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Circle Lockers: neighborhood logistics, solved
A 7-minute pitch from the founders, then ask us anything. If we've already answered it, you'll hear it from us. If we haven't, we'll get back to you directly.
About 12 minutes: the at-a-glance facts, the 7-minute pitch, our answers to common questions, and four short demos. Everything under Explore is optional.
- 12 Circle Lockers live in Denver metro
- 120 returns and 92 app downloads from our first pilot
- 48 Luxer apartment sites in a live pilot
- Luxer One (9,000+ multi-family locations), and Harbor (revenue share, no hardware capex), branded Circle Lockers
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How it works
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Thirty minutes with both of us. Bring the questions this page couldn't answer.
Go deeper on what matters to you
Why our unit economics are different
On-demand delivery sends a driver on a trip for one order, on a clock. Circle collects many items from one locker, on a route, with no deadline. That difference is the business.
| On-demand deliveryDoorDash, Q3 2025 | Circleupdates with the levers below | |
|---|---|---|
| What one trip carries | One order to one door | returns from one locker stop |
| Time pressure | Delivered in minutes | Collected every 2 days, on a planned route |
| Who covers the last few hundred feet | The driver, to the door | The resident, to the lobby locker |
| Company revenue per item | ≈ $4.44 per order$3.45B revenue ÷ 776M orders | per return |
| Cost to collect each item | A driver trip, mostly per order | per returnvan, driver and route cost ÷ items per stop |
| Items moved per hour | 2–3 (one trip, one item) | () |
| Where the margin comes from | A 13.8% cut of a ≈ $32 basket | Density: more items per stop, more services per item picked up |
- Density per building. The locker is already in the lobby, so the next service costs almost nothing to collect.
- Host locations. Lockers sit at properties and public sites we sign; the best ones go to whoever gets there first.
- Carrier-agnostic. One drop-off works for any carrier or marketplace, unlike single-carrier networks.
- Services ride the same stop. Mailings, exchanges and listings add revenue without adding trips.
DoorDash figures from its Q3 2025 results (revenue, total orders, net revenue margin, Marketplace GOV); per-order values are simple division. Comparison is per trip, not company profit.
One location, then the network
Move the levers to see how returns alone carry a location. Every other service we add rides the same pickups.
Fixed assumptions: a typical Denver Luxer building (about 330 units, 1,160 packages a month, measured), 20% of packages returned, lockers collected every 2 days, a van-day at $316 (driver and van), about 8 minutes per stop plus 30 seconds per item, 3% card processing, a $0.50 fee per return to the locker owner, company overhead $20K a month.
- Returns through Circle
- Revenue
- Collection cost
- Card and locker fees
- Contribution
- Monthly contribution
- Annual contribution
Illustrative, from Circle's internal model (Oct 2026). Returns only; not a forecast or a promise of results. The full model is in the data room.
From pre-seed to a self-funding network
Each raise has one job. Sites cost about $1,000 to switch on because the lockers already exist, so every dollar goes into routes, people and new metros, and each new service rides the same pickups.
| 2027$250K pre-seed | 2028$2M seed |
|---|
Illustrative, from Circle's integrated model (v28, Oct 2026); not a forecast or a promise of results. Package volumes are measured per Luxer site; the 20% return rate is our assumption. Returns only: mailings, Xchanges, Listings and partner drop-offs are not included. Routes run at most every 2 days; costs include drivers and vans, 3% card processing and a $0.50 Luxer fee per deposit (from six months after a metro is 80% built), company overhead of $20K a month in 2027 and $50K in 2028, and local operations per metro. Our live price test (free, $1.99 and $2.99 across 48 sites) is measuring these two levers now. The full model and yearly plans are in the data room.
We run on lockers that already exist
Circle doesn't build or buy locker hardware. We bring services and volume to two locker networks, and each one earns more as we grow.
- Residents use the Luxer locker already in their lobby to return, ship and Xchange through the Circle app.
- Turning on a building takes marketing and drivers, not a property-by-property sale.
- Live in Denver now: 48 buildings in our current pilot.
What Luxer gets: a fee on every deposit Circle brings, after a runway for each new metro. Our volume becomes their revenue.
- Live in Denver now: 12 Circle Lockers, branded and open to the whole neighborhood. We're placing the rest at locations that prove out, as a bootstrapped team.
- Harbor builds and owns the hardware; we share revenue. No hardware capex for Circle.
- 500 Harbor lockers nationwide we can redeploy to Circle locations as needed.
- Room to grow: Harbor publicly set a goal of 25,000 lockers (CES, January 2024). Circle is now the build partner carrying that plan forward, and Harbor supports expansion wherever Circle shows engagement.
What Harbor gets: a share of the revenue from every Circle Locker, so each new location pays both of us.
“Their model and execution have been impressive.” He called it a major reason Harbor made a significant early commitment to Circle.Van Tucker, VP of Technology Partnerships, Harbor Lockers · Kiosk Marketplace, Jan 2025 ↗
One partner, two layers. Harbor is a division of Luxer One, so one locker company backs us in both places. Luxer lockers sit inside apartment buildings and serve their residents. Circle Lockers on Harbor are public and serve everyone nearby. The same Circle app, routes and vans run both.
Partner terms are in the data room.
Traction · as of October 2026
Source: our pilot data, as presented to the Watson Institute ESEP fellowship, October 2026.
What properties and residents say
to filmDraft
The deal
- Round
- $250,000 pre-seed
- Instrument
- SAFE · [cap and discount, or “discussed live”]
- Committed so far
- [$ and from whom, if they agree]
- Minimum check
- [$]
- Investors
- Accredited investors only (Reg D 506(c)); we verify on commitment
Use of funds
What this round proves
- [Milestone 1: e.g. locations live and returns per location]
- [Milestone 2: unit economics at scale in Denver/Boulder]
- [Milestone 3: the metro playbook, ready to repeat]
Resources
Independent research behind what we've said. Each item names its source and links to the original; figures are dated so you know how current they are.
- 188,000out-of-home pickup locations in the U.S. as of mid-2026; staffed pickup points grew about 36% in a yearp. 6Why it matters: the category is growing fast, and the report says local density, not national count, is now the problem.
- $850Bof merchandise U.S. retailers expected back in 2025, about 19.3% of online salesp. 7Why it matters: returns are our base traffic.
- Carrier-agnostic“allows a single physical location to serve several logistics operators,” and interoperability “may ultimately prove more relevant” in the U.S. than closed networksp. 8Why it matters: that's the network Circle is building.
- $0.31Colorado's retail delivery fee per order, the first in the U.S.; the main consumer response to these fees is a shift toward out-of-home pickupp. 41Why it matters: our home market already nudges people toward lockers.
- Two-thirdsof surveyed U.S. consumers had never used a parcel locker; time saved, simplicity and fitting existing routines drive adoptionp. 7Why it matters: adoption is the real test, and it's what our pilot measures.
- Parcels per stoputilization, parcels per stop and return cost, not location count, are the measures the report says will matter nextp. 9Why it matters: our economics are built per stop.
Short extracts quoted under the report's licence terms; source: “OOH Delivery in the USA 2026,” Last Mile Experts.
After we meet
Financials, unit economics and partner terms, for investors we've had a conversation with. We'll send a separate code after our call. Every file is marked with your name.