Episode 102: Using data to improve your delivery business, with David Pickerell of Para

David Pickerell of Para joins us to talk about the tools his team is developing to help delivery drivers and contractors be more profitable.

Para would love to partner with you. Some of the tools already developed or being developed include:
Analytics of your earnings
Mileage tracking (both past and future)
One Click signup for various delivery apps
Personal dispatching to assist working multiple apps.

If you are interested in talking with David, especially as an early adopter, give him a shout. David@Withpara.com.

To read this in article format, you can visit the associated blog post for this episode.

03:25 Introduction of Para
06:02 Some of the tools Para is developing for contractors
07:03 One Click Apply
07:30 Personal Dispatch
09:47 Mileage logs
14:56 The value of assembling trip data from drivers
17:26 How drivers can help gather data for Para
18:31 How can that data make a difference for contractors?
22:55 How data levels the playing feeld between apps and contractors
30:22 Dealing with the inefficiency and incompetence of delivery platforms
33:18 David's thoughts on the Doordash IPO
36:29 Are there repercussions for using an app like Para to multi-app?
37:15 The opportunities with up and coming delivery companies
43:51 The relationship between gig companies and independent contractors
47:41 Can any newcomers shake up the delivery industry?
51:28 What about Lyft entering the market?
52:54 What's in the future for Para?

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Transcript

0:03

Hello, Courier Nation. Welcome to the Deliver on Your Business podcast, where you are the boss. Each week, we talk about how to make the most of your business as an independent contractor, as a courier delivering for gig economy apps like GrubHub, Doordash, Postmate Uber Eats and so many others. Hello, Courier nation, welcome back for another week on the Deliver on your Business podcast, and it is great having you back. It is so good being back again. And we're going to be jumping right in here pretty quickly to today's interview. But I do want to really invite you, encourage you to join me next week. As you know, it'll be our last episode before Christmas. And I'm going to be talking about some of the things coming up that I'm excited about the year ahead. One, because twenty twenty will be over, but two, because really going all in on on this website and on trying to put together resources that can help you with your delivery business. And so we're going to talk a little bit more about that and we'll talk some about just the future of this website and the future of the podcast and some of the things that we've got coming up. So I really invite you to join me next week, but also invite you, of course, to stay with me here this week as we talk with David Pickerell with an organization, it's a new app that is coming out that is called Para, P A R A. So I invite you to kick back and listen to our interview with David with Para. Well, Courier Nation, I am excited to have a special guest on us with this this week, and more than anything, I think we're just talking shop a little bit as far as delivery and and the state of the industry and what things are like in a lot of different areas. And I'm talking today with David Pickerell with Para and it's at WithPera.com, I believe that's correct . And David has worked with, he was he was with Uber in some of the earlier days and he was involved in actually opening up the market for Uber in Las Vegas and was involved in getting drivers together and different things like that. Just, just getting, you know, doing all the onboarding, opening up the market, getting everything started, and a whole new city, which is kind of a fascinating thing just in and of itself. He's probably got a lot of good stories to tell about that. And right now with Para, he is putting together, you know, he's kind of on this mission to try and help independent contractors. I want to see if I put this the best way, and you could probably tell me a lot better what you want to do. But just trying to help independent contractors get the data, the information and everything they need to be able to maximize their ability to earn and just kind of getting off the ground with a lot of things like that. And so I'm just glad to have David with us. And David, welcome. And maybe tell us how kind of fill in the fill in the blanks there, because I'm sure I left a lot of things in there. Kind of tell me about a little more about your start with Uber and then kind of what you're doing with her. No, thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here, sort of been a fan of your work, especially around multi-apping. I think you were the person who really sort of introduced that concept to me and sort of you definitely have sort of the resources that others don't. So I'm glad to be here. Yeah, sort of following up what you're saying had worked internally at Uber and just sort of had seen the power of a lot of the tools that we had internally. And I think what's really driving us at with Para to take some of that tools, and put it in the hand of the driver, really. So that's really sort of our driving force. We, the company started March, so it was a Covid company for lack of a better term. And how we first started off was basically building tools around the Cares Act. So I sort of spent a while reading the Cares Act and realized that after spending a couple hours, I had no idea what to do and just thought that this was way too hard. So we started off was was building a tool. You can answer sort of a couple of questions and we'd let you know what the different programs would pay you out and sort of talk you through. I'm sure you remember it was a sort of a mess back then, right? Different states told you to do different things. So that's really where we started. But since then, we've come a long way and we're in the process of building out a suite of tools. And we coin is to put you in charge basically. So to arm you with the data, to arm you with automation and to sort of just build a tech tool that can push back a little on the tech tools. The platforms. And I'm excited about just that whole idea because, you know, we are such a loosely knit group of drivers. There are well, and there's there are things like my podcast and there are some YouTubers out there and a lot of different things like that. And then you've got some Facebook groups and Reddit groups and everything. And so you got some folks trying to kind of work together. But at the same time, just, you know, thousands upon thousands of people that are just completely on their own. And so you putting together some things to help people out, I think could be huge. You I do think that's sort of the beauty in the system is the more the people are on it, the smarter it gets, sort of like the collective contributing to the benefit of the collective. Sure, sure. And what kind of tools? I mean, give me an idea of some of the things that you want to put together and what kind of what kind of information are you thinking of putting together? Yeah, on sort of a very basic side. We have just automatic earnings tracking. So you can we can automatically pull your earnings data from the majority of accounts you work on. I know sort of a couple apps claim to do this, but we've spent a lot of time really honing this is it's automatic earnings tracking, done simply, done right. Beyond that. One other feature we have that's a little interesting is we're able to retroactively calculate your miles driven. So a lot of the time, if you haven't tracked your miles, you it's hard to file with the IRS. We can actually go back in time and generate an IRS applicable report for you. And that's really hugeyeah. It's the way I put it is, you know, a lot of people, especially if you're near or just don't know that you have to track your files. If you're a veteran driver, you know what you're doing. But a lot of people don't know that. But I think, you know, that's the basis of what we're building. But what's coming next is actually the part that really excites me. So we're building out two features, one is called one click apply. So basically you can take a central profile and we can apply to any of the other apps in your area that you're interested in. For you on your behalf. So if you had to apply to five or 10 apps, that takes a while. You're filling out mostly the same information again and again and again. So we can do that on your behalf. And then sort of the second part that we're building, and this is the ambitious part that will probably take a while is what we're calling personal dispatch. So we can then go and actually monitor all those apps on your behalf and only surface stuff that fits your preferences or fits what you like, basically. OK, OK. Yeah, that that sounds fascinating. That one right there I think could be huge when you try. As you mentioned, you know, I've talked a lot about multit-apping in the past, and I tell you what, it can be stressful. You know, you get four different apps going or or more for some folks. Yeah. And trying to stay on top of OK, which is the one that's giving you a good order and how do you do that. So that's going to be interesting to do. Let's go back to that. You mentioned that you can go. One of the things you mentioned was that you can go retroactively track your miles, so how do you how do you find that information out? Because I've signed on to, you know, what you've had and been able to pull up and it'll give me like an hourly earnings and some different things like that. And and I can go back actually and look at like for one thing that stands out, I'm going in circles here. I know. I apologize. One of the things I noticed when I logged in was, you know, I sign in and I sign in with my my sign ins with all of the different apps. And I can go back and look at every week, all year on Doordarsh, which I can't even do on the door dash app, as some people want to, you know, boy, if you're trying to find your information from back in January or February, that's that's something worth just getting onto you just for that, I think for a lot of folks, but. So, so and you're your information that you provide as far as like an hourly rate is, I think, a lot more on point than than an awful lot of things that I see out there. So I'm just curious, I guess, how do you, do the apps give kind of a mileage amount in their data that you're able to pull? Not exactly, but. So what happens is when you provide the login information that's basically sent directly to the app, so we don't see it, we don't store it, but effectively it works sort of as a key. And what's happening is you're telling the apps, hey, we, that's that we're representing this driver and the driver would like to access their work history. It's there, right. So they should be able to access it. So after that, we're actually able to pull your entire work history, just not just back to January, but sort of to the beginning of time. Sure. And what we pull is it's sort of what we call trip level data. So it's like Ron did this trip. He got paid this much. It started on this time and it lasted this long, basically, OK. And what we can do with that is the reason that I got really excited about that. That's the sort of data I used to have internally when I worked at Uber. But now we can democratize access to that data. So what we do is we just run sort of a bunch of analysis. We can go and see how long did you drive on that trip? But we also have this idea of sort of a session so we can ask we can calculate sort of miles in between those trips also. And what we've then done is gone and looked at what does the IRS what's the bar that the IRS concept proof basically. And what we've then done is we can go and build a detailed trip reports that is IRS auditable, basically, that will be able to say, even though basically we can retroactively create a mile long for you. Sure, sure. Yeah. And I've I've got an article that I had that I put, you know, how do you what do you do if you forgot to track Miles? And there's a few things that you can do just as an individual, you can go through your GrubHub and GrubHub will tell you how many miles you get paid for so you can add all that up. Doordash provides a log at the end of the year, but it's a terrible log. One, it takes forever for them to get it posted and it's just a whole year's worth. And two, it's only calculated based on straight estimate between the restaurant and the customer, so probably two thirds of your miles are missing on that. And I think, you know, Uber, of course, you can you can see a little bit more on Uber than a lot of things, and it'll actually give some miles. But you got to go through and you got to do a lot of addition. And that's a lot of work, and then, you know, the other option that I've thrown out is you can check your Google Maps timeline and you might be able to get something off of that. But that's that's a lot of work for somebody to go through. And if you've got a tool like that that you can go back through there and put all that together. Yeah, that that could be huge. Yeah, I think just sort of take the hassle off of your hands. And the other one too is like, God forbid the IRS comes, your duck's in a row. Yeah. Right. Because it's one of these where. Yeah, yeah. They come to you and if you provide a multiple, you know, 10, 20, 50, 100 page report, you know, they're probably happy. Yeah. And, you know, as part of that article I wrote in there that, you know, you can actually go back and you can create a log, but you've got to have evidence for it. And so that's the thing that I tell people, if you go back and you try and create that log, OK, yeah, you could do that, but you better take screenshots of everything that you're basing it on so that you've got a basis for it. And then you need to have like a little written description that says this is how I got my information, that if you hadn't kept it as you're going, but what you're doing is you're providing something that's already a basis right there for what they could use. Yeah. Because they have some requirements about the start point and start time and time of a trip. And there's just sort of, you know, a bunch of hoops they want you to jump through. So I think that's what we're trying to help do is like let us just help you jump through. We'll jump through hoops for you basically. And folks, if you're not aware of the need to track your miles, you've got to track your miles. That's a huge, huge deal. The fact of the matter is that I think figured it out that about every mile that you track is going to knock about 15 cents off the average person's taxes. It's like nine cents of your self employment tax and about six cents off of your income tax. So, you know, you drive a thousand miles and already you're talking one hundred and fifty dollars less that you pay in taxes. And that's that's the tax amount that you're paying. That's that's you know, you can take was at 57 and a half cents in this year off of y our earnings for every mile that you drove, if you recorded it properly and if you've tracked it properly, and if you're not tracking that, you're just paying the IRS a heck of a lot more money than you have to. So, yeah, and it's just, you know, take the money that's on the table. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think that's one reason right there. You ought to be getting on and taking a look at this whole thing, because just the data, just the data alone is so worthwhile to get a feel for. You know, you got Miles, you got an idea of how much you've actually been earning per hour, which I think a lot of people have no clue about. And so even just kind of in the beginning stages, you've already got a lot going on there. Yeah, no, I know where it gets interesting, I think is as more people in a city start to provide this data, you could start to draw some pretty interesting insights, will actually be able to know. I mean, we've seen this, for example, we've noticed Jordache paying significantly less than overeats for multiple weeks in a row in Chicago, call it. Right. And we start to see these really just interesting differences between the different apps and when and where to work et. Yeah, yeah. I think that could be huge if you're able to share data. From other drivers within the same community, so the more people that we get from any one particular city market or different things like that, just more information that you've got. And what could drivers do with that then once you start gathering that information, how could they use that? Yeah, so we've started to take that information and we've also started to gather a lot of other information on our own. So Jeff, who works in the who's my co-founder, is sort of the technical whiz programmer who makes things happen. What we're doing right now is for a given city, we can also then go and scrape, you know, sort of pull automatically. What are the top three hundred Doordash restaurants? What are the top three hundred Uber Eats restaurants? What do apartment complexes and houses look like in the vicinity to those dense areas? And then you start to combine that with the real data, a real trip data from drivers, and we can start to help people make some really smart decisions at the same time. What's interesting there is I realized that data is data, but the end of the day, the experience on the ground is really what matters the most. So from our end, we're using sort of, you know, what is our specialty, which is scraping and presenting this data. But we're actually looking for is professional drivers would be interested in taking a look at some of this, because what I imagine is going to happen is we will put this map or put this data we've collected in front of somebody. And very quickly, we'll get some good feedback, like, hey, there's something here you don't know about. Hey, you know, I just have this information, having worked this area for a while that you just don't know about. So I think that's what we're really hoping for, is like to take this data, but then to work with professional drivers to really make it useful for people so they can ask for listeners here as if for some reason this interests anybody. I would love to work with you. So right now. We're not we haven't created sort of a list of cities for which we're doing this. So if you're in a city and you're interested in this, we'll come do this for your city. Just shoot me an email I'm at David@withpara.com, and I would love to work with you. Yeah, and we'll put a link in the show notes. And then I've always got this is episode 102 already and that's at entrecourier.com/102. And in both places. I'll have David's email there. It's David@withpara w-i-t-h-p-a-r-a dot com correct? Correct. And so guys shoot him an email and or send me an email or go through the comments, whatever, and I can forward the information, do whatever, because I think, t he deal here is the more people that we can get to provide information, I think, you know, there's a lot more power in in all of that because, my gosh, I just think that if, like, I'm here in Denver and if we had 50 or 100 people, that all sent in their information. To, you know, as far as what they're doing and then to be able to start finding out that, you know what, the Chipotle over here on Broadway Is is actually pretty good and the average trip times are a lot shorter, but the one over on Hampden maybe is not so great, you know, imagine what kind of information that could be. Yeah. And I think what I've noticed is at least I've been sort of delivering quite a lot over the past couple of months. And what I've noticed is just and I'd love your thoughts on this is the difference between a good trip and a bad trip is huge. So I notice this like, hey, you know, Doordarsh will give me an offer for seven bucks to go a mile and a half or they'll give me an offer for $8.50 to go seven miles. Yeah. And I always think that's crazy and it makes no sense. Yeah. But what we're hoping is that. The only way to really change that is for people to start rejecting the bad trips. Yeah, absolutely. I'm wondering just real quick, because I know with their new pay model, gosh, you guys probably get enough data that it might be easier for you to try and break the code a little bit with some of these places to see if there are patterns where there really is an algorithm to decide what they're paying or not. Yeah, I just I sit there and I think that, you know, Uber Eats with their new you know, they change their pay model a little more than a year ago and they did away with the transparency. They didn't they no longer publish at least the rates that they're charging or that they're paying based on. It seems like they're still somewhat of a formula with them. It does seem like if you go longer, they pay more. Yeah. Doordarsh, on the other hand, it's like just like you said, it could be one mile, it could be seven miles, and they're still putting out three dollars for their base pay or something like that. And. That'd be fascinating, just just in and of itself. Yeah, I think another concept I'd like to bring up is when you go into a restaurant, they have sort of, you know, the checkout machine there. Right. And that checkout machine pulls in requests from Doordash from Uber Eats from Postmates all into sort of one central form that the restaurant can then use to manage their operations. Right. Given that most deliverers are working on multiple platforms. Why can't that be done for deliveries? Yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, Right? The platforms provide that information in that format to the restaurants at the end of the day, you know, the drivers or their customer, too. Why can't it be done that way? Yeah, that was, in fact. I remember that in the language when Doordash went through their IPO, they talked about having this three faced market that they understand, you know, that's one of the challenges. When they put out their first paperwork, they said one of the challenges they face is they're really looking at three different markets between the customer, the drivers and the restaurants. And, you know. I think if you had more drivers working together, sharing information, sharing data. That could level the playing field a little bit when it comes to the relationship with these companies. Yeah, I agree, it's just sort of a given that there are three sided marketplace, the way to shift things for the better is sort of through that market dynamics a little bit. Right. If you if people realize that certain areas aren't great or certain tips aren't great, guess what? Their algorithm will have to price it better. Yeah. Yeah, it will. And if you've got it, you know, I mean, if if long term, you know, you're talking about maybe personal dispatch if you can build something that can take a look at stuff from several different platforms. And can kind of take that data that you've already built where you know that, OK, your average wait time at I mean, I'm just thinking off top of my head, what I'd love to be able to put together is that... I hope the dogs aren't coming through too loud here. I just sat there and I think if you could take that data and you kind of know that the average wait time at this particular restaurant at this particular time of day is normally about three minutes as opposed to ten minutes or something like that, and and this address to this particular apartment complex that it's usually takes longer for somebody to deliver there. And if you could somehow have all that data put together based on where you're picking up and where you're going and having a more accurate idea of what you can expect time wise and everything else, and it could be huge. Yeah, especially on that apartment side. I know that that's everybody knows everyone who delivers knows this, but like some apartments are great. It's very rare. Most aren't. Right. And the part that always gets me is of gives you sort of the first name and an initial. But most of the call boxes give you the last name and an initial. Exactly. And just having to sort of play that lottery of like, hey, did you order Doordash? Like, You know, we had the guys on, are you familiar with the beans app? I am not. OK, so there's a, there's an app out there called Beans B-e-a-n-s. And what they've done is they have taken up this thing of trying to map out apartment complexes. Awesome. And so you can enter, you know, enter your building number, your apartment number, and it'll show you right where it's at. And I know one of the things that they have been thinking of doing, and I don't I haven't seen them able to do that yet, but it's kind of like if you could start sharing information about even like access codes and different things like that. Yeah, and or if that's something that you guys are able to do based on different addresses or something like that, that if a driver is in and then it's there, so that next time I get to this particular address and it's # 7 7 7 7, what a huge difference that could make in time and different things like that. Yeah. And that sort of apartment thing is actually something that I guess is a little bit of a personal crusade for me or sort of annoys me because when I was at Uber we built tools that sold for this. So the example I gave is imagine you're delivering food to a casino in Las Vegas, right? You're not able to go up to the hotel room. So we had a process that the hotel first that the person at the hotel room would know, would know where to come down and walk through to the casino to meet you at the perfect time to pick up the food. So I know that this apartment problem can be solved. It just feels that it's an active decision not to solve it. So I think from my end, it's a little bit of a personal crusade and that I would love to work with the platforms to try and find some sort of a solution to this, because they must know. Right. If you think about it, Doordash will see that delivery's not able to be made and then they make you wait for five minutes so they know what's going on. And the other side of that is maybe call me crazy, but if that doesn't work, perhaps the other approach is we're creating what we're calling almost sort of like a blacklist. So the example I give is there's a spot in San Francisco where there's an address on Market Street, which nobody can ever find it. What it turns out is it's the Four Seasons, but the Four Seasons will not put you in touch with any of their guests. So basically, if you are to deliver there, it's going to be undeliverable every time. But can we start? You know, it's great when we go I do this or I go on Facebook and I complain about it right in the groups, but what we're hoping is by sort of giving a little bit of public pressure, maybe some of these apartments and hotels will just make a better experience. You know, you mentioned that and you know, these companies not really right now until. Very recently, there hasn't been any incentive for these delivery companies to do anything about it. Because. It doesn't cost them anything, you know, and efficiency is not incentivized at all. Except maybe now in California. Yeah, because with Prop 22 now that they have to start paying based on, you know, a minimum pay based on the amount of time that takes to deliver. I got a feeling that these delivery companies are all of a sudden going to start getting a lot more efficient about some of that stuff because now there's a financial incentive, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. And so I wonder how much of a difference that's going to make and. I don't know this, but you're right, you know, there's everybody's on their own and, you know, this way, I just the crazy thing about this whole market is it is such an inefficient you know, it's such an inefficient model because you got one guy going to one restaurant to pick up one order of food to take to one place. And and then on top of that, most of these companies. My gut feeling is that, their dispatching is based more on. Them getting you to the restaurant when the food is ready, then it is on anything, it's really efficient or good for the driver. And I see that I think especially with GrubHub, in that when things are kind of midway or whatever, GrubHub is going to send you seven minutes, 10, 15 minutes away to pick up. And it's like every order is six, seven miles away. And it's just like, you know, one after the other after the other. And I think it has to do with them trying to get you there closer when that food's supposed to be ready than it is whether they give a crap at all, whether or not you're driving the wheels off your car or anything like that. Yeah. And so. Yeah, and I wonder about. If something like what you're doing will help with that. And if you get people doing a little better about being able to accept or reject things, and part of that has to be has to do with getting enough drivers on probably to make it work. Yes, I think it's enough people in an area, so it's a little bit about density, right? A lot of the time I feel like there are some active decisions by the platforms on this end. When I see these trips with these crazy different prices for completely different types of trips, you know, the conspiracy theorist in me definitely goes, all right. But for me, having worked internally at Uber previously, generally how I feel is that it is more towards incompetence than it does to wards like maliciousness, basically. I think there are some active decisions that do require change, but I think to some extent. Yeah, I think lot of it is a little bit of incompetence, to be honest. Yeah, I just in fact, last week was my you know, I was just talking about the whole IPO and and, you know, my reservations about Doordashash and whether or not they could be profitable. And there was a part where I talked about I thought that my, m aybe I'm just too skeptical because look at all these other companies that you know, w hen they went public, there is no sign of ever being profitable. And look how they're doing now, but then, you know, the one thing that I said then was but the difference was these companies are good at what they did. And I can't figure out how these companies, Doordarsh, all of them, it can be so incompetent and what they're doing for as much as they're doing. Yeah, my experience is they were probably going through what we went through when I was an Uber, which was just it was growing like crazy. And because of that, everything is just breaking all the time. So what we had to do was, like you were planning on the tech side, what would what should last do for the next two years? But then growth went way above your plan, basically. So that's why I know people probably experience this, the Doordash app sometimes feels slow, right. Or it crashes sometimes. And it's just sort of. Yeah, the duct tape is falling apart a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. A Doorcrash. I hadn't heard that. I always joke about Doorcrash Fridays because it always seems like it's Friday when it happens, which is when things are really busy. So it's just like that's when the system is overwhelmed. What do you think about all this? I mean, what are your thoughts, I guess? Well, I'm just throwing that out there about Doordash their IPO, h ow it went, how everything is sold for so much higher than they thought. What do you think is the possibility of them being profitable and of that having been maybe a good investment for people? What's your take on that? Yeah, it's sort of fascinating. I live in San Francisco right now, and just all these tech IPOs in the last couple of weeks have just jumped. Right. And it's like, you know, maybe trading on the market. They've gone up a bit, but like selling into the IPO, the prices have almost doubled on the first day of trading for a lot of these companies, right? That's what's insane. And I think what's going to be really interesting is a little bit of knowledge here, which is employees at these companies aren't allowed to share sell their shares until six months after the IPO. So I think that's actually going to be the big sort of day of reckoning is going to be interesting, is six months from the day of IPO when all the employees want to cash out a bit. Does the stock price still hold? Yeah, that's what's going to be super interesting to see. Or is there going to be a rush to sell that stuff because they know that it can't last? Because here's the guys that are probably no better than anybody else. Yeah, and that's probably not to say that Doordash won't be around for a while. I think it will be right there. They're Doordash. They're big. Right. But the question is, does the price to make sense? But then again, also, I'm not the right person to pontificate on that. Really. No, I understand that. I understand that. But you do have at least some interesting perspectives because you've been on, you know, the the app side of things or something with your experience with Uber. Yeah. And but I think what's driving a lot of these companies really is they're in a fight for the person who's ordering on the app. Right. That's really sort of where the big war is going on between the different companies is getting the order, the people who are ordering. And it's sort of a war for that. And I think to some extent not out of ill will. But it's just the drivers have been left a little bit on the side. And that's a key part of the equation. Yeah. So I think that's sort of where we're really coming in from is, you know, let's yeah, let's advocate for the driver. Yeah. What do you think happens if, you know, let's say you get the personal dispatch working and you've got people then basically able to really it's really multi-apping on steroids, then you're able to have somebody log in and basically have, you know, have one central point that's just kind of catching all of these different offers from all of these different apps and throwing that, you know, and then just kind of evaluate and say, OK, here's an offer that this is what it looks like or something like that. You try and weed out the best ones for the drivers of. Do you think do you think you could end up running into repercussions with any of these apps if you're using that? I I could see that, yes, I'm assuming some apps might not be happy, but it depends on sort of how you're doing it. At the end of the day, you're an independent contractor. I am building a suite of tools that support you and your business and make your life easier. If I'm not doing it in a way that I think where a lot of these tools and there's been a wave of these tools should have ended up falling afoul with the tech companies is sort of the way that they accomplish the app, switching the way that they accomplish what they're doing. So because there a lot of it is done through a little deeper sort of hacking accessibility settings on Android. And then just the way in which they interact with the apps is what actually makes the apps upset. So I think to some extent we're hoping to do it in a more aboveground manner. And to be honest, what I think at first is that maybe the bigger companies are less likely to give us the data in the way in which we can make your life easier at first. But up and coming companies have an incentive to do that. So the way I imagine this is, you know, there's an up and coming gig company I'm representing, you run up and, you know, they want they are hoping to get Ron to work on Friday evening between this time. So the market rate for work during that time is twenty seven bucks an hour. Let's say you're a new company. You should pay above market rate because that way people will be willing to try out your platform. The problem, too, is if you have one right now, is that you have to apply and learn this new platform and that can be quite frustrating. But with one click apply, that friction is now gone.

But where we really want to get to is: 37:56

yes, but actually Ron has ten thousand trips on Doordash at 4.95 star rating. I'm making this up, but. Ron's, good at this and you're new, you need to provide your customer a great service because you're new. So market rates twenty seven and you should probably pay thirty two but really you should be paying around thirty six bucks an hour. So I think that's where we really want to go to is can we get your work history taken into account and can we get you paid for the good work that you have done and how I basically view it as I am building a personal algorithm for you. And you can also tell me, hey, I'm just not interested in grocery delivery. I'm just not interested in certain types of new types of work. At the end of the day, you're in charge. I just want to build an algorithm that accomplishes what you want to do. But the flip side then, or I guess the plus side is that if you could do that in a way that brings value to these apps, then all of a sudden, you know, because I think that's part of the problem with, you know, with multi-apping in general right now is that there are too many people that when they're multitasking, what they're doing is they're just picking up whatever they can pick up. Yeah. And so, OK, I'm going to stop at Chipotle and I'm going to take this order that's going east and it's going to pay twelve dollars. And oh by the way, now this, you know, the steakhouse just came up with this order that's seventeen dollars and its going west. But I'm going to take them both because I can make some good money doing that, and what happens is both customers are really late because you did that. Yep. And and that's why companies are cracking down so much on, you know, some some are saying multi-apping. What they're doing, at least as I see it, is they're cracking down on late deliveries. Yes. And if you could if you can juggle it well, I don't think they'll have a problem with it. But it's also they don't make it easy. Right? Like, I've been going out there delivering on sort of three apps at the same time, you're forced to make snap decisions. It's like, let's look at the map. Let's look at that direction. Let's look at the dollar amount. Let's look at the restaurant. Let's combine that with the other one. And you need to do this within 30 seconds. Yeah, right. That takes practice. Right. Like, I failed really hard the first week, like I was struggling. Or, you know, what I've done sometimes is I thought that I'm grabbing things that are going, you know, in the same directions. And, you know, unfortunately, one of them was Uber. And you don't get that. Or Uber eats and you don't get as, you don't get the constant look at the map, which you've accepted, and all of a sudden you realize that I was looking at it backwards and I just picked something that's going the opposite direction and, you know, so I've had to be like, OK, I've got to cancel out of that one rather than try and make something really late. But yeah, it can be challenging sometimes. You get you get data coming in all sorts of different directions. Uber Eats used to be terrible at, you know, when when the order came in and it's flashing at you and the map is shaking and all that stuff. And it's like, how do you make a decision based on that? And then you've got your orders coming in from everybody else and it really gets stressful And you're driving and it's raining outside. Exactly. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. Middle of a snowstorm or something like that. And that's when it gets the worst. You know, the big thing that I always try and stress to people is that you're running a business still and these companies are your customers. And I think, you know, there's a point where it's real easy for me to get adversarial when I talk about these companies because of the way they do things. But the bottom line is nobody's forcing them to give me any offers at all. No. And if I'm going to do a crappy job doing deliveries just because I'm my own boss, then I'm shoot myself in the foot. Yeah, I think actually you told a quote that really stuck with me is sort of like, you know, people are frustrated because they still care. Right, and I sort of agree with that, is that the platforms have their issues right, but I still believe that we can make it better. Yeah, right. Despite sort of all the complaints and things that aren't working, I do really believe that we can make it better. Yeah, I do think we can. And I think that by people coming together, if if you're doing it in a way that is for for the benefit of everybody involved, Yeah, that it it can work without without all the pushback that necessarily comes with, you know, guys that are just kind of more like I'm just in it for myself and I don't care whether or not I'm getting things done the way that I agreed to do it or not. And that's the stuff that I think is getting a lot of people in trouble right now. Yeah, yeah. Let me ask you, this one is kind of jumping off board just a little bit or something like that. But I think because because you worked with Uber, with this whole thing that's happened with AB5 and Prop 22 and the whole contract independent contractor versus employee type of thing. And, you know, half the world right now kind of believes that all these gig companies are exploiting drivers because you kind of got, you've got some experience on both sides of it now. What's your take on that? How do you how do you see this whole independent contractor relationship and the relationship between drivers and these companies? And how do these companies actually look at it as far as from what you can tell? Yeah, I think it's you know, it's obviously sort of a very complex issue. I think what's interesting is it's actually sort of a debate on, I'm going to get a little philosophical here as sort of a debate on. Sort of labor law and health insurance as a whole in the United States. This is sort of like a microcosm of that to some extent. And the problem is that's going to be a much longer, much more protracted battle before we really get to the end of that, and that's really why I think what's motivated us to do this company is just a belief that things are going to take a while for this to shake out. But there are things we can do to make people's lives better in the immediate term. Sure. Regardless of where you stand on that debate. Yeah. Do you feel I mean, because you're kind of getting off the ground right now and you're doing something geared towards independent contractors. Do you feel any kind of hesitance or kind of fear that that maybe this whole gig economy thing could go away because of maybe the way the new administration might lean towards things? Or because if, you know, if they enact ProAct, which is like a nationwide ABC test or something like that, what do you, how do you think any of that's going to play out? Yeah, I think that's that's a possibility. Right. But say something. Say that were to happen. The way I view it regardless, is, you know, sort of similar to how we built this tool at the beginning for the Cares Act at the beginning of the covid. Regardless of what happens, people will need help and we will be there to provide that help. Let's say the ProAct passes and people have to have a decision, you know, hey, should I stick with one of these companies or should I consider doing other things? We'd love to be there to help you make that decision as well. I think at the end of the day, where we're really coming from is. The ground is shifting, you know, stuff is happening and the gig economy, things have sort of come to a head, right? So regardless of where that shakes out, people will need help to make informed decisions. And we just want to be there to provide that. That's yeah, absolutely true. And I guess, You know, I just I just you know, what happens politically is anybody's guess. So I just can't really weigh in on that. All I know is whatever does happen, we'll try to be there to help. Well, I think the fact that Prop 22 passed by as much as it did, that's got to temper things a little bit, I think. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. It's hard to say. You mentioned to you talked about, you know, some of these up and coming places, and so, you know, we're seeing at least most of the stuff I talk about, of course, are, you know, GrubHub Postmates U ber Eats, Doordash. And, you know, already we're seeing, you know, that Uber Eats has completed their purchase now of Postmates. And it looks to me like they're going to consolidate operations, at least from the driver fleet perspective. That's what I'm seeing. I don't know if you see something differently, but all of a sudden now you're from four major ones down to three. You see GrubHub being bought out by this European company. If it happens, it's still a year away is kind of what it's looking like. But what do you think as far as like other companies out there? Do you see anybody that looks like they could come in and change things up a little bit? Yeah, I think just sort of digging into these other companies, there's a lot that is sort of being built right now where a lot of companies that are up and coming in, it runs the gamut from sort of small to quite large. I think just sort of the gig economy has been around for a while now when people see the consolidation happening, especially in food delivery and as happens in a free market, I think people are coming with different ideas and different takes and different plans on it. So I'm fascinated to see what happens. I mean, from our perspective, we know we've looked quite closely at a company like GoPuff, for example, which is growing like grown like crazy right now. But there's other ones, which is Peach and Rodie, I'm interviewing for a company called Jupiter actually tomorrow. So there's sort of an up and coming up food delivery company here in the Bay Area. But I think really what we're trying to do is I'm personally just testing out all of these. Sure. And we're only going to and I'm just going to come back with the results and only highlight things that make sense for people basically. But I do think that there is a whole wave of sort of these companies that are being built right now. Yeah, yeah. That's, what do you think it's going to take for somebody to really change things up? What do you think a new company would have to do to really differentiate themselves? Yeah, I think a couple different things, I think a better relationship with the drivers over time, right? Like right now the larger companies are doing well, but at the end of the day, you need to keep all your customers happy. Right. So I think a better relationship with drivers over time. I think somewhat of a more efficient model somehow or some just type of different offering that captures that sort of orderers imagination in some sort of different way. Right. And if I knew the answer to that, that would be sort of the next big thing. Really? Yes. Right. So I don't quite know. But I'm excited to see people try. And there seems to be a bunch of these companies trying. And I just have to believe that somebody will crack something interesting. Yeah, no, absolutely. I know I talked with the guys from TripD elivers that just launched in Nashville. And they've got some interesting things in their model. But my question is, how are they going to do logistics wise? How are they going to do it actually getting the deliveries done? And that's the thing that I'm kind of waiting to see before I start getting probably too on board with anyone like that. I see Lyft saying they want to come into the market. And but they want to do it in a way that they're not going to be customer facing, that they're just going to work with the restaurants. But it's kind of like you said with some of these companies that the battle is trying to get the customer in. And I think that's a reason a lot of these restaurants are going with these companies is because they can bring customers in the door. And so if Lyft is not providing that I'm wondering if they can succeed. What do you think of Lyft coming into the market? Do you think they'd be able to do much or how do you think that that might work out? Yes, it's fascinating there. Who are they partnering with again? I'm blanking on a little Well they did a partnership with GrubHub and so there was that. But then I think they've been talking about actually starting to do their own deliveries. And what it sounds like is what they want to do is, you know, charge a lot less to the restaurants. But then basically it sounds like maybe having the restaurants order up the delivery and then they just use their fleet to do the deliveries. What's interesting is it's sort of comparable to Doordash does have that sort of an offering, but they actually offer it to other types of services. So, for example, I've been getting a lot of Dordash pings for this company called Shef S h e f. And what that is, it's a company here that home cooks cooked food basically. So they have like a nice kitchen in their home that passes an inspection and they cook sort of home cooking style and the food's delivered to you. That's fulfilled through Doordash. So actually sort of after getting a bunch of these pings, it's like, what is this? And sort of signed up for Shef, put an order in and then notice that it was being delivered on basically through the DoorDash systems is sort of a very similar approach there. What sort of annoyed me is I noticed that chef will only give you a maximum tip of one dollar. So going back to what we're saying earlier, they're going on sort of the list of like maybe you shouldn't consider this order a little bit. Yeah, no kidding. But it's interesting that I think that's sort of the angle that Lyft is trying to come in with. Also sounds like it's sort of like delivery as a sub service a little bit. What do you think? What do you have? But I guess kind of coming up in the near future, what you're doing with Para, kind of let us know, I guess maybe some of that and then we'll kind of get back and remind everybody to touch base with you as well. Yeah, I think where you as a lot of people, we're sort of we're in the process of building an app. We're slated to launch that the second or third week of January. So, yeah, my engineers are probably kill me for saying that. But that's OK. We've got a plant, got to plant the flag on the ground, right? So, you know, that sort of has that basic features we've talked about, which is just automatic earnings done. Right, mileage tracking. And we're going to have some basic, not basic sort of this earnings insights basically that I was talking about. But we're going to launch that on sort of a city by city basis, which is why the ask earlier, which is, hey, if you're interested in helping create this for your city, I would love to chat with you. So if people reach out, your city gets prioritized. Other than that, there's basically sort of sign your city up. So it's sort of a leader board and we're going to work our way down the votes on cities basically. OK, so that's sort of the core app. But we are testing out right now this one click apply and personal dispatch technology. So if there are people who are interested in testing that out to I would also love to chat with you. I think the caveat being this is not even a beta. This is like a working concept right now. Sure. But I think knowing that, especially in the personal dispatch side of anybody is just interested in sort of being a first adopter, we would love to work with you to try some of this out. And what we can do is we know that your time is valuable. So we're going to guarantee that you make. You know, at least slightly more than what you would already doing your work right now, because we know that we're asking you to somewhat be a little bit of a guinea pig in this case, you're an active guinea pig. Probably not the best term, right? Your input is the most important part of it. But that is another thing we are looking for is if anybody is interested in testing that, we would love to chat with you. Yeah, no, absolutely. In fact, here's what I would I would want to throw out to anybody that's listening to this right now, that if this has your interest, if you want to get more data for your community, what this is going to involve is getting you've got to get a lot of data from your community. That has to be more than just you. You know, you've got to get other drivers. And so here's I guess what I would encourage you to do is, you know, first thing to do is send your email to David and let him know that, you know, you're interested. And the second thing I would do is reach out to anybody that, you know, that's doing delivery, have them do the same thing, because I think the more you can kind of ramp up in your community, you know, the more you kind of move up that priority as far as getting that capability and getting that feedback in your particular market. And and I would say even, you know, get on, there's, a lot of places where, you know, you've got a Facebook group maybe for Doordash or GrubHub or Ubereats or any of those companies within your community. Put a link to this, a podcast or whatever. You know, get people to listen to it and just say, hey, you know, here's a group that's trying to get some data together and if we can get more people from our area than we can get more information that will help us with our deliveries, and I think if you if you become an evangelist in your area and try and get people spread out or get people to get any information in or anything and, you know, I'll let you know right up front here, I'm not getting any kind of, you know, commission or referral or anything like that back for it and stuff like that is just we've kind of been in touch for a little bit. And I'm just really fascinated with with what David and his group are doing. And I think he's putting together some stuff that could be very helpful for a lot of people. It's not something that's actually helping me out a whole lot, but I think it would help me out a lot if I get a lot of people from Denver, for instance, that are engaged in providing information and I appreciate that Ron. I think what's really important is that community aspect of it, right? It's just that's it. Everyone coming together, especially in the current times, to help each other. And I think that's sort of one thing I missed is actually it's probably not going to be in the version of the app launch, but we're immediately going to fast follow was also this sort of community sourced information. So how I put it is, you know, where are toilets available and are they driver friendly? Yeah. Where is a popular meal or coffee spot near where you have to wait for a restaurant? And are they driver friendly? You know, where our parking spots you can sit to wait and are they driver friendly. But these things are always I don't know that I want to share any of that information. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I know all my loading zones downtown in Denver and I keep thinking I could probably help people out with that. But then that would mean that somebody else might be parking in that loading zone the next time I need it. Yeah, that's true. And I'm in San Francisco where there just are no loading zones. Yeah, but what matters is it's nice to have these lists, but it only works if it's up to date. And the only way to do that well is just as a community. Really. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and I knew a guy that one time was talking about building an app that that was going to rely on a lot of community information. But he was like, didn't really have a plan on trying to build up at scale at any one place. And it was kind of like, if you don't have a lot of people involved, the information doesn't help a whole lot. So, yeah, absolutely. David, what's your email address again? Let me get that. Let me have you put that out again so you to remind people on that Yeah, it's David@WithPara.com. So with and then p a r a dot com again. That's all one word. There's no dash in between or anything like that. Correct. Yeah. All right. Well, David, thanks again for joining us and really appreciate you taking the time to come on the podcast here and share a little bit about what you're doing and love to kind of stay in touch with whatever's going on. Now, thanks again, Ron, and stay safe, everyone. All right, sounds good. So what do you think are Courier nation? I really enjoyed doing this interview. I've talked to, I've talked with David before. I've talked with one of the guys on his team, some before also. And I'm just excited about the possibilities that David and his team could be looking at as far as especially assembling the kind of information that could be a real difference maker to people like you and I as we go out and do our deliveries. And, you know, I see all sorts of possibilities just with the data with with, p utting together information based on on our individual markets and, you know, if you can if you can get real time information about where things are really busy, where they're not, that's that's a heck of a lot better than, you know, the supposed hot spots that some of these companies will put out. And so I just hate having to wait for it to all come together. But here's the deal, folks. They need participation. And so I really recommend you go check them out. If you go to WithPara. com, w i t h p a r a dot com and, but more than anything, maybe just shoot David a line. I mean, you know, talk to him about your market and and if he can get a few people from your market, you know, I think you can kind of become one of the early places for him to be able to get data put together. And so, folks, thank you so much. Just for joining me again today and I invite you to come back again next week for the Deliver on your Business podcast. And let me just wrap up by saying here's here's the most exciting thing about what David and his group are doing. And that is they're putting together some tools and information that will help you to take even more control, and that's the thing that like I do every week when I end this up, I just beg of you guys to do, take control, take control of your delivery work, treat this like a business. You make the decisions. Don't let yourself be controlled by GrubHub or Doordash or any of these others that you take control, you be the boss!