We hear a lot nowadays about social media’s divisive impact on the country. But another venture-backed industry arguably poses a much graver danger to people’s long-term health: ultrafast delivery startups. Venture capitalists are currently pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into a sector whose entire goal in life is to enable couch potatoes to order croissants to be delivered to their living rooms in under 15 minutes. Get a sweet tooth while watching a TV show? Click on the app and you’ll have your favorite dessert before the show is half over. What a world we live in.
It’s the delivery equivalent of Moore’s Law: Amazon’s two-hour delivery offer back in 2018 was surpassed by Gopuff’s half-hour promise, which has now been leapfrogged by startups like Fridge No More and Jokr with their 15-minutes-or-less offers. (Where will this lead—startups that use artificial intelligence to deliver what they think you want?) In Europe, host to a similar battle involving a different group of startups, Russia’s ride-hailing giant Yandex has even jumped into the market, CNBC reported today. Will Shu, CEO of one European delivery firm, Amazon-backed Deliveroo, told The Information this week that the firm was averaging 22-minute delivery times door-to-door and was trying to cut that down. “Do you care so much that it’s 12 or 22 [minutes]? Maybe you do. We’re trying to figure that out,” he told us.
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