>Companies like this could've easily succeeded even 10 years ago if the old-school dot-com companies hadn't blown all their capital on super bowl ads and aeron

>Companies like this could've easily succeeded even 10 years ago if the old-school dot-com companies hadn't blown all their capital on super bowl ads and aeron chairs. Maybe. There have been a lot of innovations in the consumer Internet business that have enabled the successes of businesses like diapers.com... 1) Internet adoption rate is 2-3x higher now than it was in 1998. Companies like Pets.com weren't just building their own brands, but also educating everyday people about the Internet. 2) There were no self-serve distribution channels like SEM or affiliate marketings that had any scale. Google was founded the same year as Pets.com and Adwords didn't surface for a few years after that. The only ads you could buy were CPM banners, integrated sponsorship deals (AOL bankrupted several companies with these types of deals) and offline media like TV commercials. Additionally, media buys were a lot less accountable. I was selling online ads at this time and some of my clients weren't even tracking registrations by source let alone sales on their website. 3) Businesses like Amazon and Zappos have helped create a completely different model for logistics that simply didn't exist 10-12 years ago. There is a reason that Pets.com had to spend tens to hundreds of millions on infrastructure for warehouses, etc.