Fetch, an Austin last-mile delivery service for apartment communities, is on a quest to hire a few hundred people and bring its services to 24 new markets over the next two years.
The ambitious growth will be fueled by a new $50 million round of series C venture capital investment, as well as $10 million in new debt funding.
On the venture side, the round was led by Austin-based Ocelot Capital, with Greenpoint Partners, Alpaca VC and Rose Park Advisors making first-time investments. Meanwhile, earlier investors Iron Gate Capital, Signal Peak Ventures, Venn Ventures, Pando Ventures and Seamless also backed the new round.
The venture debt was provided by Signature Bank.
Fetch has now raised about $92 million total.
The company was founded in Dallas in 2016 by CEO Michael Patton. It relocated to Austin in 2018.
Patton declined to reveal the company's valuation, but he said it has tripled since its series B round.
Fetch focuses entirely on multifamily communities. It allows apartment renters to have virtually any of their packages, including perishables, sent to Fetch warehouses instead of their doorstep. Then, renters can schedule a two-hour window for delivery, cutting down on thefts and package damage.
It's able to deliver packages, largely using gig workers, in an efficient way because it can service many people in the same apartment complexes. And it's attractive to apartment managers who often see dozens, if not hundreds, of deliveries pile up, forcing them to find storage or rent or purchase lockers for residents.
"Our business makes money because we get density," Patton said. "...we get the density of delivering to 300 doors at one address instead of 300 packages to 300 different addresses."
The business has been growing swiftly.
About a year ago, when it raised its $18 million series B, Fetch had a total of 272 employees, with 86, including contractors, based in Austin. It now has 386 employees, including 101 in Austin. It also has about 2,000 contracted couriers.
Fetch's entire tech team is based in Austin; its corporate team is in Austin and spread across several locations nationwide. The company moved into a new, 10,000-square-foot office on Guadalupe just south of the University of Texas campus in April, although it continues to operate on a hybrid model due to the pandemic.
Patton said Fetch plans to add "a few hundred" employees over the next 12 months, including about 50 who will be Austin-based. Those include roles in product, human resources and operations.
It won't be easy in a tight labor market and amid high competition for tech talent.
"Arguably the tightest market it's ever been for labor overall. But also for software engineers, as we have all these companies moving to Austin, especially in the last year."
While Fetch might not be able to offer outsized salaries like some tech giants, Patton says Fetch has advantages.
"Frankly, we don't compete as much on salaries or benefits with the big names," he said. "It's more about the pitch of working with us, joining our mission and joining our team."
Patton said over half of the company's W-2 employees are people of color.
"We have high diversity across the company," he said. "We have focused on, especially in the in the corporate roles, making sure that we are intentionally finding diverse candidates to throw in the mix. Especially in Austin, there's not a whole lot of diversity, I think you could argue, and we're making sure that we're throwing diverse candidates in the mix and have that be a real intentional part of our hiring process and an intentional part of our culture, frankly."
The hiring spree comes as Fetch has roughly tripled its business during pandemic-ravaged 2020, when it delivered about 3.5 million packages. It expects to double business this year, and it has already delivered 2.5 million packages as of June.
Fetch is currently in 16 metros – Austin, Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas and Fort Worth, Denver, Houston, Jacksonville, Orlando Phoenix, Portland, Raleigh-Durham, San Antonio, Seattle, Tampa and Washington, D.C.
It aims to be in 35 cities by the end of 2022.
In Austin, it services nearly 80 multi-family communities, or about 25,000 apartment units.
“Based on our experience within parcel logistics and last-mile delivery, we view the Fetch model as the only sustainable option for multifamily and see it quickly becoming the gold standard for apartment operators," Andrew Townsend, managing member at Ocelot Capital, said in a news release. "With the acceleration in e-commerce volumes, it is more apparent than ever that limited capacity parcel storage systems are no longer viable and Fetch is the only long-term parcel storage solution that meets the needs of both multifamily operators and residents.”
