Postmates wants to become the “Uber of goods,” but Uber also wants to fulfill that function, and the “venerable” rideshare company aims to upend the Silicon Valley upstart, founded by German-born entrepreneur Bastian Lehmann, which will deliver an iPad or eye drops to your home or office in under an hour, with the help of non-FT freelancers. The job is very flexible, which is helpful, because you might have time for another job that offers great benefits.

It’s amazing to reflect on services like UrbanFetch or Kozmo, which attempted the same business model during Web 1.0, a time before universally fast downloads, let alone smartphones. The reverse of Miniver Cheevy, they were born too early. Now we have the technology.

From Thomas Schulz’s Spiegel article about the potential Valley unicorn:

Postmates has set itself an ambitious goal — to be the Uber of goods, with a vast network of couriers, linked, like Uber’s drivers, via a sleek app, waiting for users to hit a button on their smartphones and send them forth to pick up anything that money can buy. Like Uber’s drivers, Postmates couriers aren’t employees but “independent contractors.” Anyone with a bike, car, truck, scooter or motorcycle can register and decide exactly when they want to work. …

Game-Changing

Postmates currently takes 70,000 orders a week. Available in 26 major metropolitan areas, the company has raised nearly $60 million in venture capital and presides over the world’s third largest network of couriers, after Uber and Lyft. A few weeks ago, Starbucks announced it would be teaming up with Postmates so that customers can now have their skinny lattes delivered to their door.

The loft premises in a brick building in downtown San Francisco, where the company has been headquartered for the last eight months, are already getting too small. A total of 198 staff members — many of whom boast IT degrees from Ivy League universities — sit at back-to-back computers crammed into two floors. Lunch is eaten al desko.

The start-up’s rise has been so meteoric that many in Silicon Valley thought Postmates could be the next addition to the Unicorn List — one of those rare companies that prove to be game-changers or build whole new markets, such as Airbnb and Uber.•