I'd love to have this service at home, so I'm (selfishly) hoping Instacart becomes hugely successful!
That said, I can't help but wonder whether the company will find a business model with sustainable economics. A lot of really smart people have tried and failed to accomplish this sort of thing before. For example, Amazon invested $60 million in Kozmo.com back in the late 90's, and they couldn't make it work. (Kozmo.com ended up raising a quarter billion dollars before shutting down.)[1]
The main challenge is that same-day, point-to-point delivery is very expensive -- a complex problem. (Most delivery systems in use today rely on some kind of hub-and-spoke design.) Perhaps the wide adoption of smart phones will make point-to-point delivery economically viable for Instacart -- e.g., by giving the company cost-effective access to underused delivery vehicles as needed to satisfy the ebbs and flows of consumer demand.
I'm curious to see if and how Instacart can pull it off.
That said, I can't help but wonder whether the company will find a business model with sustainable economics. A lot of really smart people have tried and failed to accomplish this sort of thing before. For example, Amazon invested $60 million in Kozmo.com back in the late 90's, and they couldn't make it work. (Kozmo.com ended up raising a quarter billion dollars before shutting down.)[1]
The main challenge is that same-day, point-to-point delivery is very expensive -- a complex problem. (Most delivery systems in use today rely on some kind of hub-and-spoke design.) Perhaps the wide adoption of smart phones will make point-to-point delivery economically viable for Instacart -- e.g., by giving the company cost-effective access to underused delivery vehicles as needed to satisfy the ebbs and flows of consumer demand.
I'm curious to see if and how Instacart can pull it off.
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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com#History