When? That was the intention from the
beginning. The first goal was to serve
90 US cities. Broadly there was nothing
seriously wrong with the plan. The idea,
now common in the VC community, that can't
plan such things accurately enough is
absurd.
Once virality started to take hold and
the package volume grew, standing in the
sorting center was an enthralling
experience: The astounding, mind-bending
variety of what the US economy wanted to
ship with high priority was beyond
comprehension and belief. Early on, time
critical legal papers? Sure, there were
plenty of those. Okay.
A cubic foot of some specific small metal
fasteners a big production line needed
ASAP or shut down at some cost of
thousands of dollars an hour. Fine.
But bricks? Yup: A brick oven could send
some samples to an architect, or an
architect could send the samples to a
customer.
Spare parts for computers, etc.? Yup.
But baby chicks? Yup. Medical samples on
the way to a medical testing lab? Yup. A
live baby bear? It happened.
The variety was beyond all belief and
comprehension.
No question about the need, definitely a
must have -- a large fraction of the
customers would have paid nearly anything,
often beyond all reason.
It's so inspiring hearing about people who had unbelievable expectations from the very beginning. I always hear about the opposite – younger Zuckerberg expecting someone bigger like Microsoft/Google/etc to build the "real Facebook" [1], Larry and Sergey thinking they'd never make it to be as big as Shawn Fanning [2], etc.
Those are all extremely interesting, but I'm much more interested in what goes on with people who call it from the beginning. I'd love it if you wrote a book. Do you have a blog?
i can't remember if we used fedex or ups but the most expensive shipping i've purchased was the result of an oversight. booth equipment, about 200 pounds, overnight from LA to denver in order to make a trade show. cost us nearly 2 grand but the cost of not shipping would have been much greater!
Once virality started to take hold and the package volume grew, standing in the sorting center was an enthralling experience: The astounding, mind-bending variety of what the US economy wanted to ship with high priority was beyond comprehension and belief. Early on, time critical legal papers? Sure, there were plenty of those. Okay.
A cubic foot of some specific small metal fasteners a big production line needed ASAP or shut down at some cost of thousands of dollars an hour. Fine.
But bricks? Yup: A brick oven could send some samples to an architect, or an architect could send the samples to a customer.
Spare parts for computers, etc.? Yup. But baby chicks? Yup. Medical samples on the way to a medical testing lab? Yup. A live baby bear? It happened.
The variety was beyond all belief and comprehension.
No question about the need, definitely a must have -- a large fraction of the customers would have paid nearly anything, often beyond all reason.