The real problem with the delivery dot-coms was that the people running them didn’t understand their historical context. In 2013, Peter Relan, the founding head of technology at Webvan, published a post on TechCrunch discussing why the company failed and how the next round of delivery start-ups could avoid the same fate. Webvan’s strategy, he wrote, was to offer “the quality and selection of Whole Foods, the pricing of Safeway, and the convenience of home delivery.”59 But according to Relan, the company shouldn’t have invested in so much infrastructure. Webvan built high-tech distribution systems from scratch: giant networks of new algorithms, miles of conveyor belts, fleets of custom trucks with PalmPilot-wielding delivery drivers. At its short peak, Webvan had a billion-dollar contract with Bechtel to build new distribution facilities around the country. This was the utopian vision of e-commerce, one in which the web’s efficiencies generated gains for everyone involved: investors, workers, and customers alike. In a 2000 report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Webvan bragged that all its couriers “are Webvan employees.… The courier training lasts two weeks and includes 36 hours of classroom training, 12 hours of driving training and 28 hours of on the job training.… Webvan’s couriers receive a competitive compensation package, including cash and stock options…”60 Commentators pegged Webvan’s delivery-labor costs at $30 an hour, or over $50 in 2022 money.61 Of the company’s 4,476 reported employees on January 1, 2001, 3,705 worked out of the “real” operating facilities spread over nearly 1.5 million square feet of rented urban warehouse space across seven metropolitan regions.62 The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the summer of 2001 after losing hundreds of millions of dollars the year before.63