bubu139

I'd just reply to this even though it's probably too late, I hope you'll get notified in case you're interested. I've built Trackin (http://www.gotrackin.com) then MobyDish (http://www.mobydish.com) powered by Trackin.

First don't forget that the money doesn't get into OUR pocket, but to the company, then I'll have two reasons for me to share this info:

1- Having competitors is actually motivating, forces you to always do better and validate your market.

2- What matters the most is the execution. Google arrived after Yahoo, Apple took over Microsoft, etc. Nowadays, it's pretty "easy" to copy a software, but the way you'll deal with everything else (employees, customers, communication) is what will make you be the winner (on top of a product that people want... and some luck!)

3- (bonus answer) I'm not doing this for money anyway, mostly because I'm passionated about the delivery business and the food space and I believe it's lacking good tech. I started this as a full time job, and I'm still working more than everybody else in the company, while paying myself less than my employees.

I believe most of the founders feel the same, and if you think of starting a project that you want to make full time, you shouldn't do it for money. But if you do want to work on a side project as a complementary of your income, then it's a totally different approach. But in any case, you shouldn't be scared about the competition, if they do better, then learn from them as well :)

To complete my answer I also agree on the fact that you need to find Saas you can rely on and your business need to have solid foundations.

You definitely need to find out what is the essential part of your business (that makes you unique) and what's not, to let someone "better" do the job for you or do it yourself.

I'm curious to know what the threads were saying at the launch of AWS though :)

I'd be happy to share my experience as I've been talking with a lot of delivery companies as the founder of http://trackin.co

What I can say is that 70% of the basics regarding E-commerce/local delivery is the same whatever your market is (tour optimization, tracking, driver performances, dispatch, send orders to vendors...). Then there's often specs, based on what your business is exactly doing. That's why we decided to have a focus on food delivery at first, because we can answer every need you may have, from online ordering (adding pickup and catering) to customer relationship and promotion(adding yelp or G+ reviews) to what the drivers need to know regarding their delivery for that specific.

Meanwhile we've built our solution in a flexible way, and with an API, because a lot of things that we've built take a lot of time and expertise and we know other delivery businesses need it too. (And it's often hard to realize it before you actually start building it in house...)

So objectively if I had to start a food delivery business, I would use Trackin (obviously), and if it was a different service, I'd still use a (good) E-commerce solution + an API from a trustable 3rd party to help me manage the deliveries. That could be Trackin on something different based on your needs. A company with a product that will evolve faster that my own product and would save me 2-3+ full time engineers and 6month at least.

You can still do it yourself but in the end you'll be building a dashboard, with a catalog, inventory, delivery management, dispatch, driver app then a customer facing app VS only build a customer facing app, and get the rest from a Saas, customize it so that you can focus on your business. What I like to consider is the following: Why would I spend $$ and time on something for my business if I can have a competitor doing the same thing as me in just a couple of days/weeks thanks to SaaS solutions? Where will be the value added of your business?

Hope that helps and happy to discuss more if needed!