Thumbtack’s 2024–2025 Pro Advisory Board

DustiO

Introducing Thumbtack’s expanded Pro Advisory Board, comprised of 40 local service business owners from across the country

Before joining the product marketing team where I lead our pro community, I was a Top Pro on Thumbtack, running a wedding cake and confection company. As someone who has seen both sides of this partnership, I understand the pro perspective and also know how much Thumbtack depends on pro feedback and insights to do more for the customers we serve together.

Our pro community is the heart of Thumbtack’s business. The 300,000 local service professionals on our platform are dedicated to delivering high-quality work that’s earned them more than 11 million five-star reviews and counting.

To ensure the voices of our pros are heard, we launched the Thumbtack Pro Advisory Board, providing a direct line to Thumbtack leaders and teams building the products that fuel pros’ growth. Last year, we inaugurated its first class of 13 Thumbtack pros from a diverse mix of industries, locations, and backgrounds, and they quickly became an integral part of our decision-making process. From providing feedback on product features that helped refine our roadmap to discussions on the broader industry challenges they faced, their insights informed our efforts to help their businesses run more efficiently.

Introducing the newly expanded Thumbtack Pro Advisory Board

This year we’ve decided to bring even more voices to the table, with our 2024–2025 board including 40 pros across 16 service categories, from HVAC to general contracting to carpentry and more. Each of them has built a successful business and brings a community-centered, growth-oriented mindset to their work. With a combined 165+ years in the Thumbtack pro community and more than 10,000 customer reviews on the platform, this group of Pro Advisors is highly qualified to speak to the experiences and issues shaping the future of the home services industry.

A few members of our 2024–2025 Pro Advisory Board shared their thoughts about partnering with Thumbtack.

Building together for the future

We regularly have conversations with our Thumbtack Pro Advisors to better understand the changing experiences, priorities, and needs of our pro community. But sometimes, we need to go beyond our Thumbtack Pro Advisors and get a broader picture from a larger group of pros across the country. With this goal, we recently surveyed over 1,000 of our home service pros to capture a snapshot of how they’re feeling and what they need most at this moment.

The outlook is bright — nine in ten (89%) of our pros are currently happy with their jobs. When asked about the future of their career, they expressed optimism about a wide range of topics, including helping their community (94 percent), increased future earnings (92 percent), having good job security (91 percent), and technological advances in their trade (85 percent).

Pros also see their jobs evolving, noting that the culture of the skilled trades is becoming more high-tech, diverse, highly trained, and entrepreneurial, while offering more job flexibility as well. But it’s not all upside — when asked about the potential challenges they see, they mentioned the ability to attract and retain skilled workers and rising costs to run a service business.

It’s clear pros see the future of their industry changing, and with the insights and expertise of the Pro Advisory Board, Thumbtack can help these skilled professionals stay at the forefront of their trades and continue to provide great service to their customers.

We'd love to hear from you here in the Community - what would you like to ask our Pro Advisors? What unique challenges do you face in your industries? How are you feeling about the future of your industries? Let us know in the comments!

structuralguy65

@DustiO

Is there a single engineer or architect on this advisory board? Doesn't feel like it.

DustiO

@structuralguy65 while we'd love to have representation from every single category on Thumbtack, we currently only have 40 pros on our advisory board.

structuralguy65

@DustiO That's fair enough, but how many advisory board members are there presently that do jobs predominantly in the $500 and less range. If there are none, then that explains a lot.

DustiO

@structuralguy65 I work pretty closely with this group and I think a lot of them would fall into this category. I'm not sure what you mean by it explaining a lot? They do offer their feedback very regularly, and work closely with teams to make Thumbtack better, though some feedback does take a lot of time to get implemented.

structuralguy65

@DustiO For one, it would be helpful to hear from a small-job board member about how they handle clients constantly telling the pro "but this says the work is free" when they see "$0 on site estimate."

DustiO

Maybe we can arrange a Q&A, even if it's just virtual here in the Community. Would that interest you? We've done something similar in the past — where pros can submit questions via a Community post and then Pro Advisors could answer them (depending on their field of expertise). You could also join our CommuniTEA sessions where you could chat with other pros. We don't have any engineers that regularly attend, but we may have some pros in on-site estimate categories that could offer insight.

KateOrganizes

perhaps this board can discuss the refund policy and some unreasonable practices. Most recently, was told that a customer responding to an opportunity as “no thank you” (rather than just declining) is not covered in the policy. That seems absurd. I was give a courtesy credit but this seems like that should be explicitly covered.

I’ve also had refunds denied for a repeat customer I already quoted but reached out to me 3 more times because they didn’t remember and didn’t actually have the budget for the project they wanted. (Months apart)

PestSupportServices

I understand and appreciate the points raised above. While it's clear that no one can control the cost of a lead, it’s worth noting that leads are often sold multiple times—sometimes 3-5 times over. If a Pro has already received the same lead within a 1-3 month period, it creates an opportunity for that lead to come back if they haven’t made a decision. However, the current 1-month window feels too short.

Additionally, there seems to be a lack of transparency in how refunds for leads are decided. I genuinely appreciate the addition of the phone verification system—it’s a great step forward. That said, I often encounter leads who either have no intention to purchase or have already chosen a provider, which can be frustrating.