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WeDeliver unveiled their beta version Thursday, opening up accounts for local brick-and-mortar businesses on a limited basis. With the beta launch, WeDeliver is now utilizing a streamlined cloud-based system to deliver items from a business to its customers via delivery specialists, founder and CEO Jimmy Odom said.
“We are no longer on the old system of tracking deliveries via Google Docs and manual texts with delivery specialists,” Odom said. “Now, merchants have a dashboard where they can track histories and can communicate with delivery specialists.”
Since beginning alpha testing in February, WeDeliver has facilitated over 1,100 deliveries and has garnered a waiting list of 93 merchants. The list has been racking up because WeDeliver provides a vital service to these merchants: delivery of their products to their customers. Above, Odom pitches at Techweek.
“Merchants depend on us,” Odom said. “We are an integral part of their businesses.”
The local reaches of merchants are widely expanded with WeDeliver, Odom said, and they are saved from spending money on something like opening up new locations. These delivery services come at no charge to businesses, costing only customers a flat delivery fee based on distance.
Customers receive their requested items from one of WeDeliver’s pre-approved delivery specialists who simply sign into their WeDeliver app whenever they have time to make a deliver by foot, bike or car. This flexible work schedule is quite attractive: 165 delivery specialists are already on the waiting list and WeDeliver plans on adding about 10 that number each week (they are still accepting applications, too!). Odom said his team is constantly working on ways for WeDeliver to be a flexible and lucrative enough employer so that, for example, a parent solely employed as a WeDeliver delivery specialist could support a family.
Fifty more delivery specialist positions will be opened by the end of 2013, Odom said – and 250 merchants will be added. To meet these goals, WeDeliver is currently raising a seed round with “a huge vet of confidence from peers” to back them up, Odom said.
The support from WeDeliver’s peers shone through last month too when the company won the Techweek LAUNCH competition and $100,000 worth of cash and prizes, which was based on audience voting and input from judges.
But no matter if talking about the support of fellow entrepreneurs and mentors or of local employees, users and merchants, for Odom, WeDeliver is about community: “These 1’s and 0’s in our database are real people. We bridge the gap between tech and the real world.”
