Interview with MoveMate Founder & CEO Lucas Francioli

My name is Dustin Betts. I'm the content editor at the Founder Institute, and I'm here this morning with Lucas Francioli. He's the founder of MoveMate. It's an FI Montreal and Founder Institute Select portfolio company that's building an app-free way to move anything. Lucas Francioli, thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks so much for having me, Dustin. It's great to be here.

Yeah, so before we kind of dive into your startup MoveMate, I always like to kick it off by asking, just tell us a little bit about yourself or your personal background story. You know, what were experiences, professional or personal, that led you to founding this movie and moving and delivery technology company?

Sure, uh, so I think I've always, you know, been somebody who's pretty entrepreneurial. I actually grew up in Switzerland, where I spent most of my formative years. After high school, I, I was in the military in Switzerland as well, and I moved to Canada, where I am still currently, to pursue my studies at McGill University. And I think that I realized, you know, North America, there's a lot of opportunities and a bit more less roadblocks than there would be in, uh, where I was from to start something. So I had a few ideas throughout universities, and towards the end of my studies, I realized that there was this need in moving for my, you know, moving my peers in and out of their apartments. They were busy studying for their finals, and they hadn't really planned their upcoming move. And I was like, you know what, why not rent a U-Haul, do some marketing, and like, you know, I'm fit enough, why not try and help them out? And so in 4 days, you know, I helped over 32 people. I hired a friend, to help me out for some of the moves. You know, generated a decent amount of revenue, it paid for my summer, I traveled to Peru, and I was actually on Lake Titicaca, and I was, you know, trying to think about all of this and doing some math, and I was like, wait, maybe there's something more to this. This industry seems to be like quite, still quite archaic, and there's room for innovation. And bit by bit, you know, I met my co-founders, and we started to realize, well, there's a real need here in moving and delivery, and like, you know, shopping of large and bulky items. And that's why we started to come together. We applied to Founder Institute, got accepted, and yes, took it from there. And now we, you know, have a fully functioning tech company and we're trying to help, you know, as many customers as we can.

Perfect. I love that story that, you know, it started as kind of a college side hustle and then realizing, you know, there might be something more to this. That's really cool. Now I know because I'm somewhat familiar with MoveMate already as a Founder Institute portfolio company, I actually got this from your website too, that you're working to build a world where moving deliver as simple and accessible as ordering a pizza, which I love. But let's kind of hear it straight from you, the founder. Please sort of give us your short elevator pitch for those totally unfamiliar, you know, what is MoovMate? Absolutely.

So MoovMate essentially is a marketplace that connects individuals and businesses alike that have the need to move, deliver, or shop for large and bulky items. And how we do this by connecting them with independent contractors or, you know, entrepreneurs that have access to a vehicle, manpower, and the tools associated with each customer's needs. So, you know, we're really acting as a broker. We're a software tech company where we, you know, matchmake supply and demand, and we offer customer support. We vet all the movers that work with us. And yeah, then at the click of a button, any consumer or business can get anything delivered or transported.

Perfect. Now I want to kind of frame the problem. I think a lot of the features you sort of talk about speak to this, but for, you know, Talk to us just about the problems that people typically experience when working with a moving company or trying to contract with somebody. And then if there is kind of a COVID angle to it, has the pandemic changed the user problems in any way or anything new and notable in the industry there?

Yeah, for sure. So I'm going to start with the first part of the question. So moving is a painful process. It's quoted as one of the most stressful life events that somebody can go through. Your entire life needs to go from A to B. And it's super complicated and a lot of people are super stressed and a lot of people take advantage of this moment. And so you'll have a lot of people that advertise their services on classified listings and they're not professional, vetted moving professionals and they're going to take advantage of these customers whereby they're going to tell them, listen, I'm going to offer you a $50 rate, but then they don't tell them in the fine print they're going to charge them you know, $105 per appliance. I've heard cases where, you know, one time this customer called us, it was, you know, in such a hassle, the current movers were charging them $20 per step they have to take with an appliance. And the fact of the matter is that these people, you know, they gave them a security deposit, all of their goods are now in their truck, and there's nothing they can do. And if the guy says, well, you're not, if you're not, you're not going to pay, then we're just going to leave with your stuff. And that might seem absurd, but it's common practice. And, you know, moving professionals, you know, are there, they're good, they're not going to take advantage of customers the same way, but they do have an archaic business model. They're not tech savvy, they don't really know how to do proper customer support, how to offer tech solutions to their customers. And we, you know, really position ourselves in the middle to kind of offer both and, you know, be extremely transparent and offer the best solution to customers. And now with COVID we realize that more so than just moving, people want to get items delivered. They want to buy stuff off Craigslist, off your country's classified listing, and they may not know how to get it back home. They might want to go shop at IKEA, but IKEA has a 6-week waiting list. And so how do you actually get all these goods delivered? Just, you're a student, you just moved into a new city, You need a mattress, but you need to wait 6 weeks to get a mattress. What are you going to do? Like, stay, sleep on the couch for 6 weeks, rent an Airbnb while you're paying rent on the side. And so the issue is that you can actually get the goods right away. And so we, what we want to do is we're democratizing moving. We're offering this solution to anybody who wants to make money, who has, you know, the physical capability of helping you, might have a truck at home. He's a plumber, he's a gardener, he's anybody who has the physical capability of doing so. And we're going to train him, we're going to vet him, we're going to make sure that this guy is professional, man or woman, and that they can do a good job to help these customers move, and therefore we're employing people who need work and we're offering solutions to people that didn't have one before.

Perfect. Yeah, it sounds like a marketplace solution. It really kind of fits the need basically, a lot of it around transparency and customer service. That's awesome. So kind of in contrast, I guess, you know, so for a new MoveMate customer, you know, what's the user experience like as far as like what's looking online and then getting connected with one of your vetted movers?

Sure, so we try to position ourselves in the moving cycle. So we try to think about the customer's journey when they're moving. So they have to move, they're going to look for solutions. So first of all, we want to try and capture them the best ways we can. So we're targeting them on Google Search, Facebook Ads, anywhere where they're at that time of the year, we know that they're going to want to move. We capture them there, they go on our websites, they book, and then they receive more information as time goes on to make sure that we're gonna keep them and keep them on the platform. So, you know, they're settling into the new apartment, they just used us once, looking around their apartment, "Oh look, I'm missing a couch there, I'm missing a desk there. I'm gonna go online on Facebook Marketplace. Oh, I want that, but how am I gonna get it delivered?" And then you go back to MoveMate to get it. But then they might see something new they want for their kids, And then that's where they're going to want to shop IKEA. And so ultimately we want to have the shopping feature integrated on our platform, and so they can directly purchase the item from our platform, and then we can deliver to them by the end of the day.

Perfect. That leads really well into my next question, basically, which I've kind of seen like your website has these different individual level offers that are moving items basically from these local marketplaces, like a Facebook Marketplace or a Nextdoor. As opposed to going and picking it up yourself. So, can you talk a little bit more about that? Or also, I know you have your MoveMate business logistics and kind of personalized courier services. Do you see services like yours playing into like a wider role in sort of this last mile local delivery and transport logistics kind of jobs like that? Can you kind of just speak to like that whole ecosystem that you're talking about sort of aside from the individuals moving to a new home?

So do you mind just rephrasing the question? I'm not so sure I captured that.

Yeah, it's just like around basically these— I understand like that movement is, you know, moving to a new home, but you've kind of mentioned a few different other aspects for individuals, like buying things off of a marketplace or, you know, for business logistics, last mile, what kind of your vision, I guess, for what are some of these other, I guess, markets? Absolutely.

So, you know, obviously I'm positioning moving in the forefront because that's kind of where we started. And now we're obviously expanding to other services. One thing for sure is that we're only focusing on large and bulky items. There's too many players out there that are, you know, with COVID spiked the need suddenly to have everything delivered. And there's no point in us competing against some of these huge players today when, you know, we should focus on something that most other people are not focusing on, which is large, big and bulky. And a lot of these solutions don't really exist yet. So the focus for us is, yes, we're doing moving, and we're helping this, you know, moving journey, but we're also focusing on the delivery aspect and the shopping aspect and, you know, deliveries for businesses, but still on the large and bulky. Um, so we're approaching furniture stores, appliance stores, mattress stores, eventually galleries, sports equipment, um, anything that is large and difficult to transport. Um, and so for us, you know, we're going to businesses and we're trying to explain to them that right now, you know, they're burning cash, right? They, they have a truck that's sitting in their lot that's not being used. Well, that truck can actually be leveraged to have a mate who maybe doesn't have a vehicle, but still wants to work, and therefore match them as well. They might have decreased amounts of sales volume because people are not shopping in the store anymore, and they don't have an e-commerce web front to actually get the products delivered. So if we can come in and offer that solution where we're gonna take care of the delivery, and we can even show what they have at their store on our platform, and then suddenly their sales are gonna increase, They can get rid of their hard assets, not even have to take care of logistics anymore, and then focus on sales and increasing their revenue. And it's kind of, that's where we're obviously, you know, there's still a lot that needs to be built, but that's clearly the vision we wanna move into, to a fully fledged solution for, you know, businesses and consumers and these gig workers, and focusing on large and bulky items.

Yeah, yeah, I love that vision for kind of, yeah, adding extra value for businesses, and definitely the focus on the large bulky items definitely makes sense as far as differentiating yourself from, you know, courier package delivery services that are more abundant. That makes a ton of sense. I want to kind of ask you to make a prediction. It's always a little bit dangerous, but go out on a limb if you can. What do you envision for the future of this moving and logistics space over the next 5 years? Do you imagine it changing? And if so, how?

So I think we're just at the tip of the iceberg of how often people are going to want these types of services. Just think about food courier services today. 5 years ago, Uber Eats was trying to penetrate these different cities, and now it's like, I use it pretty frequently, and although I don't really want to, but I'm still doing it because it's just so convenient. I think we're definitely going to move into that space where unfortunately, a lot of retailers are being hit right now with COVID and it sucks, but they're the ones who need solutions the most. If we're able to integrate an e-commerce solution, plug in an API on their platform, and then suddenly, they actually don't need to have anybody come into the shop, but they have a web front, they're still active, but they're just shifting the way that they operate, then there's a big need for innovation and a lot of things are gonna change. And I think this is a bit less controversial, sorry, a bit more controversial, but I look around, there's so many trucks, so many cars, all of these vehicles are polluting our streets, they're really just creating waste and they're not operating efficiently. Ultimately, maybe not in 5 years, maybe 10, 15, 20 years, I really see a world where any type of vehicle that's gonna be on the street is gonna be leveraged as efficiently as it possibly can. You have to think about an airplane. An airplane is losing money when it's on the tarmac. It's only making money when it's flying. And a car is the same thing. Every time it's sitting in a lot, whether it's, even if it's in the evening from, 10 to 7:00 AM, it's a depreciating asset and it could be used to do something else. And the only time it should actually be stopping is when it's in the shop, trying to be fixed. And we wanna build a world where trucks, vehicles, any types of vehicle that's like polluting our streets is gonna be used more efficiently to therefore lower the amount of carbon emissions, decrease traffic, and just make cities more efficient as a whole.

Awesome. No, I really love that prediction. Thanks for going out on a limb. I think like that, yeah, that's making, you know, the fleets of vehicles that are already there, like making sure that they're optimized in such a way to minimize pollution and maximize the value that they deliver. That makes a lot of sense. So thanks for that. What advice would you offer for other early-stage or maybe even just an aspiring entrepreneur who is kind of just getting started? Anything you wish you would have known a couple of years ago or before you got going? Hmm.

I think a lot of people are crippled by fear. And if there's one thing I learned from Founder Institute is that, you know, ideas are really worthless. And it's just all about trying and trying and trying again and again, and really just maximizing your odds. You know, I'm fully aware that our solution may not work eventually. But it works today, and every single day I'm trying to improve my odds of making it a success. And so how can you improve your odds today? I think that's the way to think about it. Like, what can you study that's gonna help you get to the next level? What ecosystem should you be in? Like, I'm in Montreal in Canada currently, where there's a lot of innovation, there's so many grants. Canada is a great place to start a business if anybody's out there. There's so much money that the government is offering you, and so you can operate at a loss and still be profitable if you're in an industry where unfortunately you have to wait until you actually get traction, and the government's going to help you. We get tax credits from the government for our research and development, and so the government is helping us innovate. Other countries may not have that. Are you in the right place to do it? Move to a different city, move to a different country. Just try. I'm like, and I don't think there's any age. I mean, I am pretty young. I was the youngest in my cohort when I graduated, but I think we're doing quite well. And it doesn't mean that like, you know, we don't have the possibility of doing well. We just have to maximize our odds and make sure that, you know, we're trying hard, hard, hard, hard every single day, and eventually things should pay off.

Perfect. Yeah, I think that, you know, kind of what you're speaking to before about like, you know, not being nervous and, you know, taking swings at that, like that's kind of key is sort of breaking out of the idea phase or like wanting to keep it a secret, like sort of this ethos of like, go, go do it and just execute every little bit counts. Perfect. One final question is kind of just to ask you to give an update, you know, where is MoveMate headed next? Any other news or updates you want to share with the Founder Institute community who might be watching or any generic asks for the audience?

No, I think that for us, we realize that essentially we're in an industry which is bound to be even more competitive than it already is. And we need to build moats, defensibility, and we really need to innovate. So happy to say that we just recently hired a new CTO who has 20 years work experience, who was working in deep tech. And so really now we're focusing on building that transparency, being able to leverage machine learning to give price estimations, forecast on how much time in transit should take, optimize routes, and then that's kind of the direction we want to go into, actually provide a tech solution to the masses, which they don't actually have today. Currently, we're operating in the Greater Montreal area in Canada, and we're soon going to be expanding to different cities next year. And so if you're in Toronto, for example, and you're interested in like, you know, helping us out. You want to hear more, by all means feel free to contact me. My email is lucas@movemade.io. I'm available on LinkedIn if you, if you're interested. And yeah, we're looking for help to expand in terms of finances and also in terms of people to help us on this journey. And so yeah, that's pretty much it.

Perfect. Yeah, well, this has been really interesting for me, kind of learning a bit about the moving and logistics industry around these large items. And yeah, we're looking forward to keeping up with MoveMate as you kind of move on out of Montreal and take over the other big parts of Canada, on to Toronto and what's next. So Lucas Francioli, you know, thank you so much again for joining us today.

Thank you so much for your time, Dustin. It was great chatting with you.