Kozmo is relaunching

by peterldowns • 13 years ago

48 44 13 years ago

danso• 13 years ago

Congrats, but this article from 2001 has some background:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1309&dat=20010426&id=G...

If Kozmo had trouble then, with an employee count of 3,300 and with Amazon barely the logistical superpower it is today, what makes the plan more viable today, with Amazon and Google reportedly getting into the game?

jsolson• 13 years ago

Kozmo was originally funded, at least in part, by Amazon. My first boss when I worked at Amazon was a dev for Kozmo (as I understood it, the while staff and possibly the company had been brought into Amazon).

I don't know if something similar is happening this time around.

jonnathanson• 13 years ago

Ironically enough, Amazon now owns and operates Webvan.

doseofreality• 13 years ago

The audience of likely users is bigger today.

tptacek2• 13 years ago

This is an in-joke about how there might be another startup bubble, right?

wickedshimmy• 13 years ago

It's fine. Everything is fine.

jfb• 13 years ago

It's different this time!

windsurfer2• 13 years ago

I put this up years ago: http://abielinski.com/startup

samstave5• 13 years ago

What am I missing, that link just says:

"Too busy coding, follow us on twitter: @crypticstartup(coming soon)"

comex• 13 years ago

Might be?

tptacek2• 13 years ago

I honestly don't know. It's one of the benefits of not living in the San Francisco Bay area.

samstave5• 13 years ago

Depends on how many Aeron chairs they end up buying during the relaunch :)

7Figures2Commas• 13 years ago

Well, the text-as-image (with dithering) suggests that somebody is trying to take us back to 1998, but perhaps Kozmo 2.0 has only raised a small seed round. Once the $6 million Series A closes, they'll be able to afford to hire a top full-stack engineer in the Mission who can create a real landing page using Rails and Ember.js, or something cool like that.

colinbartlett2• 13 years ago

Will it still will be free delivery within an hour? I'd like to see something sustainable this time.

Damn, I still wear my Kozmo.com tshirt with pride. I hope this happens.

cortesoft• 13 years ago

No, I do not remember them.

drone• 13 years ago

Loved the concept back then, wished it would've made it (and hit more markets more effectively) - they folded up shortly after entering my market, and barely got to use them. Maybe they can make it a worthwhile venture this time around.

georgemcbay• 13 years ago

I'm holding out for a return of Webvan.

I've moved probably 6 times since they were in operation (including cross-country) and yet I still have 4 of their old delivery boxes that I use for storage and could use some more, those things last forever.

WalterSear• 13 years ago

Every Webvan delivery cost them $80. I'm sure without such ass backward overhead, it will come. Maybe even before the google car.

irollboozers• 13 years ago

Webvan? Pfft. Some people are holding out for the return of Yahoo.

samstave5• 13 years ago

Safeway.com

itp• 13 years ago

I fondly remember sitting in my apartment in Boston sometime around 2001 waiting for Kozmo to bring me a new memory card for the Dreamcast, a pint of Ben & Jerry's From Russia With Buzz, and an Entenmann's Coffee Cake. This perhaps does not bode well for my wallet or my waistline.

discipline• 13 years ago

Same here, but in our apartment across the river in Cambridge. Magazine, movie, and Ben&Jerry's. And it was freakin' cold out, close to zero!

adamnemecek• 13 years ago

Seems like they were inspired by Zombo (http://zombo.com) when making this page.

allworknoplay• 13 years ago

miss the shit out of kozmo, but it's 2013: movies are on the internet and everything else is seamless, so...

staunch• 13 years ago

Perhaps the improved state of marijuana laws will make them successful this time.

tlrobinson2• 13 years ago

Google Shopping Express, Ebay Now, Amazon Fresh, Instacart, Postmates are all getting in this space, but with a $5+ delivery fee.

Free might not be sustainable, but if one of them can pull off an Amazon Prime pricing model I'd probably be sold.

samstave5• 13 years ago

ELI5 the prime pricing model?

tlrobinson2• 13 years ago

Unlimited 2 day shipping for $79 per year.

neovive• 13 years ago

Are the original founders are involved in the relaunch? That would be very interesting.

evv• 13 years ago

Ok, I'll be the one to poke fun on a technical level.

XHTML, really?? One big splash image, really? Oh, and this unused javascript:

onload="timer=setTimeout('move()',2000)"

Is this for real??

bliti• 13 years ago

I was going to mention this. The page is like a trip to the past. Will they handout free AOL cds at launch? (:

RoboTeddy• 13 years ago

Has instant delivery been made feasible by some underlying change? (e.g. cheap GPS in phones of deliverers, people being more comfortable buying stuff online, etc). Or, has it been feasible this entire time?

bastian2• 13 years ago

I believe that the ubiquity of smartphones with GPS capability is an important driver. However at Postmates (I'm a Co-founder), we spent a lot of our time working on our dispatch algorithm, with the goal to constantly improve the way we match the current demand to the available supply.

Our challenges are slightly different than the ones Kozmo faced. One huge difference is that our deliveries are much more distributed since we don't deliver from just one or two warehouses but from locations all over the city. This model brings some advantages but also holds some very interesting challenges at the same time. ;) On a typical day, our couriers operate in the most efficient way during our peak demand times - during breakfast, lunch and dinner that is.

johnrob• 13 years ago

One change is the willingness to pay workers as contractors. This saves quite a bit of money in terms of insurance, payroll, and taxes.

dvanduzer• 13 years ago

Get out of this thread and stay out, under 30s.

bastian2• 13 years ago

As far as i can tell, Kozmo.com is now registered by Yummy Foods LLC which operates Yummy.com, a chain of mini supermarkets in the Los Angeles area.

I believe that they are either doing a PR stunt, or that they are planning to offer deliveries under this brand name instead of Yummy.

Funny enough, when we launched Postmates we toyed with the idea to create a Kozmo themed teaser page but ultimately decided against it.

colinbartlett2• 13 years ago

Not so subtle plug.

dsjoerg• 13 years ago

Look out cause here comes UrbanFetch!

paulgb• 13 years ago

There is a documentary on the rise and fall of the original Kozmo called e-Dreams http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Dreams

Wonder if they'll make a sequel? :)

asanwal• 13 years ago

I used to work at Kozmo launching their facilities and new markets, and I can say the brand still resonates with those that used it almost 13 years later.

I have a messenger bag from the firm which I use from time-to-time and every time I do, people stop me to say how much they loved Kozmo and of course point how dumb it was that they could order a Ben & Jerry's for $3 at 2 in the morning.

So ,of course, the model was fatally flawed, but for the average consumer who used Kozmo back in the day, they loved it. And so there is some brand value and a ton of PR that come with the name that someone could exploit.

Let's hope the biz model is just a bit better this time :)

tazzy531• 13 years ago

Kozmo definitely still resonates with me. I was a huge fan of them while I was back in college. Where else can you order Ben & Jerry's at 11PM and get a refund because they were late on their delivery?

samstave5• 13 years ago

Absolutely!

I LOVED IT.

Once I sat on plane next to one of the founders and told them nt only that I loved it - but how fantastic it would be to allow for me to define my location and then search for stuff nearby that I wanted Kozmo to bring: "Show me all indian restaurants within walking distance of me"

Yeah - that was coming... just not from Kozmo. I will totally support this resurrection.

fluxon• 13 years ago

Oh noes! I kept my Kozmo receipts and delivery bags in pristine condition. I hope this relaunch doesn't kill their eBay value!

Kozmo is relaunching

Related Stories