What if you bought Webvan in 2000?
US Tech · Internet. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play0× · S&P 500 same money: $4,626
Every dollar is gone. Webvan burned through $800m and folded in 2001, so $1,000 invested in any of these years is worth exactly nothing today.
The story
Webvan promised groceries ordered online and delivered to your door within a 30-minute window, and it set out to build that in the most expensive way imaginable. Founded by Louis Borders, of Borders bookstores, and backed by top venture capital firms, it commissioned giant automated warehouses and ordered delivery fleets before it had proven customers would pay enough. Its November 1999 IPO valued it at several billion dollars, despite modest revenue.
The arithmetic never worked. Groceries carry thin margins, delivery is expensive, and Webvan expanded into new cities rather than making any one of them profitable. It merged with rival HomeGrocer in 2000, just as the market lost patience with loss-making internet companies. Unable to raise more money, it filed for bankruptcy in July 2001, having burned through around 800 million dollars, and thousands of employees lost their jobs. The idea itself was not absurd: grocery delivery later became a large business for companies such as Instacart and Amazon. It was simply too early, too big and too fast.
The lesson: Being early is often indistinguishable from being wrong; Webvan's vision was later vindicated, but its shareholders were wiped out long before that happened.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | $25.00 | $0 | $4,626 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
There was no good entry point: every starting year ends at zero. The same $1,000 in the S&P 500 from 2000 would be $4,626 today.
Now try it without hindsight. The wheel decides the year and the asset class, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick, and we simulate to today. Webvan is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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