Leaked Postmates financials suggest company might be doing better than thought
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
2. Speculation that the numbers didn't work
3. PostMates is in the process of raising new funding
4. It is in PostMates' best interest to get a positive news buzz going about its business model and numbers to raise valuation of the company in a new round of funding.
5. Financials are "leaked" that show the numbers look better than expected. (Thank you TechCrunch)
6. New round of funding is closed at a higher valuation than what it would have been if these documents were not "leaked" (Speculation based on how investors follow herd mentality)
7. PostMates founders do a high five (Speculation on my part)
8. Mission Accomplished
[1] http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/04/leaked-uber-numbers-which-w...
This is how government disseminates some news They are "leaked" via "unnamed govt officials". Doing it via a "leak" works in some cases better.
The other use of leaks is to public opinion. "Leak" a little bit of a story. See how public reacts. If doesn't react well, re-phrase. If it does, do a full release.
So you leak the bark and maintain an official "No Barking" policy.
I could also think of a scenario where there's some internal conflict and somebody wanted to get the numbers released. Tho ofc it wouldn't be "in PostMates' best interest" anymore perhaps.
Also, if a company is doing much better than expected, they don't want their competitors to see their margins.
Not trying to single out TechCrunch; it's a major public goods problem that was solved pre-internet by the difficulty of copying newspapers, so companies could profit by doing thorough research and fact-checking. I hope they solve it by some kind of "one payment, all-you-can-eat, payout-in-proportion-to-views" system.
"They are now in the process of raising new funding, although we’re told they have at least half of the financing from the last round in the bank. Existing investors are expected to participate. Some are hoping that the company could eventually even IPO."
On the broader subject, even if numbers are quite good, there are many reasons why private companies do not want this data to be out in public. Any investor who needs to see the data on Postmates will be seeing it as they fundraise, as that is a relatively small pool of people.
"nearly $500 million valuation. They are now in the process of raising new funding"
That's the reason. Positive buzz. Are you of the opinion that all these VCs and investors are geniuses that do intense due diligence? Or do they herd follow into what turn out to be terrible businesses (note: not saying Postmates necessarily is) all the time? I'm certainly in the camp of the latter.
I dunno. If delivery employees know that the company is doing well, they might start demanding better pay.
However, it's still no excuse for what they have today. Their support, in my experience, is often lackluster at best and requires the consumer to basically beg for a resolution.
I love Postmates and will continue to use them, but competitors like Doordash who have awesome customer service[0] continue to woo me over to their side.
[0] - Had a bad delivery yesterday.. their support flow to select exactly what was wrong and what I wanted done about it (bring me new item, refund me, other).
I should point out that we're really talking about two types of customer service experiences here. When it comes to our Plus merchants, we're facing way less challenges simply because we're interacting with them via tablets or electronic ordering. Where we don't succeed yet, is the customer service part of our Anywhere product. Here we don't have integrations with all merchants and the error rates are higher and so is the level of complexity when something goes wrong.
That's great, but it's your responsibility to manage this complexity. You should refund the money to your customers when there's an error, not give excuses.
What ever happened to civility?
The co-founder acknowledged problems but offered reasons instead of a solution. I don't care how hard their job is, I care if they offered a solution for the specific person who complained. (They did not.)
If they know they're unable to cope with load they should auto-refund customers who ask rather than waiting till they ramp up their CS team. Misaligned incentives or what?
"We’ve also obtained more recent numbers that suggest that the growth has continued."
I'm confused. Why wouldn't they release the most recent numbers if they have them. This read like a press statement, fwiw.
And 5x top-line growth in a year isn't completely crazy at all for a growth-stage startup of Postmates's size. Aside from normal organic/word-of-mouth and paid growth, they can also launch in new markets.
If they are doing this kind of thing in cities everywhere, I can see them growing pretty fast, as long as no one sues them or otherwise stops their "growth hacking" plans.