Sustainability-minded delivery service The Rounds just raised a $38M Series A

Philly-founded delivery service The Rounds has raised a $38 million Series A, its leaders announced Thursday.

The household goods startup, a 2022 RealLIST Startups honoree, aims to offer a more sustainable alternative to Amazon for household goods and pantry staples. White label and local products are delivered and refilled to customers on ebikes on an automated schedule that works best for them, and items arrive in reusable packaging.

The Rounds is following an East Coast expansion plan in quick succession. After testing the market in dense, urban markets in the Northeast like Philly and DC, the company expanded to southern cities of Miami and Atlanta earlier this year that present different challenges, like urban sprawl.

“It’s been important for us to continue to learn and prove our model will work in very different markets,” cofounder Alexander Torrey told Technical.ly in May. “That’s what we’re excited about. It’s going to teach us a lot about how to operate.”

The Series A round, which was led by Annie Kadavy at Redpoint Ventures and Andrew Chen at Andreessen Horowitz, came after a $4 million seed led by Rachel Holt at Construct Capital and Hayley Barna at local firm First Round Capital.

Big congrats to @theroundsco on their $38M Series A! Co-Founders AT & BK talk with @akad and @urvashibarooah about how they're changing the way we shop for essentials in a sustainable way. pic.twitter.com/MZTb9c7xWu

— Redpoint (@Redpoint) October 6, 2022

The Rounds has grown by more than 10 times in the last year, Torrey wrote in blog post this week, and has grown to more than 10,000 members. In a LinkedIn post Thursday, Torrey also noted the service’s technology makes a “’psychic home manager’ accessible to everyone,” allowing a set-it-and-forget-it method for home goods purchases.

“We’re still ‘young, scrappy and hungry’ (IYKYK),” Torrey wrote on LinkedIn. “We’re still learning and iterating every day. We’re still working on foldout tables and sitting on milk crates (and won’t stop), but this funding allows us to run faster, make bolder bets, and, most importantly, hire the absolute best talent on the planet.”

The Rounds also has plans to “double down” on its technology, enhancing its prediction engine that manages members’ delivery schedule. The $42 million the company has raised recently is a statement about ecommerce and the future of the planet, Torrey said. And, calling to mind the business model of fellow Philly-HQ’d delivery company Gopuff, he added:

“The future of last-mile logistics is not about getting Flamin’ Hot Cheetos delivered in 15 minutes at 1AM; the future is a sustainable two-way last mile,” the cofounder said.