NEW STARTUP DELIVERS YOUR PACKAGES WHEN YOU’RE ACTUALLY HOME

When Harvard graduate Jesse Kaplan moved to New York City last summer, he couldn’t believe how hard it was to get his online orders delivered. Dozens of missed delivery slips and weekends spent at the post office later, Kaplan decided that he couldn’t be the only one struggling with this.

Close to a year later, Parcel raised a million dollars in seed funding and is now fully functional everywhere in Manhattan, and in a private beta in Brooklyn. For anyone with a full time job, no doorman, or a busy schedule, Parcel is a life saver. It works especially well for people who tend to be out during the day.

“It’s almost impossible to be home when your package is being delivered. And then you have to go through the hassle of rescheduling, and then being there between for 4 hour window they give you. With Parcel, they let you know when your package arrives at their facility and then you schedule a one hour window with them to have it delivered in the evening. There were times where I would be at school until 10pm for a rehearsal, get home, and then my package would be delivered between 10-11pm. It was fantastic, and I haven’t missed a delivery since.” said Jacob Carll, an early beta user of the service.

Kaplan is no stranger to running ambitious ventures. As an underclassmen at Harvard, he started Cabot Cafe, the university’s first fully student-run cafe and event venue. CTO Patrick Yan (Stern ’13) joined Parcel upon graduating. When asked why he decided to work for a startup instead of a large investment bank, Yan said “I wanted to work on something would let me apply my skills to help improve the lives of people”.

Parcel spent the last year or so in private beta across Manhattan, and the response has been fantastic. “After using Parcel just once, over 70% of our members continue using Parcel for their online orders!”, said Kaplan. Their aim is to make the experience for the customer as positive as possible, especially as an alternative to the hassle of ‘last notice’ slips left by delivery companies.

“We’ve spent a lot of time crafting the customer experience to be as transparent and seamless as possible — if a delivery arrives even one minute late, it’s completely free of charge.” said Kaplan. Every delivery is $5 – irrespective of the number of packages delivered or where in the city you’re located.

It’s a simple idea – each user gets a unique ID and has their package shipped to Parcel. when their package arrives, they text you and let you choose a one-hour window for it to be delivered. They deliver between 7 and 11pm, when people are actually home. “You get your packages delivered to your front door by a friendly employee at a time you want. What’s not to like?” said Nina Liu, recent NYU grad and a user of Parcel from its early days.

In the past few years, startups like Uber, Postmates and TaskRabbit have begun to enter previously saturated industries like operations, logistics and transportation which were dominated by the government or large firms. Where companies like Parcel excel is in being able to provide highly localized and specialized services and fill the huge gaps that firms like USPS, UPS and FedEx have in their services. There’s also a massive shift to online shopping, and it’s often a lot cheaper even to buy everyday things online. Parcel functions as a convenient middleman to make that even easier.