Innovative website invites open bids for work

Author: Alex Fensome - Southland Times 14/04/2012
Date posted: 16/04/12

A trio of Invercargill students hope to climb the same ladder as Sam Morgan and Mark Zuckerberg by setting up an innovative new website business.

Will Finlayson, Andrew Hanley and Josh Dean are the brains behind http://jobit.co.nz. The website, built entirely in Invercargill, allows people to post jobs and invite bids from other people to do them.

For example, if you needed a few hours of gardening done, you could post it on the site and anyone interested could quote you a price for it.

Quotes are all public, so there was a chance for bidders to undercut the competition.

Mr Dean said it would be an ideal tool for tradespeople, handymen and teenagers looking for a bit of pocket money. Any job could be listed.

"Rather than find people to do work, you just post the job and they come to you," he said. It was free to register to use the site and free to quote up to $100 a job.

Mr Hanley said the concept of a "reverse auction" had not really been done in New Zealand before.

Jobit is already live but Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt will officially launch it on Tuesday when he mows the lawn of 597 Tweed St for $1.

The three met on the batchelor of information technology course at the Southern Institute of Technology, where they came up with the idea.

It had taken them hours of coding into the early morning inside their "programming den" to get the site live, Mr Dean said.

Initially they were worried it would clash with Trade Me's services section, but it operates as an advertising service for tradespeople rather than a place to list jobs to be done, they said.