All of these new services that enable poor or lower-income people to serve rich people (Uber, TaskRabbit, Instacart) have been enabled by two main things: an economic recession that permanently eliminated a lot of jobs and the recovery which drove economics gains to the 1%, and smartphones, which allow the customers or workers to send or receive requests at any time.

> All of these new services that enable poor or lower-income people to serve rich people (Uber, TaskRabbit, Instacart) have been enabled by two main things: an economic recession that permanently eliminated a lot of jobs and the recovery which drove economics gains to the 1%

The 1% don't use Uber, TaskRabbit, or Instacart; they have actual personal drivers, servants, and chefs.

I'm using the word "1%" in the recently popularized figurative sense, the people who make enough money to outsource things like hailing a taxi or doing grocery shopping.

That sort of makes your point an exercise in circular logic then: The recovery drove money to people who spend money on goods and services. Well yes, the people who work in fields that are doing well now are more likely to spend the money they get paid on new products.

I think (or at least surmised) that the circular nature of the argument is part of the point. Previous economic happenings increased the wealth/income gap, but these new services have arrived which allow the wealthy to increase their standard of living while creating income for the lower classes, thus decreasing the gap to an extent.

"the recently popularized figurative sense"

so how many % is the recently popularized figurative 1%?

Probably around 2%.

You are 100% correct. The one percent do not use any of those services. As a one percenter mentioned to me, "why would I have a random person pick me up at the airport? My wife picks me up. And she does my shopping."

Here's another use case: I'm in a wheelchair and shopping is tricky. I'd LOVE this system to start up in Australia.

Probably the biggest risk to crowdsouring is a reestablishment of the middle class. That will drive wages up to the point where these services end up too expensive or too poorly executed (by bottom of the barrel labor).

On a positive note (for these companies), I don't see the middle class coming back any time soon.

This is my attempt at a guess:

-- For the user, it's easier than ever to place an order. Internet connection speeds are fast, smartphones have snappy native apps, 3G is everywhere -- so you can order groceries on the ride home. You can quickly download 100 images of products on the bus ride home and pick the ones you want (for example).

-- For Instacart, processing those orders at scale is also easier than ever. EC2 instances are cheap and easily provisioned, payment processing is easier thanks to a bevy of services, and online use of credit cards doesn't have the riskiness and stigma associated with it in the 90s.

-- For the shopper going out to buy groceries, communication is easier than the 90s. With broadband and smartphones, they can send updates back to Instacart servers faster and have them processed automatically (as opposed to the 90s, where a cellphone call would have information transmitted by voice, which would have to be processed by a human). Smartphones alone enable a larger volume of information to be communicated back to Instacart, and have it be as simple as the shopper checking off items purchased or scratching off items not available.

-- For Instacart again, dynamic routing, inventory updates, and scheduling are much easier (in theory) because of the timely updates from shoppers, as well as the enormous amount of computing power available. Couple that with GPS tracking and you enable some sort of accountability for the shoppers, as well as a better customer experience for the user ("your shopper is 3 minutes away, on Van Ness...")

It's similar to how UPS revolutionized package shipping with point-by-point delivery updates.

That said, as a former Instacart patron, I feel Instacart has a long way to go before it's as entrenched as Amazon.

Hey, few questions that I'm asking in earnest.

1. When did UPS revolutionize package shipping? 5 years ago, 10 years ago, or longer? 2. Couldn't someone who ran a delivery service (i.e. UPS, DHL, FedEx, etc) have been in place to do this sort of thing 10 years ago or even longer? I mean sure, it's easier and more accessible than ever now, but it doesn't look like a showstopper to me. The convenience of having someone else do your groceries for you is so convenient for most people. It's on the level of convenience of paying the neighbor's kid to mow your lawn.

Seems like it was about 1995: http://www.ups.com/content/us/en/about/history/1999.html

But it peaked in 2000: http://www.ups.com/content/us/en/about/history/2007.html?WT....

I am curious what InstaCart could do better at, since you said you are a former patron.

Too many deliveries had missed or swapped items, and although customer service was always excellent, it got a little tiring. Also, my perception (although I never actually checked) is that prices were slightly higher than driving down 2 blocks to Safeway and using my loyalty card there.

What might bring me back is a cost incentive on repeated purchases, say by offering 10% off if I sign up for regular monthly deliveries of common household items.

Yes. Mobile and crowdsourcing: a freelancer with a smart phone removes the need for a warehouse.

I agree that I don't see how THESE GUYS can succed, but I feel that with the infrastructure, and automation technology that Amazon has developed/purchased over the past 12 years the home delivery of groceries is a slam dunk to be successful.

The world was ready for Webvan back then, it was taking off, but the fatal flaw was their legendary dot-com overspending did them in.

The Webvan implosion was so big that it left a lasting stigma around that entire business model that made people assume that you'd need a Webvan-size spending budget to ever attempt it again.

Instacart has a clever twist of offloading the actual transportation and storage, the most expensive and complex aspect of grocery delivery, work onto self-appointed local providers who solve that hard part themselves independently of Instacart.

  What has changed in technology in the past 12 years to 
  enable home grocery delivery?

Perhaps home grocery delivery has been feasible the whole time, and Webvan's failure was one of execution and management. Perhaps Webvan just scared off VCs until now.