Any idea how much he paid for http://melt.com ? Is it just me or do there seem to be a lot of high-profile domain name purchases lately? (though I say that, only color and melt come to mind immediately although I'm sure there are some others... I know Pizza.com sold for $2.5m, which is ridiculous considering what they are doing with that name)
Flip creator gets into the grilled cheese business, Sequoia invests
41–50 of 69 posts
Re: Flip creator gets into the grilled cheese business, Sequoia invests
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
That makes a lot more sense. I still don't think I'd use it ("fast food isn't fast enough" is not a complaint I've ever made), but at least I can understand why someone would.
"fast food isn't fast enough" is not a complaint I've ever made Really? I just went down to Cheeseboard Pizza to get a slice, but the line was too long, so I went somewhere else. If I could have ordered and paid while I walked and then just picked it up when I got there, that would have been sweet. Mind you, I'm pretty impatient.
Just get their phone number and call ahead for takeout — it's pretty common here in Seattle even for places that don't deliver or even have a counter to order at.
There are some terrific sit-down restaurants that have tons of excess kitchen capacity.
Re: Flip creator gets into the grilled cheese business, Sequoia invests
#43So when Sequoia is investing in a fast casual restaurant, can we say that the bubble is now officially in play? I understand wacky tech ideas no one understands, but a restaurant? Really?
Relax. They're not issuing stock yet.
Re: Flip creator gets into the grilled cheese business, Sequoia invests
#44It would be even cooler if a quadcopter delivered your grilled cheese sandwich within minutes no matter where you were. Why doesn't that exist yet?
You know... that sounds doable. Quadcopter are very fast and can go very far before they lose power. And a single sandwich is not a very heavy load. If you are outdoors and can give it your GPS coordinates, a single restaurant/quadcopter port, could serve a very large area.
Yep. You would need a) an iPhone app that you would use to place your order (it would send updated coordinates as you move around, and provide a perimeter within which you would have to stay) b) an army of quadcopters so that a subset of them could be charging while the others were making deliveries c) the quadcopters would have to be equipped with parachutes in case they malfunctioned so they wouldn't kill someone on the way down. d) The quadcopters would have to keep a persistent connection with the central server through wireless networks to keep in sync with your latest position and to send back their coordinates for you to see on your phone. e) there would have to be a mechanism in place to prevent mid-air collisions (buildings you could pre-encode, birds and other quadcopters you couldn`t) for bonus points, you generalize the whole thing and make it like an airbnb where people can exchange arbitrary goods and you just broker the deal and execute the deliveries for a fee that would be dynamically calculated based on distance and weight. DO IT. DO IT NOW.
Re: Flip creator gets into the grilled cheese business, Sequoia invests
#45Well, Chuck E Cheese was founded by Nolan Bushnell who before that founded Atari, so it might just work!
Re: Flip creator gets into the grilled cheese business, Sequoia invests
#46He could at least deliver to arbitrary locations like "Ronnie" the underground cheese griller in NYC.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/he_making_gouda...
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/09/21/am...
He was covered quite a bit last year for taking orders via text message and for being mildly subversive of the NYC health department.
Re: Flip creator gets into the grilled cheese business, Sequoia invests
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know... that sounds doable. Quadcopter are very fast and can go very far before they lose power. And a single sandwich is not a very heavy load. If you are outdoors and can give it your GPS coordinates, a single restaurant/quadcopter port, could serve a very large area.
Yep. You would need a) an iPhone app that you would use to place your order (it would send updated coordinates as you move around, and provide a perimeter within which you would have to stay) b) an army of quadcopters so that a subset of them could be charging while the others were making deliveries c) the quadcopters would have to be equipped with parachutes in case they malfunctioned so they wouldn't kill someone o…
Actually, you wouldn't even need to have extra quadcopters for charging purposes: you would just need extra batteries.
Re: Flip creator gets into the grilled cheese business, Sequoia invests
#48The article on one side and the serious comments on the other side have me really torn, please help me - this is satire right? Right???
Re: Flip creator gets into the grilled cheese business, Sequoia invests
#49I was thinking of starting a company that sells pet supplies to retail customers by way of a website. Think I'll be able to secure VC funding?
Maybe if you incorporate a mascot, say... a sock puppet dog
Re: Flip creator gets into the grilled cheese business, Sequoia invests
#50I don't mean to be dense... but why would I want to order food on my phone? I'm reminded of Paul Graham's office hours video on TC. He asked one of the founders if his product solved the biggest problem in his life. I don't think there's a single person on Earth whose biggest problem in life is, "I have to tell the cashier what I want to eat before I can get fast food."
I've used the chipolte iphone app to order food. It lets me skip the line, not go through payment bs, not have the worker be grumpy when I ask for something special (especially chipolte workers, they tend to have an attitude) or have to wait for it to be prepared. I basically arrive say my name and my food is handed to me.