Issue #36 — Pipedream Labs

Ok, time to take a trip down memory lane. Do you remember going to the bank and putting a check into the tube? Magic. In 5 seconds it’s over to the teller on the other side of the glass. From your car to inside the building to the teller’s hands in seconds. Talk about peak technology.

How about Sonic? You order food and all of a sudden someone is blading out to you with a double cheeseburger and fries. Top-notch service. Unless of course there’s a crack in the pavement your server didn’t see.

How about our beloved Chick-fil-A? I’d argue it’s not the #1 fast food joint, but it's surely up there based solely on the consistency alone. Fast, hot, and middle of the fairway every time — unlike my golf drive, which has me often has me on a scavenger hunt in someone's backyard.

And Chick-fil-A has our brains broken from everything we historically know about fast food service. A 15-car-deep drive-thru line would take forever at any other restaurant. At Chick-fil-A? Minutes. The micro supply chain they’re running is remarkable (shout out Phil, Justin, and Woody for the hard work in high school).

The point is efficiency. All different techniques of getting a product to a buyer. By tube, by blade, or by world-class design.

So, can we take it further? What if the tube came from under the parking lot? Similar to what Chick-fil-A or Sonic is doing, but you remove the human carrier. A person inside the building puts your food or product inside a pipe, and just like at the bank, your food pops out the other side. Shorter lines and faster pickups. Better for customers, better for businesses. Well, that’s exactly what Pipedream Labs has in mind.

They’re building underground pipes with robots inside. Right now, it’s restaurant and grocery parking lots. Someday, the plan is pipes under whole cities, delivering anything in minutes for pocket change.

Okay but how

If you had a friend with a home laundry chute (shoutout to the Seitz family), you know how awesome it was. A little door in the upstairs hallway that dropped straight into the laundry room downstairs. No stairs needed. I think we once or twice contemplated whether we could stuff one of us down it... for what reason? Uhh, because we were 14 and it sounded awesome.

Pipedream is essentially that, but sideways, underground, and it works in both directions.

Here’s how it works. A grocery store or restaurant loads your order into a tote-like container. A robot carries that container through an 18-inch pipe under the parking lot. You pull up to a kiosk — like you’re pulling into a Sonic drive-in space — and your order rises out of the ground.

All in all, it’s not that complex of a system — or at least not on the face of it. The team compares the robot to a model train on a rail. Riding on the train is a container that stays level, so your cheeseburger doesn’t arrive like it was a pizza delivery from SpongeBob and Squidward.

The pipes aren’t sci-fi either. They go underground the same way water and sewer lines do. Nothing fancy about it. And 18 inches — the vertical leap of some of my friends — isn’t a random number. According to Pipedream, it fits 99%+ of e-commerce items.

At scale, think about a new drawer in your kitchen. Open that bad boy up and pull out the salsa and avocados you forgot to buy at Harris Teeter. Done with something? Send it back down. A pipe connects your home to a grocery store or the closest distribution center, just like the water and gas lines you already have.

And where are they today? In Peachtree Corners, GA, about a mile of pipe connects a shopping center to an office building. And in Austin, Pipedream set up their own grocery store where your order gets to your car in minutes.

The guy who started it

Garrett McCurrach and Canon Reeves.

Garrett is the CEO and a mechanical engineer by training. Before Pipedream, he was the VP of Business Development at Martin Bionics, a prosthetics startup focused on improving the comfort, independence, and quality of life of their patients. He’s also been obsessed with delivery his whole life and said he got goosebumps the first time he used Postmates. So naturally, he started a business focused on revolutionizing what modern-day delivery could be.

Canon, who according to his X profile, is a professional robot whisperer, amateur hockey player, and mountaineer. And yes, I could write a quick blurb on his prior success and exit to Sphero, but I think a more recent invention of his on X does a better job of describing what type of guy he is.

— # (#)

An anti-doomscroll phone case? Yeah... this guy rocks.

So together we have a delivery guy and a professional robot whisperer. Like Mr. Incredible and Frozone. Teaming up to take on the Underminer.

The honest take

The build-out is expensive. If we’re talking about getting pipes across cities or to the burbs, it’s likely millions per mile. You better have the conviction this will work before spending millions digging underground.

So where does this make sense? Cities. Tons of people packed into a few square miles means every mile of pipe serves a ton of customers. But then again... the whole point of living in a city is that everything is already close. Counter-counterpoint… I didn’t think people would spend $25 on Taco Bell at 2 am for a meal that costs $8. But the delivery apps are now worth billions. And if a pipe can take traffic off our already-congested streets, I’ll take it.

The burbs are the opposite problem. It’s like running fiber. When houses are spread out, the same mile of pipe reaches far fewer people, and the math falls apart quick. Their best bet there is to build into new neighborhoods before the houses go up, and they’ve pitched developers on exactly that.

Garrett and Canon know the odds of success. And although slim, it’s a pipe dream business with odds above 0%.

If they pull this off

First, it was 2-day Amazon delivery. Then same-day. Next up is autonomous ground delivery. Right now you can even get Zipline to deliver you a burrito from the sky.

If Pipedream pulls this off, it’s the piece you can’t see in the city rug that connects everything. The ingredient for dinner to your home in minutes rather than getting back into your car and heading back to the store.

The tube from the bank is back. And it’s heading for a drawer in your kitchen.