It’s a good idea to be in good shape, have had a good night’s sleep and a jolt of caffeine before trying to keep up with Nick Turner, DeliverEnd Founder and CEO.

The 2019 TechPoint Mira Awards Rising Entrepreneur finalist, who just recently turned 30, is as well known in Silicon Valley as he is in his hometown of Indianapolis.

Many tech leaders have seen spikes in the need for their services through the COVID-19 pandemic, but for DeliverEnd, it may be the catalyst that propels the company to an elite level and makes Nick the state’s first Black unicorn.

In a November 2020 post, FutureShark declared that Nick is “Developing the App Store’s Next Unicorn” and setting Silicon Valley abuzz. Last year, the San Francisco blog DitchtheCubes.com, asked “Could DeliverEnd Be the Next Unicorn?” in a post that said integrating with even one of the Big Four online marketplaces could bring DeliverEnd $5 billion in annual revenue.

DeliverEnd was born in 2017 after one of Nick’s close friends was robbed when he tried to sell an iPhone through an online marketplace. DeliverEnd eliminates the sketchiness of strangers meeting in person to complete their transactions. The company’s app includes a video-chat feature, temporarily escrowed payments, and usernames to keep buyers’ and sellers’ personal information and locations private.

An accomplished athlete at Southport High School and Indiana University, Nick hit the investor ground running soon after launching the company. He’s met with dozens of potential investors and participated in pitch competitions across the country to raise awareness of his brand as well as to bring in capital and advisors needed to grow the company. Last year, auto racing fans might have seen the DeliverEnd logo on Harding Steinbrenner Racing’s Indy cars.

In just the last year, he’s:

  • Begun scaling into 20 of the biggest cities across the country, giving DeliverEnd the potential to become a prime integrated delivery partner for Big Four consumer marketplaces like Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, OfferUp and NextDoor;
  • Brought on nationally renowned talent and gained support from executives, mentors, and advisors with experience at SiriusXM Radio, EventBrite, Google, Yahoo Small Business and Uber to help further build out the company; and
  • Brought in investors from the auto racing industry like James Hinchcliffe and Robert Wickens; and the National Football League with Cowboys’ Jaylon Smith’s Minority Entrepreneurship Institute pitch competition.

“It’s been a really crazy year, but we are here to help.” he says.

He’s serious about helping. And he doesn’t seem to put a limit on who’s on the other end of that assistance. He’s in talks now with state officials to help with a reopening plan focused on giving small businesses a way to get their goods out the door during the pandemic.

He partnered with the “Plug” App to deliver food to those in need, and the company is currently offering new customers a $50 Credit towards their marketplace purchases on any item paid for on the DeliverEnd app starting November 11.

“When we started we saw there was a big untapped market when it came to keeping people safe when buying and selling on platforms like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace,” he said. “The pandemic caused even more people to turn to marketplace platforms to make ends meet. COVID has made it incredibly hard for people and businesses, and we are here to help both.”

DeliverEnd currently has 22 employees but Nick plans to grow the team to more than 100 by the end of 2021. That’s in addition to a countrywide delivery workforce of at least 500,000 in the same time-frame.

“We are going to be aggressive with our rollout and will compete on a national scale,” Nick said. “We have the opportunity to create something that could forever change the way people look at and use online marketplaces and to create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

But wait, there’s more.

“We are going to do all of this from Indianapolis, not in the Bay area,” Nick pledged. “We really are here to help; not just our company and our workforce, but the tech community here that has been supportive of our efforts from the start.”