You could get pretty much anything delivered in an hour. I vividly remember being super-hormonal and unhappy (major breakup had just occurred) and ordering a delicious salmon dinner, a new heating pad and two Farscape dvds. It was bliss.

Urban Fetch was a similar service, with a similar demise, in NYC. For a while, they also delivered logo t-shirts with each order, and I've still got a few of those that I wear sometimes. They're super comfortable, though that could be because they're several sizes too big for me. (They're men's x-large. The sleeves go down past my elbows, and the hem is nearly at my knees.)

you might want to tweak your business idea. someone comes to me with comfort food and the right kind of demeanor, they might have to sit in my home for 4 hours and listen to ALL the problems.

Starlight Premium membership! Includes house-call therapy/shoulder-to-weep-on.

Zen, If you decide to modify the business plan to le nubian's specifications, I'd like a job as the trainer for local counselors.

Additional services I could offer include cleaning up pet messes clients do not have the physical/emotional wherewithal to deal with (no judgment, only empathy) and I could bring Harvey along to snuggle with and purr for clients.

Excellent! My plan comes together.

Urban Fetch was a similar service, with a similar demise, in NYC.

Kozmo was an on-line convenience store/delivery service founded by two Wall Street whiz kids in the early Zeros.

Sadly, the kids lacked a viable business plan, despite garnering 250 million in capital.

Bwuh-wha? gzsajdf I'm going to read about all this, seriously. There has to be a way to make this work.

So... Kozmo didn't charge for delivery or have a minimum purchase. They'd just bring you a candy bar and a soda for COST? No wonder they failed.

billytea, geezis, that's a sock in the gut. Surely Australia will be amenable regarding a payment plan, though.

No delivery fee? I don't remember that. I do recall that the food was expensive. I assumed they had a tack-on for each item.

I just read the Wiki page for it. It said the founders refused to charge for delivery even when their own employees were urging them to do it. I don't see how the F they expected to make a profit.

Clearly, that ended up being the problem!

I was especially interested in the Kozmo story because two friends were going through the exact same dissolution. It convinced me that young whizkid projects are doomed to fail without serious intervention from wiser minds.

Now that you mention it, I remember writing to the company when I heard they were in trouble, saying I would gladly pay a fee for the service to survive.

I blotted that out for some reason.

Is there a reason one can't be a whizkid with enough business sense to stay afloat? Are you saying it never happens, or it's really that rare?

Sometimes the innovation the whizkid is having is the business model, isn't it?

Are you saying it never happens, or it's really that rare?

It does seem rare, though of course not impossible.

I'd point to Gates and Jobs as those whose business models clearly worked.

At the same time, I point to e-Dreams and Startup.com, Riot On! and my friend's company as sad examples of what seems like a common experience.

I was sad when Webvan folded. They did an excellent job of grocery delivery, and in the years since, there's been times when I really needed Webvan or something like it. They did the classic trajectory of trying to get too big too fast and putting in millions of upfront costs without knowing if the market could support it.

There have been times when I'd pay quite a bit for ice cream or homemade soup.

There are just so many successes, all over the web, that it seems weird to call it rare. So many things are done so differently from how they were ten years ago--there are different ways to spend your money and different ways to earn it.

It doesn't feel rare at all. It feels like an interesting place to be.