I went to a talk with one of WebVan's early employees, who actually went on to found Kiva Systems, the robotic fulfillment system Amazon just purchased for something like $750 million.
He seemed to insist the reason WebVan couldn't be profitable was because fulfillment was too expensive, which served as inspiration for Kiva. Having people walk around was too slow and too big a cost center.
Obviously this is biased, but still an interesting point to throw in here, since it doesn't look like something they've addressed.
He seemed to insist the reason WebVan couldn't be profitable was because fulfillment was too expensive, which served as inspiration for Kiva. Having people walk around was too slow and too big a cost center.
Obviously this is biased, but still an interesting point to throw in here, since it doesn't look like something they've addressed.