NowDocs.com Has Attracted $13M from VCers, Banks
Eat your heart out, Scotty.
Brad Adamske won’t beam trekkers thousands of miles through space, but thanks to the wonders of the Internet, he hopes to make money doing practically the same thing with paper documents.
Using a combination of the Internet and old-fashioned printing offices, his company, NowDocs.com, promises two-hour delivery of physical documents to major cities across the world. Instead of packing an envelope full of paper and waiting for Federal Express to ship it cross-country, NowDocs.com wants customers to send in their word processing and spreadsheet files electronically, which the company then transmits to one of its local offices for printing and hand delivery.
The Aliso Viejo firm’s 36-year-old founder said he got the idea while working on a project for his former employer that required him to collaborate with a co-worker on the East Coast. The documents needed to be on paper, but they also had to arrive at their destination in a few hours. Desperate, he shelled out $317 to have them shipped , and saw a market opportunity in the process.
Investors have apparently encountered a similar epiphany. Two months from its formal launch in February, the 56-person operation has already secured close to $9 million in venture capital and another $4 million in loans. Most of the VC money has gone into web development, setting up satellite printing offices in 16 cities, including one in London and another in Toronto, and a fleet of Volkswagen Beetles for delivery. Lead investors include Communications Ventures of Menlo Park and Mission Ventures of San Diego.
Beetles Deliver
Since NowDocs.com didn’t need large trucks to deliver packages, Adamske says, the eye-catching VW Bugs serve equally well as marketing vehicles. The company secured a $1 million line of credit from Ford for the fleet and $3 million in credit from Comdisco, a computer equipment leasing and consulting firm.
NowDocs.com plans to charge $20 for up to 10 pages of black-and-white laser-printed paper, including delivery. Advantages of using NowDocs.com over traditional overnight shipping include customers’ ability to store frequently used files on NowDocs.com’s web servers for remote access and to transmit a document just once to have it sent to multiple recipients.
A patent-pending print preview feature helps eliminate unpleasant surprises in the process.
Of course, the business plan begs the question: why not just use e-mail?
“Because paper is not going to go away,” Adamske says.
Security Blankets
While he admits e-mail is usually a faster way of transmitting the documents, he says many people still prefer paper, which offers the simplest, most foolproof way of communicating. And for the legal industry, one of NowDocs’ target markets, paper is the only acceptable format for final drafts of important documents.
“Sending something electronically requires somebody on the other end to do something , you’re putting the onus on the recipient,” he says.
NowDocs.com plans to broaden its reach to 200 cities over the next year, an expansion that will require it to hire about 60 more people and seek another round of financing, possibly through a public offering.
Darcy Fowkes, a research director with Boston research firm Aberdeen Group, says it’s too early to tell what size market exists for such a service.
“There aren’t a lot of people doing this, so how big the market is hasn’t been established yet,” she said. “But clearly the opportunity is there, and there’s not a lot of competition.”
But NowDocs.com won’t be alone. Kinko’s, a well-known printing brand has a similar service and others aren’t far behind. Adamske insists his company offers an easier-to-use, more automated service focused on document delivery, not just printing.
Last month, another Orange County startup called SmartShip.com launched its online delivery service, which promises same-day local delivery of packages within 150 miles of major cities.
While Adamske is confident his business model could someday pose a serious challenge to traditional document delivery, he’s not zealous about confronting the delivery giants head-on. In fact, his company uses Federal Express for deliveries in cities he hasn’t reached with local printing facilities.
He says he’ll consider his venture successful if it reaches 300 document deliveries a day within six months of launching and retains a high percentage of repeat customers. Though Adamske has worked for several technology startups over the past few years, this is his first try at the helm of one.
His biggest challenge so far has been keeping up with his company’s breakneck growth during its ramp-up.
“This is a business where quality is supreme, and we want to do everything we can to create that instead of being a fly-by-night dot-com just waiting to go public,” he says. n
