Beer, Band-Aids And Ben & Jerry’s: Why Venture Capitalists Gave Two 27-Year-Olds $1 Billion To Build The Ultimate Online Convenience Store
- Date: 31-Aug-2020
- Source: Forbes
- Sector:Financial Markets
- Country:GCC
Beer, Band-Aids And Ben & Jerry’s: Why Venture Capitalists Gave Two 27-Year-Olds $1 Billion To Build The Ultimate Online Convenience Store
With its flat $2 fee for 30-minute deliveries of junk food and booze, GoPuff is having a very good pandemic. Orders are up four-fold at the SoftBank-backed startup but hypergrowth comes with problems: high costs, low margins “” and thousands of unreliable drivers.
Rushing through their empty offices in a resurgent section of industrial Philadelphia, Rafael Ilishayev and Yakir Gola, the co-founders and co-CEOs of GoPuff are a blur of activity amplified by the silence of the cavernous lobby. "We're here everyday,“ says Ilishayev energetically. "A lot of people want to come back.“
Built from the bones of an Irish bar and a boxing gym, and spanning an entire city block, the 30,000 square-foot space was meant to be the buzzing new headquarters for the seven-year-old online delivery service. Instead it sits