Four Notre Dame alumni, including founders of the popular campus
websites NDToday.com and NDbay.com, reached the finals of Fortune
magazine's national collegiate business plan competition
with their idea for an online store that provides same day
delivery.
(UPDATE: The team finished in the top five and won an honorable
mention in the Fortune magazine competition. )
Judging of the alumni group's proposal, called LicketyShip.com,
and the four other finalists in the Fortune Student Showdown was
scheduled for September 17. Prizes in the contest were $50,000
(and the magazine's cover) for first place, $10,000 for second
and $5,000 for third.
With LicketyShip, businesses and individuals can shop online
for merchandise, the same as at such sites as OfficeMax.com or
Amazon.com. The difference is, instead of filling an order from
a warehouse and shipping it out via the U.S. mail or a national
delivery service like UPS, LicketyShip has local couriers pick
up the item from a store and drive it over to the purchasers'
office or home. The site promises to complete deliveries within
four hours.
The charge for this ultimate express delivery is expected to
run about $30 for items weighing up to 50 pounds, according to
LicketyShip's plan. That sounds steep, and it is for overnight
delivery of many goods. But the founders say online sites such
as BestBuy.com charge $45 or more for overnight delivery of merchandise
like laptop computers and printers. And that's overnight, not
the same day.
They also point out that some businesses would rather pay $30
to get an item delivered than lose an employee for the time it
takes to run to the store and back.
LicketyShip plans to focus on what its research has shown are
the categories of items people are most likely to shop for online
and most willing to pay extra to have shipped overnight. These
are books, computers/electronics and office supplies.
As of September, the service was being tested in the South Bend
area (with a lower $22.99 delivery charge). The company had plans
to launch next in Chicago and then in the San Francisco Bay area,
according to Robert Pazornik '02, chief executive officer and
software architect.
LicketyShip was founded by Pazornik,
a co-founder of NDToday.com, the unofficial student website of
Notre Dame, launched in fall 1999; Tim Connors '89, a general
partner with the venture capital firm US Venture Partners; and
co-directors of software development Chris Kelly '05 and Aaron
Wenger '05, who launched NDbay.com, an e-Bay-like merchandise
auction site for students, in fall 2002. They were both sophomores
at the time.
Earlier this year LicketyShip won the $18,000 first prize in
the McCloskey Notre Dame Business Plan Competition of the business
college's Gigot Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. The group
finished second ($10,000) in the Jungle Media, Fenwick & West
Silicon Valley Business Plan Competition.
(October 2005)
