DoorDash Wants to Own the Last Mile • Hacker News Board

Re: DoorDash Wants to Own the Last Mile

#31

Post by bootload » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 3:49 AM UTC

berberous wrote: post #21

bootload wrote: post #2

"Tony Xu is ready to do some Dashing. He’s wearing his bright red DoorDash T shirt. His water bottle is full. He’s got the Dasher app loaded on his iPhone." Can you spot the difference b/w this scenario and Kosmo [0] who attempted this in 2000? [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com [1] hint: phone & market size.

Kozmo did not charge delivery fees and I believe had their own warehouses/inventory. I'm not sure what I think about the economics of these delivery companies, but those are two pretty fundamental distinctions.

"Kozmo did not charge delivery fees and I believe had their own warehouses/inventory."

I'd forgotten about the warehouses. Kozmo might have worked if the market was as big as it is now ... and possibly looked at ways to become profitable.

"in 1999 the company had revenue of $3.5 million, with a resulting net loss of $26.3 million.[5] The company raised about $250 million,"

There was a lot of VC money thrown around but the number of employees and scale... 1100 employees and 18 locations. I would have thought it would have been best to win high values cities then expand gradually.

Re: DoorDash Wants to Own the Last Mile

#32

Post by trevordev » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 4:27 AM UTC

I don't want this company anywhere near the last mile to me. DoorDash sent a flyer to my house false advertising a coupon code. I spent half an hour creating an order only to realize that the coupon they sent me was different from what the flyer said. When I called to complain they acknowledged their error but said they wouldn't do anything and that I should just place an order anyways.

Re: DoorDash Wants to Own the Last Mile

#33

Post by alaskamiller » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 8:01 AM UTC

bootload wrote: post #31

berberous wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kozmo did not charge delivery fees and I believe had their own warehouses/inventory. I'm not sure what I think about the economics of these delivery companies, but those are two pretty fundamental distinctions.

"Kozmo did not charge delivery fees and I believe had their own warehouses/inventory." I'd forgotten about the warehouses. Kozmo might have worked if the market was as big as it is now ... and possibly looked at ways to become profitable. "in 1999 the company had revenue of $3.5 million, with a resulting net loss of $26.3 million.[5] The company raised about $250 million," There was a lot of VC money thrown around bu…

DoorDash has pulled off the trick of charging 20% to the restaurants then $7 to the customer for the delivery.

So really they're a courier service paired with a lead gen service instead of kozmo wanting to be a store that delivers.

The only other model that works is a pizza shop where they can make the products and deliver too.

Waiter.com here in Silicon Valley must be so pissed that ten years in the game they're still outshined.

Re: DoorDash Wants to Own the Last Mile

#34

Post by alaskamiller » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 8:03 AM UTC

sageabilly wrote: post #4

This looks to be a big risk for the contracted delivery people since they're only getting paid the delivery fee plus the tip. Even working pizza delivery, you are still an employee and must make at least minimum wage. If you work for DoorDash you're absolutely dependent on tips. This leads me to a further line of thought- if DoorDash is classifying all of their delivery people as contractors do they have a robust vet…

These days everyone just rely on an API for the background check. Be scared when the push for faster and more dense data results in a new world where anytime you engage with another person you run a background check, credit check, and medical history check before uttering a single word.