 Postmates is an on-demand delivery service with a fleet of local couriers who purchase goods and deliver them to customers across the city. But within the expanding on-demand industry, Postmates faces growing competition. We're the largest on-demand delivery company in the world. We will try to do a delivery from anywhere within an hour. No one does as many deliveries as us and if it's surfaceable on Foursquare, you can put in a note what you want to have done and we will try and do it. Postmates is an app that let's say you need something picked up from the Apple Store or you're looking for a burrito from Chipotle, you can go into your app, you can request delivery and for a fee you will essentially get that delivered to you. We like to believe it helps a whole bunch of people. So if you think how it works, it's local products delivered by local people purchased by someone who lives in that city. So when you press that button when you purchase food from a restaurant, when you purchase something from a store in your city, a local merchant makes revenues, a person comes picks up the goods and he gets compensated for that and you pay tax in your own city. Postmates has made certain things very simple. Top a couple of buttons, you're done and it shows up and that's great. Postmates has evolved from its original idea to better fit the market and serve its customers. Once the concept for Postmates was solidified, they faced the challenges of compiling inventory from local stores and building their business. The first version of Postmates was way closer to the original idea of being a ride sharing for stuff. You would open the app and you selected a pickup and a drop-off and you could describe what item should have been picked up and where it should be dropped off to. But there was no commerce element. There's no one to tell us like what our problems will be. There is no playbook out there. We can't copy FedEx, we can't copy other people in this space. We can't even really copy Uber or Lyft. We kind of understand some things from them but our core business, how to deliver this like triangle, that exists. There's no one to teach us so we discover our challenges as much as we solve them. And we actually said this weekend only you can have the items that you want to have purchased. You can have them purchased through the app and we deliver them. And I think that first weekend we sold goods anywhere between eight or ten thousand dollars. After that test we knew that we had to build this app which we didn't really want it to build. So the next version of the app would allow you to actually browse stores. The permutations of things that could go wrong are really really high. You have a consumer, you have a courier, you have a person placing an order, you have a merchant who's preparing an order, you have a courier that goes there and drops it off. That's four different people all aligned within 45 minutes to get something done. People do care about affordability when it comes to on-demand services like Postmates but there are certain instances where you'll almost pay any amount in some cases just to get something delivered. Postmates sets themselves apart by bringing merchandise to customers directly from local stores via their couriers. This freelance workforce is crucial to make the transactions happen and a big part of Postmates success but it's not without issues especially as more and more companies start to depend on independent contractors. FedEx and UPS they enabled a lot of the commerce that is happening in the world or companies like them. And on a local level really your only alternative to move things around is you either do it yourself, you ask a friend to do it, you have an assistant or you call a messenger. For Postmates the ideal scenario is that businesses find themselves making so much money by Postmates coming in to deliver to their customers that they want to work with Postmates. It felt like something that is a real problem, right? Connecting local merchants with customers, giving the power back to local economies or just at least trying to provide them with better tools so that they compete with big-box retailers and outlets. It felt like the right thing to do. I do think it is going to be a challenge for Postmates to figure out what can they do better than Amazon, right? It's not just enough to exist alongside them. They're gonna have to figure out something they can do either faster, cheaper or better in some other way. I think people would simply just not purchase anything from Amazon anymore if you can have the same product delivered within a couple of minutes in your city and if you can have it at a comparable price. Our Trojan horse is the fleet. It's the fleet of Postmates, 16,000 of them that are available in these cities and that are doing deliveries. A huge part of what we're doing at Postmates is we want to provide the infrastructure, the people on the ground that do the deliveries that allow these transactions to happen. A lot of the success is dependent on this part-time workforce. Something has shifted in the American economy. There are more and more freelancers, more and more contractors, so I think that we're going to continue to see a lot of, you know, part-time workers working on demand and people are going to be utilizing those services. But there are so many right now that I just don't see how all of them are going to continue to exist and some of the bigger players are ultimately going to scoop them up. The on-demand industry is growing quickly, which is great for a startup like Postmates, but it also means growing competition. Postmates has made a name for itself in the industry, but will they be able to keep up among major players like Amazon and Uber? When I think about the on-demand space, it's probably going to have a significant impact just like e-commerce had in the world. It took a while for it to actually blew up, but now you have a buy button on every website. And guess what? Amazon won that, right? Amazon won the entire category. They won the e-commerce app to cart race and they're a great leader in it. Some people think that eventually Uber will just sort of be the on-demand startup, that it will buy up startups like Postmates and will sort of just become kind of the global logistics network for getting you anything you need within a few minutes. I think if we look at the portfolio of on-demand businesses we have right now, I think we need to just continue to watch it. It's evolving and we'll see the things that succeed and fail, and I think we'll see a lot of them continue to consolidate and some of them become massive. On-demand offers an interesting twist. It offers the ability to have access to a service or a product within a couple of minutes, so it fundamentally shifts how we're perceiving a product or a service. So on a long enough timeline, I believe that just like we see a buy it button or we see an add to cart button, you will see a get it now button a lot more around and people will get used to the idea that they can press a button and something happens to them.
 Postmates is an on-demand delivery service with a fleet of local couriers
 who purchase goods and deliver them to customers across the city. But within the
 expanding on-demand industry, Postmates faces growing competition.
 We're the largest on-demand delivery company in the world. We will try to do a delivery
 from anywhere within an hour. No one does as many deliveries as us and if it's
 surfaceable on Foursquare, you can put in a note what you want to have done and we
 will try and do it.
 Postmates is an app that let's say you need
 something picked up from the Apple Store or you're looking for a burrito from
 Chipotle, you can go into your app, you can request delivery and for a fee you
 will essentially get that delivered to you.
 We like to believe it helps a whole bunch of people.
 So if you think how it works, it's local products delivered by local people
 purchased by someone who lives in that city. So when you press that button when
 you purchase food from a restaurant, when you purchase something from a store in
 your city, a local merchant makes revenues, a person comes picks up the
 goods and he gets compensated for that and you pay tax in your own city.
 Postmates has made certain things very simple. Top a couple of buttons, you're
 done and it shows up and that's great.
 Postmates has evolved from its original idea to better fit the market and serve
 its customers. Once the concept for Postmates was solidified, they faced the
 challenges of compiling inventory from local stores and building their business.
 The first version of Postmates was way closer to the original idea of being a
 ride sharing for stuff. You would open the app and you selected a pickup and a
 drop-off and you could describe what item should have been picked up and
 where it should be dropped off to. But there was no commerce element.
 There's no one to tell us like what our problems will be. There is no playbook out there.
 We can't copy FedEx, we can't copy other people in this space. We can't even
 really copy Uber or Lyft. We kind of understand some
 things from them but our core business, how to deliver this like triangle, that
 exists. There's no one to teach us so we discover our challenges as much as we
 solve them. And we actually said this weekend only you can have the items that
 you want to have purchased. You can have them purchased through the app and we
 deliver them. And I think that first weekend we sold goods anywhere between
 eight or ten thousand dollars. After that test we knew that we had to build this
 app which we didn't really want it to build. So the next version of the app
 would allow you to actually browse stores. The permutations of things that
 could go wrong are really really high. You have a consumer, you have a courier,
 you have a person placing an order, you have a merchant who's preparing an order,
 you have a courier that goes there and drops it off. That's four different
 people all aligned within 45 minutes to get something done. People do care about
 affordability when it comes to on-demand services like Postmates but there are
 certain instances where you'll almost pay any amount in some cases just to get
 something delivered. Postmates sets themselves apart by bringing
 merchandise to customers directly from local stores via their couriers. This
 freelance workforce is crucial to make the transactions happen and a big part
 of Postmates success but it's not without issues especially as more and
 more companies start to depend on independent contractors. FedEx and UPS
 they enabled a lot of the commerce that is happening in the world or companies
 like them. And on a local level really your only alternative to move things
 around is you either do it yourself, you ask a friend to do it, you have an
 assistant or you call a messenger. For Postmates the ideal scenario is that
 businesses find themselves making so much money by Postmates coming in to
 deliver to their customers that they want to work with Postmates. It felt like
 something that is a real problem, right? Connecting local merchants with
 customers, giving the power back to local economies or just at least trying to
 provide them with better tools so that they compete with big-box retailers and
 outlets. It felt like the right thing to do. I do think it is going to be a
 challenge for Postmates to figure out what can they do better than Amazon,
 right? It's not just enough to exist alongside them. They're gonna have to
 figure out something they can do either faster, cheaper or better in some other
 way. I think people would simply just not purchase anything from Amazon anymore if
 you can have the same product delivered within a couple of minutes in your city
 and if you can have it at a comparable price. Our Trojan horse is the fleet. It's
 the fleet of Postmates, 16,000 of them that are available in these cities and
 that are doing deliveries. A huge part of what we're doing at Postmates is we
 want to provide the infrastructure, the people on the ground that do the
 deliveries that allow these transactions to happen. A lot of the success is
 dependent on this part-time workforce. Something has shifted in the American
 economy. There are more and more freelancers, more and more contractors, so
 I think that we're going to continue to see a lot of, you know, part-time workers
 working on demand and people are going to be utilizing those services. But there
 are so many right now that I just don't see how all of them are going to
 continue to exist and some of the bigger players are ultimately going to scoop
 them up. The on-demand industry is growing quickly, which is great for a
 startup like Postmates, but it also means growing competition. Postmates has made a
 name for itself in the industry, but will they be able to keep up among major
 players like Amazon and Uber? When I think about the on-demand space, it's
 probably going to have a significant impact just like e-commerce had in the
 world. It took a while for it to actually blew up, but now you have a buy button on
 every website. And guess what? Amazon won that, right? Amazon won the entire
 category. They won the e-commerce app to cart race and they're a great leader in
 it. Some people think that eventually Uber will just sort of be the on-demand
 startup, that it will buy up startups like Postmates and will sort of just
 become kind of the global logistics network for getting you anything you
 need within a few minutes. I think if we look at the portfolio of on-demand
 businesses we have right now, I think we need to just continue to watch it. It's
 evolving and we'll see the things that succeed and fail, and I think we'll see a
 lot of them continue to consolidate and some of them become massive. On-demand
 offers an interesting twist. It offers the ability to have access to a service
 or a product within a couple of minutes, so it fundamentally shifts how we're
 perceiving a product or a service. So on a long enough timeline, I believe that
 just like we see a buy it button or we see an add to cart button, you will see a
 get it now button a lot more around and people will get used to the idea that
 they can press a button and something happens to them.