THEN: Kozmo.com Founders (1997)
NOW: Askville Co-Founder; [former] Lehman Brothers Banker
One of the greatest cautionary tales from the first dot-com era originates with Joseph Park and Yong Kang, investment bankers who launched Kozmo.com in New York City. The company’s unsustainable business model promised free delivery of anything from coffee and DVDs to cigarettes and aspirin -- in under an hour. Kozmo's flaw: It lost money on every delivery. The company's rise and fall were documented in the film e-Dreams (see clip below).
After going to Harvard Business School, Park went on to head up Askville, a social community and information site operated by his former competitor Amazon. Yong Kang’s LinkedIn profile lists his current employer as Lehman Brothers. We’ll just file that one under “to be continued” for now.
