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Comment by walrus01 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if given the bulky size of the thing, the tech might be great, but it's just too early. For those people who are old enough to have been working in the tech industry in the dotcom 1.0 boom days, the business model proposed by the epic failure of Webvan was later validated by Amazon/Prime Now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webvan

Look at all that money down the drain.

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> "The company raised an additional $375 million in an initial public offering in November 1999 that valued the company at more than $4.8 billion.[14] Up to that time, the company had reported cumulative revenue of $395,000 and cumulative net losses of more than $50 million.[15]"

That's astonishing.

oh, that's nothing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beenz.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooz.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Crossing

to be fair to global crossing, they did build a really awesome international network, the revenues just didn't support the billions spent on it.

It's possible. The Apple Newton is a great case study of a good idea that was too early. And the inability to minitiarize it sufficiently to fit in a pocket was one reason for it's failure. A few years later the Palm Pilot was much more successful because it could fit in your pocket, especially the baggy jeans that were fashionable in the late 90's.

Webvan's model hasn't yet been validated. The local delivery startups and offerings are still losing lots of money. If anyone can make it work it will be Amazing, but it has yet to be validated as a profitable business.

"A good idea too early" makes it sound like they were ahead-of-their-time geniuses. Reality is that everyone had that idea and knew the technology wasn't ready.

Ideas are the easy part.

I think it's more likely that Magic Leap will be way too late at release time.

Timing is... everything.

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