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Amazon Prime is Kozmo with a profitable version of the business model.

• matwood 4y ago
  Talk of Kozmo has made me want to peruse failed .com companies and see if any of the models could work today.
  • acdha 4y ago
    A ton of them do exist but run by grownups. For example, I worked for a web development company which had Petco as a client. The pets.com people were trying to get purchased and they asked us to talk with them. It was obvious that they were running way too much overhead - we’d talk with their technical team on the phone & people would outright volunteer that they didn’t have much to do and were mostly waiting for the IPO lotto tickets - so they failed but today just about everyone buys pet supplies online. The idea was fine but they didn’t understand they were in a low-margin industry. That pattern showed up a lot, especially where things like shipping were key chokepoints. Cement.com memorably failed but you can easily order building supplies in many places because the real value is proximity and there wasn’t a high-margin business as a middleman.
• jonathankoren 4y ago
  I always think of it as more of a DoorDash thing. There was that whole partnership with Starbucks immediately before the implosion.
  • WillPostForFood 4y ago
    You are right that DoorDash might be closer to Kosmo (and may also go under). I meant that Amazon Prime showed that a scaled up, same day delivery service could be viable and profitable
    • temp20160423 4y ago
      I wouldn't call Amazon Prime same day. Amazon had prime now for awhile in response to Google's Express program; these were both same-day services that delivered in 2-4 hours from order placement. Both programs were cancelled when it became clear they were unsustainable.
    • jonathankoren 4y ago
      DoorDash and Uber were fun while they lasted. Maybe someone will try and fail again in 10 or 15 years.