Today we’d like to introduce you to Marc Gorlin.
Marc, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
The idea for Roadie struck me one day when I needed a couple of boxes of custom tile from a warehouse a few hours away to finish a bathroom renovation and had no economical or practical way of getting them the same day. I started to think, there’s always someone going somewhere, surely someone who was already headed in that direction would be willing to transport a couple of boxes of tile for me. A light bulb went off and Roadie was born.
Roadie is the first on-the-way delivery service that puts unused capacity in passenger vehicles to work by connecting people with items to send with drivers already going that way. Roadie works with consumers and businesses across virtually every industry to provide a faster, cheaper, more scalable solution for scheduled, same-day and urgent delivery. With over 120,000 drivers, the Roadie community has delivered to more than 11,000 cities and towns nationwide — a larger footprint than Amazon Prime Now.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Since we launched in early 2015, we’d been a bid-based marketplace, much like eBay was in the beginning. But last year, we decided to change all that and start using a machine learning algorithm to match deliveries to the right driver, instead of having senders choose. A lot of our customers were upset because it was a fundamental change to the system, especially for drivers and senders who had essentially favorited each other. But they were working in a closed-loop system that didn’t serve the greater community. It was a decision we had to make for the fairness of our system, the quality of our service and the overall health and scalability of our business. That kind of change is always scary, but in the end, it paid off and the results have allowed us to grow and scale immensely in the past year.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Roadie – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
Today Roadie works with businesses across virtually every industry, including major brands like Walmart, The Home Depot and Delta Airlines.
Through these partnerships, Roadie has strengthened its foothold in 224 metro areas across the country. Many of these metro areas were initially launched with consumers and small businesses, but have now scaled to meet the needs of enterprises delivering anything up to 100 miles around every major city in America.
Because Roadie’s on-the-way model taps into unused capacity in passenger vehicles already on the road, the company is uniquely positioned to help America’s largest retailers bring same-day delivery to millions of customers nationwide — even in small cities and towns that most retailers struggle to reach. The company’s same-day delivery footprint now reaches 89 percent of U.S. households.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
We will continue to innovate our dynamic routing and pricing models at Roadie and expand our use of machine learning to predict capacity and match deliveries to our community of drivers based on real-time supply and demand.
Across the industry, I think we’ll see more tech innovation enabling even greater speed and efficiency across the supply chain, not just delivery from store. As the IoT (Internet of Things) becomes more ubiquitous, we’ll see smart vehicles connecting to smart stores connecting to smart warehouses and so on. As that happens, companies like Roadie will be able to better predict and utilize existing capacity to make delivery more sustainable, more flexible, and more efficient. Imagine the entire transportation grid transformed into a public utility that anyone or anything can plug into, moving things with zero waste and unprecedented speed and efficiency.
Who are five other local entrepreneurs, professionals, or creatives that you know and admire?
There are countless leaders, creatives, and entrepreneurs who have inspired me, mentored me and otherwise helped shape my career, but these five have had the most profound impact:
Steve Gorlin – Steve Gorlin may be my dad, but he’s also the single greatest entrepreneur and salesperson I’ve ever met. From the time I was born, I’d watch my dad, a biotech entrepreneur, form these incredible ideas and then turn those ideas into a tangible thing. You’re around him for a minute, and then suddenly you don’t feel like a stranger any more. In fact, you were probably pulled into whatever deal he was planning next. And each next deal was the best one he’d ever done. He was infectious, and he still is. My dad taught me to find a deal, not a job. That’s why I’ve spent my career starting companies rather than working for them. And to this day, I find myself quoting him more
than anyone else. Whether it’s about fundraising to “raise money when you can,” lawyers where “the most expensive thing in the world is a cheap lawyer,” and even profits where “large profit margins can do wonders to make up for bad management,” I use his lessons every day. My dad has inspired multiple generations of Gorlins to start new businesses, including my son Mills, who happens to working on a bubble business as I write this.
Frank Blake – Frank Blake, the former chairman and CEO of Home Depot, is an important mentor to me, and he’s definitely on the top of the list. Obviously, I admire the fact that he took an iconic Atlanta brand from a very difficult spot and led it back to greatness. Whenever I spend time with Frank, it always feels like a MasterClass in humility and leadership. He’s a fantastic listener who never talks just for the sake of talking. And when he does speak, I’ve never met anyone who’s better at taking complex business conversations and turning them into straightforward common sense. Whether he uses storytelling or metaphors or just plain speak, he’s a genius at distilling a conversation down to its simplest essence. He helps me remove ego and figure out what really matters most in any decision for the business. When I go to him with a problem, I inevitably leave wondering why I ever thought it was a problem in the first place.
Mary Frances Jones – Mary Frances Jones, the head of marketing at Roadie, is one of the single greatest storytellers I’ve ever known. On multiple occasions, she helped turn formulaic business plans and stale powerpoints into compelling stories that make business feel personal and relatable. The stories we created together, both at Kabbage and at Roadie, have been the difference in millions of funding. For potential investors, partners, and employees, Mary Frances helped paint the vision of how our idea could become a huge business that also can impact communities at large. Her stories make it real, and they make people care. It was one of my greatest professional joys when she decided to build Roadie with me.
Tom Noonan – A legend in the Atlanta community, Tom Noonan has been a force in supporting local startups and entrepreneurship at large. He has single handedly backed more Atlanta tech startups than any person or even fund I know — supporting the entire community, not just the show ponies in the race. For me, he’s been a longtime friend and business partner. Whenever I have a new idea, I head to Tom for insight, guidance, and yes, even funds. From VerticalOne in 1998 to Roadie now, he’s been in every deal I’ve ever done. Tom’s insight and investment, both in time and funding, has helped build the foundation of southeastern startups and led the way in cybersecurity innovation. And with his help, the sun of successful startups no longer only rises and sets in Silicon Valley.
Gregg Freishtat – Gregg Freishtat and I started VerticalOne together, and in a lot of ways, our partnership shaped the way in how I ran every business after that. Early on in my career, I constantly worried about the competition and how fast they were moving compared to us. Gregg taught me to forget all that and to focus on what we could do, not what everyone else was doing. He said it much more colorfully than that. Whenever I think about our time together at VerticalOne, I remember how Gregg had this way of saying things about the company and our nascent industry as if it were written in stone. There were no doubts that VerticalOne could transform this industry or hit that milestone. It was gospel. And then he waited to see if someone argued with him. Most of the time, no one did, so we kept going. You’d be surprised how handy that tactic can be as an entrepreneur.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.roadie.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roadie_app/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/roadie/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Roadie
Image Credit:
Roadie
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