Ebay and Etsy don't have to pay for teams of "delivery ninjas" in every city who pick up goods from sellers and deliver them to the buyers. They leave all that to UPS/FedEx/USPS/etc.
Ebay and Etsy also aggregate lots of sellers along with lots of buyers, which makes it harder for any one seller or buyer to corner their end of the newly created marketplace. But from the article, it sounds like several of the laundry startups are all really just frontends for Wash Then Fold. That gives WTF (hey, I just realized how clever their name is) a pretty fair amount of clout over them all.
If that's the case, it actually suggests a pretty clever business strategy for WTF: let the startups burn other people's money proving the market and finding out what sort of features people want in a laundry app, and then once that's established swoop in and do the same thing yourself. Free R&D!
Ebay and Etsy also aggregate lots of sellers along with lots of buyers, which makes it harder for any one seller or buyer to corner their end of the newly created marketplace. But from the article, it sounds like several of the laundry startups are all really just frontends for Wash Then Fold. That gives WTF (hey, I just realized how clever their name is) a pretty fair amount of clout over them all.
If that's the case, it actually suggests a pretty clever business strategy for WTF: let the startups burn other people's money proving the market and finding out what sort of features people want in a laundry app, and then once that's established swoop in and do the same thing yourself. Free R&D!