Instacart (YC S12) wants to be Amazon with 1 hour delivery
I'd love to have this service at home, so I'm (selfishly) hoping Instacart becomes hugely successful!<p>That said, I can't help but wonder whether the company will find a business model with sustainable economics.  A lot of really smart people have tried and failed to accomplish this sort of thing before.  For example, Amazon invested $60 million in Kozmo.com back in the late 90's, and they couldn't make it work.  (Kozmo.com ended up raising a quarter billion dollars before shutting down.)[1]<p>The main challenge is that same-day, point-to-point delivery is very expensive -- a complex problem.  (Most delivery systems in use today rely on some kind of hub-and-spoke design.)  Perhaps the wide adoption of smart phones will make point-to-point delivery economically viable for Instacart -- e.g., by giving the company cost-effective access to underused delivery vehicles as needed to satisfy the ebbs and flows of consumer demand.<p>I'm curious to see if and how Instacart can pull it off.<p>--<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com#History" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com#History</a>