster.

Did you see us on The Today Show and Wall Street Journal?  Wow.  We’re still riding the wave of excitement and we’ve been besieged with the same question, “When is TaskRabbit coming to my town?”  From Chicago to Austin, and Orlando to Seattle, we’ve heard from every corner of the U.S., and we also heard from folks all over the world too:  from South Africa to China and Germany to Melbourne.   We hear you and remember, rabbits are really good at multiplying quickly, so stay tuned!

As TaskRabbit’s founder, I am touched knowing that TaskRabbit is resonating with so many people around the world.  I started TaskRabbit a couple years ago in Boston when on a dark and cold night I ran out of dog food and just knew there was someone who would be happy and willing to help me, if I could only just find them.  Now, with TaskRabbit in two cities and planning on expanding to other major cities soon, it seems that not only was my vision spot on, but there are people all over the world who are looking for similar help, and lots of people wanting to help them. Go rabbits, go!

It is with deep pride and excitement that TaskRabbit announces the launch of it’s San Francisco services. TaskRabbit has been active throughout the Greater Boston region, encouraging neighbors to help neighbors by posting tasks in an open marketplace. Tasks ranging from yard work to dog sitting are standard fare and members can set their own price or allow TaskRabbit Runners to bid on doing their chores. At TaskRabbit, the saying goes “there’s almost nothing we can’t help with. Challenge us!”

With over 300 Runners in the Boston area, and more being added every day to San Francisco, this team of highly professional, background-checked Runners are giving their neighbors a safer and more efficient alternative to other online marketplaces. This simple concept is helping to grow local communities and encourage people to outsource their needs in order to free up time in their day; time that is better spent with family and friends or just embracing a little relaxation. Why work harder when you can work smarter?

“Every day TaskRabbit is helping people check things off their to-do lists, from the ordinary tasks that never get done to the truly amazing tasks,” says Anne Moellering, TaskRabbit’s Chief Marketing Officer. “We’ve assisted people with fundraising, helped blind people navigate unfamiliar parts of the city, written love letters for Romeos with writer’s block and even delivered a Pug dog from New York to Boston.”

TaskRabbit is also seeing a spike in virtual tasks such as researching vacation destinations, selling goods on eBay or fact checking information.  The company also recently announced the availability of an iPhone app.

Tim Ferriss, author of #1 New York Times bestseller “The 4-Hour Workweek” and an adviser to TaskRabbit, has already used the service locally for everything from shopping and late-night groceries to getting rides. All of the tasks were completed within 30 minutes of posting. “It’s simple and it’s fast,” says Ferriss. “As just one example, I needed to be in Sacramento last-minute, but I didn’t want to lose three hours to driving there and back. Within 15 minutes of posting on TaskRabbit, I had a driver and was set for departure ten minutes later. Not only did I get to Sacramento in time, the Runner also picked up a healthy lunch for me while I had my meeting. The entire experience was easy, efficient and pleasant.”

Check out TaskRabbit.com and don’t be afraid to get creative with your tasks. TaskRabbit knows life is busy. They can help.

Yes the rumors are true, as Scott Kirsner reported this morning, Kevin and I have decided to move west for the launch of TaskRabbit.com in San Francisco. It was a tough decision to head west, and I’ve appreciated all the support from family and friends as we make this journey. I realize there is some rivalry between the two coasts, especially when we are talking about a certain city, but our reason for moving is simple. TaskRabbit has a somewhat unique model, in that we are hyper-local, we scale city by city. It is only natural at this early stage, as the Founder, I would want to ensure that everything goes perfectly in the second market. So in order to absolutely nail our launch in San Francisco, I want to be out there, learning the landscape, the neighborhoods, and the idiosyncrasies. After this second city, we will have learned enough about scaling of the model to go quickly after that. Our Boston-based operations team will remain in place the Cambridge office to support our East Coast growth. Look for us to bring on more Boston suburbs this summer.

In the 18 months TaskRabbit has been doing tasks for people, we have experienced tremendous growth. The company has expanded from me working alone in my apartment in Charlestown, to five full time employees and an office in Cambridge. We have more than 300 runners completing tasks in the Boston area. And we are continuing to grow. It’s a dream come true.

Both Boston and San Francisco are home to some of the brightest minds in innovation and venture and we will look to both coasts when we seek an additional round of funding to support our growth.

Kevin and I are pretty excited. We’ll be driving across the country, with our 100lb yellow lab Kobe in tow. The timing worked out that my sister is getting married in Nashville, TN this weekend – at 2:30pm on Saturday. We’ve got 24 hours to drive from Boston to Nashville staring Friday afternoon. Of Memorial Day Weekend. One of the busiest driving weekends of the year. And hitting New York City at rush hour. We should be fine, right?! I am a little concerned, but we have to make my sister’s wedding, so that’s what we’ll do.

After Nashville, we plan to get on either I-70 or I-80 to make the trek to San Francisco. Would love any recommendations here.

You can follow our progress on Twitter and I plan to checkin on Gowalla the entire way. Maybe even get a few video blog entries in. Kobe is ecstatic, he loves a good car ride. Hopefully he’ll love the 3,000+ car ride as well!

Good day RUNmyERRAND! It’s Steve here wishing everyone a season’s greetings from London, UK where I’m studying for the year. Among other things, I’ve been checking out the entrepreneurship scene here and there’s some pretty cool stuff going on! Here’s four companies to give you a taste of what the Brits have to offer. Who knows, you might even start seeing these names in the States soon:

7digital: When it comes to digital music, the market is dominated by iTunes and Amazon, but 7digital is trying to break their dominance. The company has secured rights to a fairly large library with many of the mainstream hits of its larger rivals as well as some indie artists. However, 7digital is trying to differentiate itself with its online locker feature, which remotely backs up all your music. It also has a pretty strong B2B business going and there are plans to add video and ebooks soon. 7digital is available in the U.S., so check it out!

eCourier: This one has a strong American connection (founded by Dartmouth grads) and may be particularly interesting to RUNmyERRAND fans. Unlike traditional family courier operations, eCourier uses GPS, algorithms, and scale to optimize the effectiveness of its courier network. The company’s main clients are banks, law firms, and other business clients who need to send highly sensitive documents. They hope to become the UPS of same day local deliveries. eCourier is only available in London right now.

DIY KYOTO: DIY KYOTO makes the WATTSON, a cool little device for all those environmentally conscious consumers out there. It plugs right into your electric meter and helps you monitor how much electricity you’re consuming. You can also hook it up to your computer and get additional details about your energy consumption and effect on the environment. The WATTSON is not available in the U.S. yet, but as people become more conscious about the energy they use, don’t be surprised if you see this and other devices in a Brookstones in the near future.

Skimlinks: Calling all bloggers and online retailers out there! Skimlinks provides an innovative way to advertise on the Internet. It places links for products mentioned on a certain website to a retailer that sells it. In exchange, the webmaster earns a commission for every successful conversion. This works great for sites and blogs that review products and services. Skimlinks should be available in the U.S., so this could be a good way for some of you to earn some extra bucks!

Of course, one thing we don’t have here is RUNmyERRAND! With the crazy London weather and traffic, I sometimes wish we did. For those of you in Boston, take full advantage of it!

Have a safe and happy holidays everyone! Cheers!

The word on the street is true, RME closed a $1 million financing from West Coast firms, including Maples Investments and Baseline Ventures.  Team RME is just thrilled.  Both have impressive portfolios including Twitter and Digg, and we are excited to be working with these two firms because of their expertise in the field.

We’ve got a lot of work to do, but it is very exciting to think about all the possibilities and potential that lie ahead.  We will be focused on aggressively scaling the business here in Boston, and plan to open an office in San Francisco in due time.  Many, many, people along the way have helped us get to this point, and especially the current RME community of Senders and Runners have been fantastic supporters.  We are so grateful to have such wonderful users, who want to help this business succeed.  Doing simple things like telling their friends, writing in blogs, wearing their RME t-shirts, or passing around post cards, have all helped … so thank you very much for your support!

As I wrote in my personal blog, I love what @dharmesh had to say about raising another $16 million for Hubspot: “Startups: Closing a funding round is not value creation. It’s the *opportunity* to create value.”

We have an exciting opportunity ahead of us, and we look forward to continuing to pioneer Service Networking!

Thanks to Xconomy and Mass High Tech for the stellar write ups!

Boo! Happy almost Halloween.

Hi, Robbie Vorhaus here, RunMyErrand’s chief storyteller, back to talk about my favorite subject: great stories and, of course, RunMyErrand.

Let’s go back a couple years to my best Halloween costume ever. I wrapped my entire head in white gauze, stretching the last layer thinly across my eyes so my head appeared completely covered behind very dark sunglasses. I wore my grandfather’s felt Fedora hat from the 1920s, a deep blue double breasted suit, white button down cotton dress shirt and conservative rep tie, and after I covered my wrists with more gauze, I wore black leather gloves. Not an inch of skin showed anywhere on my body; I was the Invisible Man.

There was no identifiable part of my body, I couldn’t talk, and aside from my posture, there was no way to know I was me. I attended several parties that night, closing the evening on a friend’s roof deck, a little chilled from the night air, although enjoying my anonymity.

Just before I was ready to leave, a 20-something, red haired woman dressed in a Cinderella costume asked me to dance. She grabbed my hand just as the music changed to a slow tune. She said only one thing, “My name is Amanda, and I don’t care who you are. Just hold me close, say nothing, and when this song is over, walk away.”

Cinderella and The Invisible Man intimately dancing under the stars on a cold Halloween night, not saying a word, yet connected by a warm, intimate, anonymous embrace. I never forgot that tender dance with a stranger I will never know, and it reminded me of Ralph Ellison’s 1952 bestselling book, The Invisible Man, as he expressed how society often discounts the unknown – the invisible – yet for those who believe in opportunity and potential, there is great power, almost super power, in the unseen.

There was, indeed, a short time when RunMyErrand was invisible, but no more. We’ve been discovered and it feels so good.

Since this summer, on an invitation from Zipcar’s CEO, Scott Griffith, we’ve been based in Cambridge, operating and incubating out of Zipcar’s headquarters.  Also this summer, our founder and CEO, Leah Busque (our superhero), won Facebook’s prestigious fbFund Rev 2009 incubator program, and spent most of the summer in Palo Alto, CA, working alongside Facebook’s leadership, investors, mentors and other entrepreneurs. And get this: RME was the only east coast company to win!

Scott Kirsner wrote a fabulous piece about us in the Boston Globe, and Robin Hauk featured Leah and RME in her popular blog, Misstropolis.

And while I’m tooting our horn, Leah Busque was named 2009 Hall of Fame Start-Up/Small Business honoree for the Boston Herald’s Women’s Business Hall of Fame. You go, girl!

And also now great companies like IBM, Caturano and Company, Mass General Hospital and Zipcar are offering RME discounts to their employees. More to come!

I’m still trying to decide what to wear for this year’s Halloween, so if you have any ideas, please let me know. Also, tell us about your best Halloween costume. Share with us your favorite RunMyErrand story. Or just take a minute and tell us why you’re happy being alive. We love your stories, and can’t wait hearing more about your adventures.

Last week, after working in the office all day Monday, Steve and I thought we’d get out and run an errand on Friday. I offered to help carry some of the boxes, but Steve wouldn’t have it. With my hands free I decided to try out the video recording on my iPhone. Enjoy.

Side note: In the process of posting the video, I discovered Youtube’s AudioSwap feature. It allows you to legally use music in your videos. The bands benefit from an ad which makes it easy for viewers to purchase the song on iTunes and Amazon. There isn’t the biggest selection, but I managed to find one of my favorite groups: Brand New. I’m happy to see that these guys get it and aren’t locking down their content. Although I doubt I’ll put them at the top of the iTunes chart like Jill and Kevin did for Chris Brown, I hope I send some people their way.

Last week, I was lucky enough to receive an invitation to TEDxBoston- an independently organized TED event.

“TED is an annual event where some of the world’s leading thinkers and doers are invited to share what they are most passionate about. “TED” stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design — three broad subject areas that are, collectively, shaping our future… The diverse audience — CEOs, scientists, creatives, philanthropists – is almost as extraordinary as the speakers, who have included Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Frank Gehry, Paul Simon, Sir Richard Branson, Philippe Starck and Bono.”

Well, we didn’t have any Presidents at TEDxBoston, but we did have my favorite speaker, Benjamin Zander, leading the Youth Orchestra of the Americas to Beethoven.  Here is a video of Zander in action at a previous TED event.

Here are  a couple connections between TED and RunMyErrand:

-  TED exists because there have always been people breaking assumptions, and now TED has devoted itself to spreading these ideas for free! For any dreamy entrepreneur, it is relieving to connect with other people who have their own BIG dreams and aspirations.

-  Like TED, RunMyErrand is site where people connect in a community and share resources.  TED makes these connections in a virutal community, and RunMyErrand does it in a physical community.  The power of this technology is making connections where they didn’t exist before.

RunMyErrand and “Service Networking” are ready for TEDxCambridge-  tweet @tedxcambridge on our behalf!