CEO Kevin Gibbon Says Shyp Still Isn’t An On-Demand Company

Shyp still isn’t explicitly an on-demand service, according to company CEO Kevin Gibbon.

Despite having a service that allows users to summon someone who will ship something for them, Gibbon still said onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt NY the company is still more comparable to FedEx and UPS, rather than on-demand companies like Postmates or Sprig.

“I see us as a logistics company, though we definitely do have an on-demand component,” Gibbon said. “It sells us a little short — we have warehouses in every city, we have dedicated employees that will package everything. It is a really complicated service.”

Shyp allows its users to take a photo of an item they want to ship, and then the company sends someone to pick up the item and deliver it. Shyp packs the item and determines which carrier will be cheapest and most reliable. The whole process costs $5, plus postage, making it one of the cheapest and easiest options out there for shipping anything.

A small unknown recently was the status of the company’s co-founders — who had not been publicly seen in some time. It turns out both Joshua Scott and Jack Smith are no longer at the company, Gibbon confirmed onstage. One source around the time of the company’s funding announcement told us that co-founder Scott’s departure was abrupt and not necessarily amicable, and that Smith had been gone for some time.

“[Scott] parted ways a few months ago; he’s off traveling now,” Gibbon said. “As you grow as a company, there’s just… The company’s doing different things, people have different interests, these things just change.”

Last month, Shyp confirmed it raised $50 million, and the valuation was around $250 million, according to our earlier reports. That funding came at a time when a swarm of other on-demand companies also raised large sums of money, including Sprig and DoorDash. Funding for those companies tends to be spent expanding to more cities, though Gibbon said they were planning to be more methodical about the cities they entered in the future.

“We’re still figuring that out — we’re just getting ready to launch L.A.,” Gibbon said. “We planned a whole bunch of sea launches one after another, but we just learned so much from the launches that it informed our plans. We don’t have this big long list [anymore].”

And there’s still a possibility, thanks to the nature of Shyp’s business — with an 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. schedule — that the company’s drivers could become full-time employees.

“This is something we continue to look at — what’s best for our business and drivers,” he said. “Just the nature of us, especially being able to provide longer shifts, we’re better positioned to intentionally [hire them as full-time employees].”

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