Josh Gibbs normally wouldn't leave his apartment in Northeast Washington, D.C., pick up a loaded pizza from a restaurant in Chinatown, bike to a complete stranger's apartment, drop off the pizza and leave without any cash exchanging hands. But last week, he did just that. And truth be told, he kind of loved it.
"It's exciting. It's just fun," he says. "When the app goes off, when it beeps, I get this little adrenaline rush. I can make some money. It's like a game."
The app he's referring to is Postmates, a service that allows users in five cities — D.C., New York, San Francisco, Seattle and, as of last month, Chicago — to order any item, from any store or restaurant, any time of day, and receive it within an hour. The couriers are everyday people like Gibbs, who's a full-time teacher, and all the money is transferred through a smartphone app, no physical cash involved. Think of it as the Uber of home delivery.
Gibbs, 23, is an avid biker, and he had toyed with the idea of making some extra money as a courier before. But he didn't know where to start.
Along came Postmates, which made the job seem not only appealing but also accessible. Gibbs started working for the startup three days after he applied.
"It's something I can do on the side. I can work during the dinner rush; I can work after the school year," he says. "I'm on my bike anyway."
A Low Barrier To Entry
Postmates is part of a burgeoning cohort of tech-savvy on-demand delivery services. In D.C., there's Urban Delivery; in San Francisco, Shyp; in Chicago and Manhattan, eBay-owned Shutl; also in Manhattan, UberRUSH, which entered the game just last week.
It's also part of a larger phenomenon that MIT researcher Denise Cheng calls the peer economy — "platforms that allow people to monetize skills and assets that they already have," she says. This includes Uber, TaskRabbit, Airbnb and Etsy, among some of the larger players.
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