A new Boston startup, Dispatch, and investors including Oracle’s former president, are placing a bet that the “Uberification” of the economy is just getting started.
Dispatch has just raised a $3.1 million seed round for its technology that aims to make it easier for “Uber for X” startups to launch — and for larger/older/legacy players to get on the “on-demand economy” bandwagon.
Put simply, Dispatch lets companies connect their consumer-facing sites and apps into backend systems for easier booking and dispatching of services.
Dispatch is starting with a focus on the home services industry, which is interesting considering the growth of startup players such as Handy and TaskRabbit. Initial customers for Dispatch include Handyman Connection, which is using the Dispatch software to make it easier to schedule and reduce wait times for repair visits (i.e., make its service more like Handy/TaskRabbit).
Legacy players must be willing to change their mindset and ingrained practices, not just their technology, in order to use what Dispatch offers.
In a news release, Dispatch put it this way: Requiring that consumers give four-hour appointment windows — when consumers expect “push-button” experiences — is “no longer viable.”
That underscores what will probably prove one of the biggest challenges for Dispatch: legacy players must be willing to change their mindset and ingrained practices, not just their technology, in order to use what the startup offers.
But bringing the old guard into the 21st century could make for a massive business, according to Ray Lane, former Oracle president and COO, who is an investor in Dispatch.
“Dispatch has a profound opportunity to ‘Uberfy’ legacy businesses, bringing them into the on-demand economy,” Lane said in a statement, while also “providing visibility into the long elusive ‘last mile’ of customer engagement.”
The new round was led by GrandBanks Capital and Promus Ventures. Along with Lane, other investors in the funding included Salesforce Ventures, LaunchCapital and Kima Ventures.
Dispatch was founded last year and has a 17-person team at its office on Milk Street in the Financial District. The company's co-founder and CEO is Avi Goldberg, previously a founder of GreatPoint Energy, a cleantech firm that's raised more than $500 million in funding, and Zafgen, a biotech firm that went public earlier this year.
