Jun 4, 2013

Apple Reportedly Refocuses iAd On New Streaming Music Radio Service Delivery.com , the New York City-based company whose technology platform lets local merchants easily provide e-commerce and delivery services, has acquired Brinkmat, a startup also based in New York that’s built an online scheduling and ordering platform for local laundry and dry cleaning businesses. In a phone call this week, Delivery.com CEO Jed Kleckner declined to discuss financial details of the deal, but said that Brinkmat’s service will continue to function and grow as part of Delivery.com going forward (for context, Brinkmat’s most notable competitor is SpotlessCity, the NYC based startup that launched at Disrupt New York last year . ) As part of the sale, Brinkmat’s co-founders, fellow Goldman Sachs alums Tim O’Malley and Jay Winters , have both taken new leadership roles on Delivery.com’s technology team. This marks a clear step forward for Delivery.com, which was founded in 2004 but has thus far focused mostly on the local restaurant and grocery verticals. “Brinkmat is a platform that we’ll be able to extend into other verticals,” Kleckner said. “Delivery.com should be something that goes well beyond food.” It’s a smart time for Delivery.com to focus on going bigger, since big competitors have emerged on the local delivery market in recent months — players in the space include giants such as Google Shopping Express , eBay same day deliveries , and of course Amazon , as well as startups such as Postmates , TaskRabbit , and Exec . But Klecker maintains that all this competition isn’t bad news for his business. Some 10,000 merchants and one million users are active on the Delivery.com site today, and last year the company grew its revenue by 25 percent year over year. “[The competition] is as validating as it comes. We’re clearly in a marketplace that’s large in size and of increasing demand in the consumer set,” he said. And, of course, there is that very valuable domain name real estate it’s got. “When people go to Google to find out what is available for delivery, by nature of our name we have the benefit of being able to reach those people.” This is not the only bit of consolidation news in the local delivery space: As TechCrunch was the first to report , two of the web’s most well-known restaurant delivery services, Seamless and Grubhub , recently came to an agreement to merge as one . And we’ve almost surely not the end of the M&A action here. When asked if more acquisitions could be in Delivery.com’s future as it looks to continue to expand either its vertical reach or tech offerings, Kleckner answered without hesitation: “Definitely.” Delivery.com, which has a full-time staff of 50, is backed with an undisclosed amount of venture capital from its lead investor Cantor Ventures , the VC arm of Cantor Fitzgerald . 0