Thumbtack.com tacks on $1.2M in funding

Juice Pitcher winner from 2009 raises $1.2 million round from prominent angel investors

Thumbtack.com, an online marketplace for finding and listing local services like guitar lessons or product photography, announced on Wednesday the closing of a $1.2 million round of funding from a long list of prominent angel investors.

The San Francisco-based startup had previously raised $500,000 from two of the founders of Logitech and an Angie’s List angel investor.

Over 40,000 service professionals have joined Thumbtack since it launched in December 2009. Because service providers must themselves create a profile on the site (Thumbtack doesn't pull businesses from phone book listings, for example), that number is doubly impressive.

Thumbtack was the first startup to win in one of Vator.tv's startup competitions when it took home the gold at the October 2009 Juice Pitcher event.

At Juice Pitcher, digital media investment banker Ezra Roizen voiced the concern that Thumbtack might have trouble initially attaining a "critical mass" of local service providers in individual regions, which was duly noted by CEO Marco Zappacosta. Zappacosta at the time said his startup would initially focus on San Francisco before moving onto other venues.

Now, Thumbtack reports that it has listings for plumbing in Los Angeles, wedding officiants in Chicago, dance lessons in New York, and thousands of nationwide long-tail services like glamour horse photography.

The new funds will be used to expand Thumbtack's team, add email marketing and appointment management features, and enhance the Personal Concierge service.

Here's a list of all the angels that contributed to the new round of financing: Scott & Cyan Banister (PayPal & Zivity), Joshua Schachter (Delicious), Jason Calacanis (WebBlogs & Mahalo), Mark Britto (Amazon), Scott Faber (Ingenio), Mark Goines (Intuit & Mint), Auren Hoffman (RapLeaf), Ariel Poler (l/PRO & Topica), Ali & Hadi Partovi (LinkExchange, Tellme Networks & iLike), Vance Bjorn (DigitalPersona), Denis Grosz (wiseGEEK), and Yan-David Elrich (ChoiceVendor).