A Passing Thought on KOZMO.Com

Recall Kozmo, fellow units? Here's the Wayback Machine's screenshot (which incidently, has just told the FBI to put a sock in their National Security Letter. ) I did always kind of like the green and orange colors.

I was idly thinking the other day about the anything-at-anytime delivery service that was one of the fuses of the dot kaboom; it tried for a big mark in Seattle. Last I heard of it, I was having a beer with one of the Kozmo guys. He was sad.

Why did such a semi- pretty good idea go wrong? In retrospect, a lot of arrogance. Why not charge a wee bit for small orders? Why 24 hours? Why insist on the purity of everything? I would assume it was really a long gamble on cornering a new market, rather than a good business strategy- the idea being to cash in rather than simply build a good market. (Not that I know anything about those, but a bad one is often obvious).

I suspect that corporate as opposed to business thinking ruled, and with an obsession with one model, killed a whole promising sector. Well, whatever. Part of this still seems like a good idea.

Now, interestingly enough, a more modest service is going in Manhattan, called MaxDelivery. According to the wiki on Kozmo.com, it's been going since 2005 and was launched by the CTO of Kozmo. Is it making money? Who knows, but it's already lasted about as long as Kozmo.

Interesting because it occurs me that this leaves the West Coast wide open for something similar, a far more modest (remember "burn rate?"), like a basic one-hour web and phone delivery service through say, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle downtowns, organized around existing stores and existing delivery systems (taxis, maybe?), and a more limited, more carefully set of products. What do you really not want to drive for when you realize you want it? Liquor comes to mind, auto parts, groceries.

And this is interesting, not because I have more than, let's see, about $37 to invest, but for a more general observation. People originally avoided this business for the expensive, understandable disaster Kozmo was, but it occurs to me they are avoiding it now somewhat irrationally. Why on earth not set up a modest internet-driven delivery service, particularly when one seems to be working in Manhattan? The giant corporate version crashed, why wouldn't at least one of a set of smaller, more market-sensitive attempts succeed?

So I ask those of you who learned the bitter lessons of those years from personal experience. Is an internet general delivery service actually a good idea underused because of the dot kaboom, or is it doomed, and why?