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Postmates founder here. I am subscriber to Internal Tech Emails and I couldn't help but smile reading these emails this morning. It was in 2017, around April 12
by bastian 5y ago
Postmates founder here. I am subscriber to Internal Tech Emails and I couldn't help but smile reading these emails this morning. It was in 2017, around April 12th when we launched Postmates Unlimited - the subscription program that inspired all this. Now, we all know Postmates didn't win the space but some product decisions outlast a company and this was one one of them. I still remember the meeting when we decided to launch the subscription. No one had ever done it, the board thought it was nuts. It became the industry standard. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- ImaCake 5y agoRegardless of outcome, it must feel pretty good to know you and your company ended up being a keystone in corporate tech history. Very few people get to say they were at the meeting when these subscription models became the future. Historians 30 years down the road would love you if you wrote a book about your perspective on it.
- CPLX 5y agoIs this comment parody? I guess Poe’s Law applies, I’m genuinely mystified.
- coldtea 5y ago>Very few people get to say they were at the meeting when these subscription models became the future. Yeah, it's like being at the meeting where planned obsolelense was first invented, or when a telco devised the "jump through hoops to to cancel your service" concept...
- citizenpaul 5y agoThey invented the multi year "free" device and contract bundle. If you are not on one of those it is quite easy to cancel or change provider.
- bastian 5y agoI forgot to mention that I also remember when Apple called about a year later to tell us about their plan to charge us 30%! Amazing we prevailed.
- 11101010001100 5y agoAs long as you still need Apple, prevailing is a temporary state.
- crcorso57 5y ago
- seneca 5y agoForgive my confusion, but wasn't Amazon Prime started a good 10 years before that? It seems like that'd the precedent. I'm guessing I'm missing some major detail.
- what_ever 5y agoMay be I am too naive but even if you want to limit to apps/companies providing similar kind of services, I don't think this to be something Uber/Lyft wouldn't have tried to do eventually anyway? May be others just had bigger fish to fry?
- slivanes 5y agoI'm trying to figure out if you are proud of this decision or not?
- sizzle 5y agowho won this space? Uber eats?
- Spivak 5y agoDepending on how bullish you are on the market it's either DoorDash or no one. Because DD is the frontrunner by a pretty solid margin but time will tell if the business ends up being sustainable med-term.
- ggregoire 5y agoDoorDash operates only in the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan. [1] Uber Eats is almost everywhere (45 countries). [2] Also there are some very big players outside of the US, e.g. Rappi in LATAM (Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, etc). [3] [1] https://help.doordash.com/dashers/s/article/Where-is-DoorDash-available https://help.doordash.com/dashers/s/article/Where-is-DoorDas... [2] https://help.uber.com/ubereats/article/when-and-where-is-uber-eats-available-?nodeId=3f8de61e-09dd-4844-afb2-749c9ffc65a8 https://help.uber.com/ubereats/article/when-and-where-is-ube... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rappi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rappi
- JimDabell 5y agoYeah, it’s very region-specific. Uber basically doesn’t exist in Southeast Asia. Here, Grab is king. A while back, Uber sold their SEA operations to Grab for a stake in Grab, and then I think they were trying to sell their stake to Alibaba.
- nickano 5y agoDoorDash acquired Wolt late last year. [1] With this they now also have quite a large presence in Europe. [1] https://blog.wolt.com/hq/2021/11/09/wolt-joins-forces-with-doordash/ https://blog.wolt.com/hq/2021/11/09/wolt-joins-forces-with-d...
- dmitriid 5y ago> but time will tell if the business ends up being sustainable med-term Narrator: "it won't. As the whole American startup scene nowadays is based on the idea of losing unlimited investor money for years and decades with literally zero plans to change that"
- miked85 5y agoPostmates invented subscriptions?
- msoad 5y agoWhen you're a CEO and only hear "yes you're a genius sir!" that happens to you
- effingwewt 5y ago
- cercatrova 5y agoThey had the first food delivery subscription service among the food delivery services, such as Uber Eats, DoorDash etc, is what I believe they mean to say, not that they literally invented subscriptions. Aside, the sibling comments are quite uncharitable, I don't see why anyone would reasonably believe that the founder invented subscriptions. If one thinks for even a second, they know this isn't true, so why not think for another second about what they really mean? I don't see the need to complain and hem and haw about how the "world's gone crazy."
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- santoshalper 5y agoI have observed over the years the IT/Tech tends to attract a lot of incredibly literal, grumpy people who do not like it when people take liberties with language.
- golemotron 5y agoIt might be because software lives and dies on the precision of language.
- vjust 5y agoIt also stems from a laziness to consider where a person is coming from, other than literal reading of text. Brains become callused, or worse slightly autistic, where only precision matters.
- ilrwbwrkhv 5y agoWhat is Postmates?
- timbee 5y agoThis is the most peculiar comment that I've ever seen on HN. Weird enough that I will post my first comment ever just to say how weird it is.
- dvt 5y ago> ...I will post my first comment ever just to say how weird it is. Your account is brand new, so this comment is doubly weird.
- hn_go_brrrrr 5y ago
- sundarurfriend 5y agoThey probably mean that they were a lurker previously, and created the account and hence made their "first comment" for this.
- SixDouble5321 5y agoLurk more... I am happy to hear from people with something apropos to add. Being out of touch with the everyman isn't overly weird for a founder of a company.
- richardburton 5y agomost baller reply i have ever seen restec-p https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWLMnX8F45M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWLMnX8F45M
- santoshalper 5y agoIn a world with Amazon Prime, it seems hard to believe people couldn't understand subscribing to get discounts or upgraded service.
- virgilp 5y ago> No one had ever done it WAT? Adobe launched "Creative Cloud" (which at the time was basically desktop-software-as-a-service) on July 17, 2013; if I recall correctly they had been trialing that for about 1year in Australia before deciding it's a good idea and doing the global launch. Not sure if Adobe was first, but they definitely preceded you by half a decade!
- ViViDboarder 5y agoBut Postmates, Uber, Lyft, etc are not really the same type of business. SaaS had been mainstream but memberships to a p2p app wasn’t really.
- pooper 5y agoIt isn't obvious at all why a membership would work for postmates or Uber eats but not for let's say movie pass or hypothetically Airbnb. Could someone share their thoughts on this? When does an all you can eat type membership (or any other type) work?
- hahajk 5y agoI looked up Uber Eats Pass; it’s not an all you can eat subscription. It waives delivery fees and gives a percentage discount to orders. It’s more like a loyalty program you pay for, like Prime.
- pooper 5y agoSorry, all you can eat was a bad choice of words. I meant in terms if the fees that Uber Eats collects. I'd say prime is similar because you get free shipping but clearly Amazon.com makes money on each sale so the more they sell the more they earn. On the other hand, movie pass is a fixed price. You pay the same regardless of whether you watch one movie or a hundred. What makes Netflix work with all you can eat but not movie pass? Is there a way to know ahead of time what works with all you can eat?
- 5y ago
- onion2k 5y agoI was at your presentation to Super Mondays at the end of the Difference Engine accelerator, when you demo'd Curatedby, many years ago. It's fantastic to see what you and the team you've built have achieved since then. :)