Postmates is looking to expand its business and make mobile, on-demand deliveries a widespread thing throughout cities around the country — that we already know. The company has been operating in San Francisco for a while, and launched in Seattle about three months ago. But where will it land next?

All signs point to New York City.

Postmates has a mobile app that allows customers to get food from restaurants, groceries and even goods from retailers like the Apple Store or Nordstrom delivered within an hour for a low, fixed price. Thanks to a little scouring of the Internet and some clues that the company has left behind (as well as a photo from a local hipster tipster), we have reason to believe that the Big Apple will be the next city to have delicious lunches (or anything, really) delivered with just a few clicks of the Postmates mobile app.

For those of you in New York, don’t get too excited — yet. People who have downloaded the app there can’t quite use it yet, several of my friends sources have confirmed. That said, a tipster in New York swears that he saw a Postmates-branded bike courier tooling around the city, and sent along this photo. (Thanks, Jesus!*)

Anyway, if Postmates is about to launch in New York City, it shouldn’t be a huge surprise. Back when I talked to him about Seattle, Postmates CEO Bastian Lehmann had mentioned it as an ideal market for future expansion.

Oh yeah, and the startup has been trying to recruit couriers on Craigslist for about a month now. The company has also recently been looking to hire an operations manager in New York over the last few weeks.

Want more proof that an NYC launch is probably coming soon? Well, Lehmann is in New York City right now as we speak. Coincidence? We think not.

@ded No idea. I'm in New York. Want me to look into it or is someone on its way?—
Bastian Lehmann (@Basti) May 23, 2013

(For what it’s worth, he hasn’t responded to our requests for comment.)

In March, Postmates announced that it had raised $5 million in funding led by Founders Fund as it looks to expand. Other investors include Crosslink Capital, Matrix Partners, SoftTech VC, AngelPad, David Wu, Thomas Korte, Naval Ravikant, Russell Cook, Russel Simmons, Walter Lee, Andy McLoughlin, Scott Banister, Paige Craig, and Jawed Karim.

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* Tipster’s name was not actually Jesus.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

After operating for about 18 months in San Francisco, urban-delivery startup Postmates is finally ready to expand into its second market. The company recently opened up deliveries in Seattle, allowing residents there to get food, groceries and other products delivered from restaurants and other shops throughout the city in less than an hour.

To prepare for launch, Postmates has been quietly ramping up its Seattle presence, sending a two-person team to hire part-time delivery people and interview for a couple of full-time employees to manage operations in the new locale. That includes a general manager to manage partnerships and local inventory, as well as an operations manager to hire Postmates and handle local deliveries. The company will also probably hire a community manager once operations take off in earnest.

Today, it has about 35 Postmates making deliveries throughout the region while it’s beta testing — that’s compared to about 200 that work for the startup in San Francisco. But it plans to expand that quickly as it transitions to a full-fledged on-demand delivery service. Most of its focus will be on the downtown area, but it will take deliveries throughout the Seattle area marked on the accompanying map. While final pricing hasn’t been set, Postmates co-founder Bastian Lehmann said pricing for deliveries in Seattle will be slightly lower than in San Francisco, probably about $1-$2 less.

The new market is set to prove the model for the company’s urban-delivery app, Lehmann told us. After launching Get It Now in San Francisco last May, the company has dramatically increased the number of deliveries that are made there. It’s delivered more than 130,000 items since launch and is making thousands of deliveries each week, according to Lehmann.

The company has also improved the experience in San Francisco, reducing the average delivery time to 39 minutes, from 42 minutes a few months ago. Keeping delivery times low is important to retaining its customer base and winning over new users. While the company promises deliveries in under an hour, Lehmann said it aims to have items delivered in 20 to 25 minutes.

Also key to having a quality experience is managing the inventory of items that its users can order from restaurants and other shops. In San Francisco, it has menu items pre-entered to choose from at more than 4,000 different locations throughout the city. That allows its customers to quickly choose from a list of items that they want to deliver. As it launches in Seattle, it will have items from about 1,000 different venues and will be adding more as users let it know through the app which places are most popular.

Soon, Postmates plans to roll out a self-serve platform that will allow vendors to manage their own inventory of items to choose from. That will allow business owners to “claim” their venue and update items on their own, as well as possibly offering subsidized delivery through the app. The platform is currently in tests with Whole Foods and other partners, but should become more widely available in the coming months.

Speaking of which, while Postmates recently expanded to offer grocery deliveries on Get It Now last September through a partnership with Whole Foods, that doesn’t mean the same functionality will be available in its Seattle launch. While users can designate items they wish to have picked up from a local grocery store, it won’t have the same level of inventory pre-built for Seattle grocery stores. That said, Lehmann said the company is working with local franchises in Seattle to change that.

If all goes well in Seattle, Postmates will be looking at other markets to expand into later in the spring. While its third market hasn’t been decided yet, New York City is probably a safe bet, due to the population density and number of residents who rely on public transportation or get deliveries through services like Grubhub or Seamless.

Founded in early 2011, Postmates has raised $1.75 million from investors such as Crosslink Capital, Matrix Partners, SoftTech VC, AngelPad, David Wu, Thomas Korte, Naval Ravikant, Russell Cook, Russel Simmons, Walter Lee, Andy McLoughlin, Scott Banister, Paige Craig, and Jawed Karim. The company has 18 full-time employees based in San Francisco.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Postmates has always wanted to be the go-to app for on-demand delivery of local items. It took off thanks to the launch of its Get It Now app, providing hundreds of warm meals a day to lazy, hard-working,* hungry startup workers throughout San Francisco. But now it’s expanding to also help users feed themselves at home, with an update to its app that provide fast delivery of groceries as well.

Postmates users can already request delivery of grocery store items through its existing app, but there’s a catch — you have to actually know what you want before placing an order. Even without inventory or help from stores, groceries are already the number 2 category for deliveries, and the average order from a grocery store is $41. Postmates had previously announced a partnership with Whole Foods, and orders have been up 240 percent month over month since the pilot.

But the update to the app — which Postmates expects to go live next week — will take things a step further. The new, updated Get It Now app will simplifies the process of outsourcing your grocery shopping, by providing an inventory of items that users can have delivered. Users of the app can check out local grocery stores like Whole Foods and Safeway within Get It Now and navigate a Pinterest-like menu of items that can be purchased and delivered within an hour.

As part of the rollout, the startup is working with merchants like Whole Foods to facilitate orders at stores. According to founder and CEO Bastian Lehmann, Postmates learned a lot from its test with Whole Foods, such as how couriers should navigate through the stores, where to find various items and the like. It’s looking to make that even easier for couriers, by giving them express checkout, and getting stores have agreed to help pre-package orders. As a result, the startups hopes to get its average delivery time for groceries down from an average of 42 minutes, which is where it stands now.

The company has also been growing its number of couriers, and especially those with cars, to support the increased focus on groceries. Lehmann says it now has nearly 150 Postmates couriers, and is adding 10-20 per week.

In addition to the expanded focus on groceries, Postmates will also be testing out a new pricing scheme for deliveries that don’t have to take place in under an hour. The economy pricing system, which will be perfect for stuff like groceries, would cost around $4 for deliveries within a three-hour window. That compares to its current dynamic pricing structure, under which deliveries range anywhere from $5-$12, based on how difficult they are.

The grocery delivery business isn’t exactly a totally new idea. Companies like Kozmo tried to capture the local delivery market in the Web 1.0 world. And there are newer options like FreshDirect or Safeway’s own delivery service, as well as startups like Instacart going after that opportunity. For his part, Lehmann says Postmates’ advantage comes from “doing more and doing more faster… when it comes to urban logistics.”

Postmates has raised $1.75 million from investors like Crosslink Capital, AngelPad, SoftTech VC, and Matrix Partners, as well as angels that include David Wu, Thomas Korte, Naval Ravikant, Russell Cook, Russel Simmons, Walter Lee, Andy McLoughlin, Scott Banister, Paige Craig, and Jawed Karim. The company has 12 full-time employees and is headquartered in foggy San Francisco.

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* So hardworking, they can’t get up from their desks to walk down the street and pick up Jamba Juice

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

A month ago, mobile delivery startup Postmates publicly launched its ‘Get It Now’ on-demand courier service in San Francisco, allowing its users to order pretty much anything from various stores and restaurants around the city. When it introduced the plan, it charged a flat $7.99 fee for all deliveries made within an hour. Now it’s changing things up just a bit, with a new dynamic pricing plan that will range anywhere from $5-$12, based on how difficult the delivery is.

The dynamic pricing plan is based on an algorithm which calculates the fee based on the amount of time spent traveling and distance traveled, how long its couriers spend shopping or waiting in line to pick up an item, and the type of store that the user ordered from. Prices are based on historical data from the last month of operations, and will continue to be adjusted as new deliveries provide more data.

The new pricing recognizes that not all deliveries are created equal: For instance, ordering smoothies from the Jamba Juice down the street — as one Vungle co-founder does pretty much every day — is different from ordering Postmates to pick up some animal style fries from In-N-Out at Fisherman’s Wharf and having them delivered to the Outer Sunset. The former delivery would probably cost $5, while the latter would probably run $12.

Postmates is really trying to incentivize users to keep using it for really easy local deliveries. And really, it’s about “giving customers the best price possible,” co-founder Bastian Lehmann told me by email.

Another reason it’s willing to move to this model is that, based on its historical data, Postmates is able to forecast the cost of these deliveries before they happen. The new model is also more fair to its couriers, who, you know, actually do the work of delivering things. That said, the new pricing won’t affect early adopters, who will remain at the flat-rate $7.99 model.

In addition to dynamic pricing, Postmates is also pushing its startup discount program, which reduces the cost of deliveries for companies that offer the service to their employees. So far, it’s quietly signed up about 50 startups to the program, including Twitter, Square, Groupon, Yelp, Getaround, Dropbox, Github, and InMobi.

The more employees sign up, the steeper the discount — with average discount running around 25 percent currently. In addition to cheaper deliveries, companies that sign up get tailored newsletters, special offers, and exclusive events through the program.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

One of the things that people who move away from New York City lament is the lack of delivery services elsewhere. In the Big Apple, you can famously get pretty much any kind of food — or anything else really — delivered straight to your door, 24 hours a day, rain or shine. San Francisco, for example, is a bit more limited. You actually have to leave your apartment to get most things (first world problems, I know, but it is a thing that people complain about.) Well, at least that was the case until today.

Postmates, the urban logistics startup that launched its flagship business-to-business courier system back in December, just launched the public version of its first consumer-facing app, “Get It Now.” The app, which is currently available on the iPhone and active only in the San Francisco Bay Area, lets users get anything in San Francisco delivered to them in under an hour.

‘Hacking’ The Local Delivery System

As my colleague Ryan Lawler has reported, Get It Now has been a big hit in insidery SF startup circles since it launched the private beta version of its app two months ago. It amassed about 1,000 beta users, and grew its courier capacity to be able to fulfill 1,000 deliveries a day with an average delivery time of 30 minutes. And the people who used the app really used it: In private beta, Get It Now averaged $116 in revenues per user per month.

Postmates co-founder and CEO Bastian Lehmann tells me that the company has simply outfitted its current courier fleet with credit cards, allowing them to purchase goods for users. The company takes between 20 to 40 percent commission on each purchase. The big thing here is that it allows consumers to turn any place into something that delivers, he said: “It allows consumers to hack the system. It’s no longer that if you want delivery there’s only that one Italian place, or that one Chinese place, that they can order from. You open the app and see that you have all these beautiful places around you.”

A Sleek Exterior, But Specialized Tech

When asked about the competitive landscape — you can use Taskrabbit and Exec to find someone to deliver something for you, for example, and on-demand car service Uber looks like it’s dipping its toes into the delivery space — Lehmann said that specialization is what gives Postmates its edge. “Uber is a premium product, and I don’t see them starting to deliver food for $7.99 per order. Taskrabbit and Exec are all cute… but if you want efficient delivery of something specific in your city, Get It Now is going to be the fastest option. We’re doing one thing, and we’re doing it really well.”

He said that with its logistics platform, he sees Postmates as a startup more in the vein of companies such as Amazon, FedEx, and Square. “It’s a huge technology play, and we’re taking something that was super complicated for a lot of merchants and making it very easy.”

Shifting The Focus From B2B To Consumer

Postmates will continue to operate its business-to-business courier service, but sees the Get It Now app as a way to effectively promote itself to merchants more effectively than its own small sales force could. “Initially, our plan was to concentrate on merchants. What we realized, though, is that it takes a lot time to sign up all these merchants — if you are a small business, you have several startups coming in every week trying to sell you on a a rewards platform, or a new daily deals app. We realized that maybe sales is not in the DNA of our company.” From a business perspective, it seems to be a very smart move toward efficiency.

Postmates currently has 12 full-time employees, and has raised $1.75 million in seed funding from a group of angel investors. Lehmann says that geographic expansion beyond the San Francisco Bay Area is certainly in the company’s plans, and that Postmates will likely raise a Series A round before it moves into other metro areas.

Here are a few screenshots of the Get It Now app in action (click on images to enlarge):

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Last December, Postmates launched with the plan to offer up a courier delivery service for local businesses throughout San Francisco. But then the team had a brilliant idea: What if it gave its couriers pre-paid debit cards, which would let them purchase goods for customers and then deliver them anywhere in the city?

That idea evolved into the Get It Now app, which Postmates launched in private beta in mid-April. Since then, the app has attracted more than 1,000 users in just four weeks. Not surprisingly, many of those users come from tech startups themselves, with employees of Twitter, TaskRabbit, Square, Cherry, and Yelp all signed up to use the service.

More than just acquiring beta users, however, the app has been making money. Since launch, the app has pulled in $20,000 in revenue, with the average user spending $116 per month. And it’s getting stuff to people pretty quickly, with average delivery time under 30 minutes. To achieve that, Postmates has greatly increased the number of couriers that it uses for deliveries, from 20 or 25 to 60 altogether.

Being able to show that its app makes retailers money gives Postmates some leverage as it tries to get them signed up for its local delivery services. For some top venues in San Francisco, like Little Star Pizza, Pakwaan, or Papalote, offering up a way to offer delivery services without having to actually hire delivery guys seems like a no-brainer. And for lazy customers, or those who don’t necessarily live near their favorite restaurants, being able to get an In-and-Out fix (ANIMAL STYLE!!!) without fighting tourists in Fisherman’s Wharf is a clear win.

Co-founder Bastian Lehmann told me he expects the Get It Now app to be released publicly over the next few weeks. In the meantime, if you want to test out the app for yourself, you can sign up for the closed beta at postmates.com/getitnow.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Every week there seems to be another Brit announcing that they’re leaving London’s startup community and heading west to Silicon Valley. Meanwhile, those who have already made the jump frequently head home to offer advice and encouragement to those left behind on how to follow suit.

But with the decline of Silicon Valley and the rise of emerging markets, is moving to San Francisco still the right thing to do for Euro entrepreneurs? We invited Bastian Lehmann, founder and CEO of curated.by into the TechCrunch TV studios and asked him to explain the journey that took him from his first startup in Germany to his second in London to his new home in Silicon Valley.

We start by asking if he feels like he’s abandoning his homeland…

Video below.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch