In light of Michael Richards (AKA Kramer of Seinfeld) recent racial outburt, I'm reminded of an old friends' dream of making it big. How are Michael Richards and Joe Park related? If you remember Web 1.0, when VC money poured into biz plans that made no economical sense, then you'll remember Kozmo.com. Joe is the founder of Kozmo.com and he named the company after the Seinfeld character portrayed by Michael Richards. Too bad we found out that underneath Kramer's whacky and crazy clothing is a white sheet and a conehead. Conicidentally I came across CNET.com's top 5 dot-com flops and Kozmo.com made the dubious distincition of coming in at #3. Joe had it big by befriending execs like Jeff Bezos of Amazon and even making TV appearances on CNBC. I remember the first time he told me he was quitting Goldman Sachs to pursue this Interent thing. The original idea was to deliver videos -- I soon found out porn was the initial driver of business in the early days of Kozmo. I thought to myself, quit Goldman Sachs to deliver videos? Hmmm, curious. I didn't get it but I gotta give him credit because he did quickly get more than 15 minutes of fame. The last time I saw Joe was at his sister's wedding and I don't keep in touch because we were more acquintenances from high school. I remember him reminding me how he raised $250MM for Kozmo.com and the models he suppposedly dated. Maybe money can't buy you happiness but it will buy you some models to sleep with; that is until you make the top 5 dot-com flops of CNET.com. Perhaps Joe should've stuck with porn since it did drive up business.
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