Its been a full 24 hours since we launched the site, and I’m about ready to crash face first into a keyboard…
……

Also Xavier. A tech company with 100k employees has a tech department or an affilated company they work with to upgrade software and equipment all the time. They wont order from LicketyShip. Please.

How many tech companies send their $100K+ engineers over to Best Buy every day because their laptop just blew up and they need a new one?

How many execs work 80 hours a week and don’t exactly feel like taking a cab to Staples to buy toner?

How many startups need routers, toner, printers, flash drives and laptops on an almost daily basis? Do you really want to grind everything to a halt while the CEO hails a rickshaw?

There have been a lot of times in my career where I would have paid a lot more than $19 to have the thing I need immediately. Although this service certainly provides value to consumers, its true value proposition is to businesses: your employees are too expensive to send on shopping trips in the middle of the day and overnight is simply too long a wait (and often more expensive!). I wouldn’t be surprised if Lickety will become a staple of half the startups in the Valley.

CHI is $2.25 + $1.80/mi. Assume there’s a staples within 5 miles of you and NO traffic (dream on). You’re looking at $11.25 EACH WAY!

In NYC its worse. $2.50 + $2.00/mi. That’s $12.50 each way with no traffic (yea right).

In LA, holy crap. It’s so spread out you’d be lucky to find a staples within 20 miles, and freeways resemeble parking lots. Assuming the drive-bys don’t get you, its $2.00 + $2.00/mi. = $12.00 each way.

Of course there are all kinds of public transport options, subway, walking, hitchiking, whatever. At the end of the day, this boils down to a $20 convenience tax. And my point is, when compared to the other options out there, $20 isn’t that bad.

There are millions of people like me who pay through the nose for overnight shipping, and don’t really think twice about it. I’d pay $20 for same-day in a second becuase I’m already paying about the same for slower service. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste my day in a cab, bus, or rickshaw running all over the city to find a card reader or a flash drive. But hey, that’s just me

This is just stupid. You could make this argument for anything. The bottom line is that people who could buy stuff at local stores buy online anyway because it’s more CONVENIENT, and they care less about the price than the convenience of not having to go to the store.

I for one buy almost everything online, usually delivered overnight. When I needed a monitor last week, I shopped at TigerDirect, and I paid tham $75 to ship it overnight! Sure, I COULD have driven to Fry’s and saved some money, but why bother??? I just don’t have the time for that.

And to the idiot who says you can just get in a cab???? Are you kidding me? When was the last time you took a cab just to pickup print toner?? You’d pay $10 EACH WAY for a 5 mile ride, plus you’d have to wait in lines, wait for the cabs both ways…. that just doesnt make sense. Why don’t you just take the bus? That’s MUCH cheaper, and SOOOOOOO convenient

I’m thrilled that someone is giving same day delivery a shot again. At $20, they beat overnight delivery almost every time. I just hope they figured out the revenue model so they don’t die the familiar death of kozmos and urbanfetches past…

Because the success of this model is based on an assumption of immediate need that that product offerings don’t really back up. I could understand if this was like perscription refill delivery or something that was time sensitive but what can I purchase on this site at retail that I couldn’t drive, be driven, bike, or walk to get?

Why aren’t people comparing LicketyShip to Fedex overnight?

Plus, its already after 3pm and the site still seems to be operating normally.

Found the info on: http://www.lick...om/about_us.php

Courier services are at least $10 a stop, more for many locations, and they don’t like residential.

Courier services want routes that they can count on like weekly pickups at the same location, many different residential deliveries with short notice is going to be low margin for the couriers and many will opt out.