Name: Postmates CEO Introduces the Newest Member of the Postmates Fleet
Uploaded: 2019-07-17
Duration: 19 min 34 s
Description: Bastian Lehmann, Postmates CEO, showcases ‘Serve’, an autonomous delivery vehicle, on Fortune's Brainstorm Tech stage.

[ APPLAUSE ] Hello? Hi, welcome. Hello, thank you. Okay, so the business model is pretty simple. There are a few other delivery companies out there that have gotten pretty big as well, but you guys have focused on innovating in certain areas. Can you explain a little bit about how you approach innovation? [ COUGH ] Good morning, first of all, great, thank you for having me, excited to be here. Look, we simply like to compete not dollar for dollar, but with innovation, as you just mentioned it. And I think it, in many cases, it's the smarter way to compete. Money is one angle, and I think it's an important one. But if you're not the most well capitalized player in any space that you're operating in, I think you have to find alternatives how to compete. And that's what we do as a company at Postmates. You know, one of the innovations that we have I think we brought it here today. You know, we believe that There is a piece of the network that we're building that can be served because of Thomas vehicles. I was as called Sheriff and, we brought it here. If this would been a cooking show, we would be telling them, be prepared a little bit. But yeah, this is Sheriff. And , maybe, we can show it. It drives itself. Hopefully not off the stage. [ LAUGH ] it understands that htere's an object here for example, so it moves around it. We called it socially aware navigation. It navigates on a sidewalk, so it needs to do things a little bit differently than on the street. It's all built in house. The team is now 60 people. Sorry I'm so distracted. >��� So am I. This is the first time, the second time that he's on she's on the stage. So we're very excited. It's a she? Yeah. All of our Rovers are female Rovers. All right. Okay. We can move over Yeah, we can move over and have a look. Okay. You would use [ UNKNOWN ]. [ UNKNOWN ] socially aware of me? Yes, yeah. It's [ UNKNOWN ] open the lid, there you go. It worked [ UNKNOWN ]. Magic. And we got you a little bit here from Paradise Bakery apparently, it's a staple here. [ LAUGH ] In Aspen. So this is for you. There's actually, there's more in there. There's more. [ UNKNOWN ] so you guys can see Yeah that's- It's maybe in there since yesterday, so I'm not sure if you wanna eat it, but- [ LAUGH ] The baked goods are fine. This is it, it's our little iPod. Okay, so let's sit down, and while I eat- Yeah. Day- old yogurt, I'm gonna ask you some questions. So Why bring it in house? There are a few companies doing this already. I'm gonna, you're not offended if I don't eat this, right? No, it's good. Okay. Anybody who wants baked goods later. Why bring it in house? That was not your competency before. Right, couple of things. So we looked at the landscape two and a half years ago. Transcribed by https :// otter. ai We tried to figure out if there were companies that we can acquire that would help us build [ UNKNOWN ]. It turns out how it's sometimes is in Silicon Valley the valuation of these companies [ UNKNOWN ] extremely high. So we said you know what? We think we can do it in house, we can do it faster. Because the only thing that we need to do in ours is to be our own customer. We do millions of deliveries every month. We have all the data that many other companies need in order to build the autonomous vehicles to perfection, so we decided to bring it in house. What's the roadmap? When is this launching? Where is it launching? How difficult is it to roll it out into Cities. The most, the really beautiful thing about the stuff is that because it operates on the sidewalk we don't have to wait until it has achieved. And until we have permission to deploy with full autonomy that means we can use it in a mode that we call semi- autonomous. So we have an operator that can look at it and can intervene with it. In situations where it can't figure out quite yet itself what to do. So- Is the operator sitting in some war room or is it- Remote in San Francisco. Okay, got it. And we actually work with veteran organizations across the country and help them, help veterans find jobs after they are back from serving this country, so I think that's a beautiful part of it But obviously selfishly it helps us deploy serve and we're testing it right now in LA. Okay. We might get to more questions on service later and innovation but let's get serious for a minute. Are you going public? Okay. [ LAUGH ] You know I think the official line is that that I can't comment on this in anyway but. I would love to take Postmeds public. I've said it before, I think it's actually one of the great American consumer brands that we have in the millennial customer group. It is well loved and our plan is to take it public, yeah. The rumors, there are reports that you are in talks with several other players Companies like Uber, for example. Where did those rumors come from? Are they, can you substantiate them? No, I'm kidding. Well, if I would know where they're coming from I would have addressed that already. But look, it's a small industry, there's a finite amount of player Postmates has tremendous traction this year. We're growing twice as fast as Uber Eats or Grubhub. And I think people notice that. So if you take the necessary steps to prepare your company to go public, you will get inbound. And we do with all inbound requests, the same thing that we have done always. We look at it, we make the smart decision. And that's what we do. There's quite a bit of overlap with customers using multiple brands in the space. In some cases in some locations at least, maybe not in LA, but in some locations that lack of brand loyalty, does that Kind of naturally lead and other factors to tomorrow consolidation in the space. Do you think that's inevitable? There is a lot of overlap between many of the apps, but if you actually look at credit card panel data, you will see that the least overlap is between Postmates and any of the other apps. And that is, I believe, because we are very focused on the millennial customer. 60 % of our customers are female. And we're put a lot of effort into the brand and what the company stands for. We have a lot of exclusive merchants and we have carved out a customer base that we like and that is very unique. What's the reason for the popularity in LA because you seem to have? Very large market share their specifically. Well, in LA people think Postmates is cool and and that is that is difficult to understand because in Silicon Valley, nothing bothers us anymore. And my friend, I have a friend who works for Uber, eats the other person works for caviar. I work with Doordash. So, you almost have like four players that have equal market share. We were the first in LA. It gave people a superpower. People that have very limited time, musicians entertainers discovered the app now almost five, six years ago. They thought it does tremendous things. They started talking about it. Creative people started writing it in movie scripts, in rap songs, in TV. Serious and I think that's what helped. So I'm afraid to say that it wasn't me that made it cool. But it really has a an iconic status. In LA, if you want to have something delivered, you will say to post made it regardless of what service you use. So you become a verb. So I wanna go to you guys for questions, please be thinking of some. But speaking of California, how many of you are familiar with the AB 5, I'm sure the bill that's Coming up With that one. Sorry Sec we had Was one. Okay. So this would potentially reclassify independent, many independent contractors, as employees. How many contractors do you have, currently? I think it's around 400, 000. What does that do for your business model? Is that passes. I think the right wawy to look at this is to understand what it does to the people that do deliver me's on the [ UNKNOWN ] platflorm. You have and I think this is true of most platforms in the delivery space You have almost 90 % of all the Postmates we have on the platform. They work on the platform less than five hours a week. It truly is supplemental income. It's it's 4, 5, 6 hundred dollars incrementally a month. And it's funny that it's that number because it's the same number that most Americans can spare when it comes to medical expenses per year. So, we believe that Postmates fills a gap when it comes to income. It's an it's an important gap. And this is why we obviously believe that leaving these people as independent contractors, as a matter of fact, not leaving them but making sure that in any bill that passes, we solidify their status as independent contractors is the right thing to do. And you think you have a good chance of doing that of making the case that they Remain independent contractors. Look, we, Postmates works with labor unions, we work with the governor's office, we have a fleet advisory board now for almost two years that helps us do the right things for the fleet. And I think we have put forward a proposal that makes it very clear that we care deeply about the workers on the platform. We're willing to put a benefit fund. We're willing to have more worker voices on the platform. So, yeah, I think we're doing the right thing. Okay, questions from the audience. Please raise your hand if you have a question for Bastion. People need more coffee today. Okay, let's talk some more about innovation. If you do have a question raise your hand at any point. Don't be shy. But this is obviously. Very innovative. I know other companies are doing too. But what are other ways, I mean again it seems like it's a pretty simple value proposition here. What other ways are you looking at. Not only offering more to your customers, but also. Optimizing the way that you operate. Right. I give you few example. So when the company was 2 years old we unvailed our [ UNKNOWN ], deliver as a service the first in the space. And what that does is it basically. Allows us to act more like FedEx. If you are one of our customers, for example, Apple or Walmart or 711, you can have access to the Postmates fleet and you can do things that were previously not possible and that means you can deliver the goods extremely Really Fast in 3400 and something cities in the United States. So it's a great product. It grows extremely fast, almost 200 % year over year growth on the API side. We were the first to innovate with a subscription service Postmates unlimited hope that we have some subscribers here. over a third of all orders come from subscribers today. So you pay a monthly on annual fee and you get free deliveries in return. We launched [ UNKNOWN ] party just two months ago. It's the same age as my daughter is now, but it has done a lot more already. [ LAUGH ] There's a lot going on in her brain. You just can't see it. I'm sure she will get there, and it's fascinating to see that. But [ UNKNOWN ] party allows you to have free delivery because what we're doing is we're matching a place where someone else just placed an order. With your location. So when you open the app you see this feed of great places that you can just tag onto. So you're trading a few minutes of your time for free delivery. And for, on your end it's helping to increase efficiency and yeah. It's a very, and we do these things all very selfishly. But many many times, they have a great benefit to the customer as well. So it allows us to be more efficient. We can batch and bundle these deliveries. And I said we launched it two months ago it's no 15 percent of total volume on the planet. Anybody here used post mates party. Few people have that. [ LAUGH ]. Record. We got the front row. Okay. We had a question back here. Brian. Hey Brian O'Keefe from Fortune. I just want to ask about the delivery vehicle. You said you're testing it in L. A.. I'm curious. What kinds of interactions do you see like if that's moving down the sidewalk and people randomly come upon it like how do they react? You know is there like a whole range of reactions do they stop and like look at it. Kick it. Wave at it. Yep. Does she have any program responses when encountering people. How do you. Yeah. It's it's a great question. We have a team that is That is focused on just the interactions part. And you know you have a few interaction elements on the on surf, if you have the eyes, you have an illumination around the ring, you have a display. And people are very curious. People want to interact with it to the extent that we will have a more sophisticated program as part of the launch that allows surf to give back. We're thinking about use cases where you could ask her for help or better yet surf. Could you ask for help? I give you an example there is a delivery robot in a hotel. I don't know which hotel it is, but that delivery robot, you know, delivers food room service. And the one thing it can do is press the button to move the elevator to a floor. So it will ask you to press a button for it for the for the robot. And it's a great interaction because it actually shows how we can complement each other. We started testing this in the- What does it do if nobody's in the elevator? Well, it just waits around. [ UNKNOWN ] [ LAUGH ] [ UNKNOWN ] doesn't do elevators yet, so. Okay. But we actually started testing it in a community for elderly people. And we wanted to do that in a gated community because we thought, if we can figure out a way that it is non- threatening to not just the millenials that are used to technology around them, but to a group of our society that is a little less used to it. We will achieve great learnings, and it was fascinating to see the interactions there. Basically we wanted to make it as easy to use and interact with as possible. Question from Adam? [ UNKNOWN ] hi, Adam. [ UNKNOWN ] with Fortune, thank you for being here. Two quick questions, Does she collect data also as she's going around? Cuz she's got two pretty fearsome cameras there, so I'm curious how you're approaching privacy of what she sees? And, forgive me if you already said this, does Postmates operate outside the United States? And If so, where? If not, do you want to? Yeah, we do in Mexico and we're live in Mexico City, it's a great market for us. We may expand further, but that's like the for the, for the for the medium future. it you know, the data that it collects will do the same thing as everyone else will just sell it to the highest bidder. [ LAUGH ] And we think it's really a unique data asset that because you know facial recognition so No one will be saved once these are fully deployed. Your person here is like just [ LAUGH ] freaking out ,>> But givent that Iwas born in Geramny maybe that's just part of my Evil plan. [ LAUGH ] You did make a joke- You asked me. You did make a joke backstage about how it at some point could shoot lazers. There's always a little truth in everything so- [ LAUGH ] So of course most of the questions are around the robot. But it is so interesting and I I wonder if you could talk a little bit about, also, it's not the actual space inside is not huge. Yep. How efficient is it, and cost- efficient, in terms of replacing humans at some point? I think it's important to really understand, when it comes to innovation, that Whatever you see in any moment in time, this is not how it needs to be forever. You know, the first iMac was a slow computer had a slow modem in it, you know, but it looked great and it captivated people and and it had a handle on it so you thought you could carry it around which of course. Nobody does with desktop computer, right? But we wanted to take the same approach. We wanted to create something that's non- threatening, that has a medium form factor about the size of a kid when it's around 10- 12 years old. Because that is in our preferable vision when we walk on the street. That's the area where we look, and where we communicate. So this is the first version of it. It does only need to work for a few number of deliveries on the platform for us to make sense to operate it so it doesn't have to do 100 % of all deliveries. As a matter of fact, we don't think it should do, but it can do very short deliveries. It could do deliveries that are not time sensitive. It could deliver prescriptions from Walgreens. So there is a lot of use cases where we believe. That the form factor that we have today is very sufficient, and to be honest most deliveries that we do on the Postmates by far, don't take up more space than what's inside of sir. So the question about independent contractors versus employees, I mean at some point and I know this is the question with Uber and Lyft, and others but at some point is it Irrelevant because this is what does the deliveries does it ever get to that point? I think the it's the same, as with innovation. I think the idea that will replace everything is as true as computers have replaced all of us up to this point. I think. It will help, it will augment, it will make things possible that have no been possible before. And I think it's also important to see the other side. Imagine we have deployed a few thousand of these, they are here to help us fulfill the dream of having an infrastructure that can deliver goods locally at zero cost or close to zero cost. And what that allows, is it allows local businesses to distribute their costs, their goods for an extremely low cost. And I believe that that's important. It helps local economies thrive. It helps hundreds of thousands of retailers in the United States compete with Amazon, because they will have a better and faster infrastructure than Amazon has, and I think that is really the positive side of things to look at. Okay, and, real quick, totally separate question, but you talked about how you grew up in Munich, dreamed of coming to Silicon Valley. All my life. Doing a startup, all of that. Is that still an attainable dream? Has it become harder for you or for others to come to Silicon Valley and do scale? In San Francisco or elsewhere in the area I think [ CROSSTALK ] in my personal view what is happening is that, there was a time when you could be a founder and entrepreneur and you had a year to tinker around, in a weird way that was very enjoyable because Maybe your idea was very left field, it was unimportant to the bigger companies. It gave you enough time to figure things out. I think the huge challenge that everybody's facing now is that, whatever you do, if it has the smallest chance of success, it will get copied and it will get attacked from all sides immediately, so It is a lot harder. But maybe that just means that the ideas that we need to work on and that we need to think about have to be more fundamental in general than just how we can get you a pizza in 25 minutes. All right, well, we'll look forward to seeing what news unfolds with you guys in the next few months. Thank you. So thank you so much. Same here. Thank you so much. Thank you. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Postmates CEO Introduces the Newest Member of the Postmates Fleet

Tech

Bastian Lehmann, Postmates CEO, showcases ‘Serve’, an autonomous delivery vehicle, on Fortune's Brainstorm Tech stage. 