Luna delivers your packages when you're home for the night

I know I&#x27;ll just sound like another grumpy Android user here, but why launch with an iPhone app only? Why wouldn&#x27;t you start off with e-mail and a mobile-responsive web site? I can&#x27;t imagine what functionality a native Luna app could provide that couldn&#x27;t be done over the web.<p>I know that being in the App Store is a status symbol and so on, but most of my online shopping is still done on the web, and I sit in front of a computer at work - so most of the time I want to interact with Luna I&#x27;ll probably be wanting a desktop experience.<p>I&#x27;m in NYC, so I can&#x27;t use the service right now anyway. But if it launches here I&#x27;d be an absolute sucker for it, except that I won&#x27;t be able to use it.

I don&#x27;t mean to be a downer, but stuff like this bums me out. There are so few people working on important things yet half the town is working on delivering food and packages to tech workers who can afford what is genuinely a pretty insane price to pay for these services. I know that this is a pretty awesome convenience, but its just so meh. This is what we&#x27;re doing with all these resources? Building online delivery service number 45248923942?

Awesome! I think the landing page could do a slightly better job at explaining the problem Luna solves.<p>&quot;Delivering your packages when you&#x27;re home for the night&quot; sounds nice, but why would I want my packages delivered at night?<p>I looked at the blog and it perfectly explained the problem: &quot;How many times have you anxiously awaited a package only to come home and find that dreaded little slip hanging from your front door?&quot;<p>Why not put that on the landing page?

Now this business is a breath of fresh air. No &quot;social&quot;. No &quot;you are the product, not the customer&quot;. No &quot;ads as a business model&quot;. In fact, I see a clear business model. And having the price on the site? On the front page? holy cow that&#x27;s awesome.<p>A wise businessman I know used to say &quot;Think like a customer, always anticipate, and have fun!&quot; Take that to heart and you&#x27;ll do just fine. Good on you for getting this far, and best of luck for the future!

One thing that jumped out at me in the FAQ:<p>You tell Luna when you&#x27;ll be home, and the delivery will happen between that time and midnight.<p>I&#x27;m sure there are a ton of folks who wouldn&#x27;t mind a midnight delivery -- I used to be one of them -- but there are probably a fair amount who would like to get a package at 7 p.m. but would definitely not like to get a package at 12 a.m.<p>Perhaps as Luna expands, it might consider shifting to a model that allows a smaller time window for the folks who get home earlier. For instance, it might use a two-hour window, so people who get home at 7 will receive their delivery by 9 and people who get home at 10 will receive their delivery by midnight.

I wonder why the big delivery companies (UPS, FedEx) have not bothered with a service like this (I am aware that you can schedule delivery windows and the like, but we can assume that no current delivery company offers this exact, concierge like service). I can only come up with 2 possible points that would render offering this service not worth their time.<p>First, On initial glance, this appears to be a niche luxury service that skews towards a relatively young demographic. That user base may just be too small to make it worth the big delivery companies time. Also, This business model probably only works in a metro area (I can&#x27;t imagine the price points needed to make this company viable Batavia Ohio being very palatable to the average consumer).<p>There may also be other concerns, but these are the ones that I would first worry about as an investor. Either way, it will be interesting to see how this pans out. It really is a solution to one of those problem that in retrospect, was so damn obvious.

Simple and a life saver. I&#x27;ll be signing up as soon as this comes to NYC.<p>I get most things shipped to the office to avoid sitting around at home, but sometimes you get an item that&#x27;s just too big - those items also tend to be more expensive, making the $6.99 thing more palatable. I hope their numbers account for this effect (i.e., disproportionately large packages).<p>Dealing with USPS pickup slips is the sort of pain I wouldn&#x27;t wish on my worst enemy.

I&#x27;d just like to point out to all the downers out there: the pricing on this service is easily justified if you compare it to the cost of having to drive all the way to a Fedex facility, wait in line behind other similarly inconvenienced human beings, and drive all the way back. Even if you work for minimum wage, the cost of gas plus the value of your time far exceeds the $7 delivery fee.<p>I&#x27;m pretty excited to try this out!

Seems a bit pricey for me. I think the future is Amazon&#x27;s storage drop lockers in every Super America (insert your regional chain here). Works for we city dwellers (there&#x27;s one every 3 blocks), and even suburbanites.<p>There&#x27;s no way Luna will work for those many millions are trapped in the suburbs (though of course, that&#x27;s not a prerequisite for success either). That being said, i&#x27;d definitely use this service in Minneapolis proper.

I like the idea. Though the $6.99&#x2F;package is more than I&#x27;m wiling to spend. I order most of my stuff online and packages delivered to my apartment during the day will be stolen. I currently have to get all my packages delivered to work, but for some people that may not be an option.

This is great. Online shopping is so much less convenient because I can&#x27;t have packages delivered to my apartment. Instead I must ship packages to my office, and either muscle them on MUNI or get a cab (which costs more than $7).

Is there any way for you to act as a proxy for users, and pick up their packages from the will-call window at the local UPS warehouse for same-night redelivery? It would be an easier sell at $7+ if you can save your customers a drive across town and a wait in the UPS line. Folks also wouldn&#x27;t have to plan ahead to delivery to Luna.<p>Ideal user interaction would be: open the Luna app and scan the InfoNotice.<p>Perhaps you could hack&#x2F;co-opt&#x2F;use carrier services like UPS&#x27; MyChoice service, which allows customers to electronically sign for pacakges, and give special delivery instructions.

They&#x27;re solving an issue that&#x27;s been slowly building over the last 10 or so years. I love online shopping, but the fatal flaw has always been the delivery process, which is heavily geared towards those who work at home, or have a partner&#x2F;family member available in the house during the day.<p>Most of the time I get stuff delivered to work, but quite often we get angry emails from postroom staff who are swamped with packages and can&#x27;t determine what&#x27;s &quot;business critical&quot; post and just people ordering personal items off the web. I can sympathise with that a bit.

A good idea and it illustrates the growing trend of proxy-services. That is, traditional services are so inflexible or inconvenient that the best way to deal with them is to decouple them from the individual and insert a proxy that buffers the service.<p>I&#x27;ve noticed this with banking too, people decoupling the payment mechanisms ( card accounts, direct debits etc ) from their main accounts.<p>Edit: I wonder what non-IT people make of such patterns.

Over here in Germany we have solved that problem with the Packstation. They&#x27;re everywhere and you can just go there and fetch your packets whenever you want: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packstation" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Packstation</a><p>And there&#x27;s no additional fee and I think sending a packet using them is cheaper than doing it the traditional way.

I just spent 10 days playing Whack-A-Mole with UPS to get my &quot;Signature Required&quot; package. Just one issue with them after another. I was even thinking of asking them to direct me to where the driver was on his route, and I&#x27;d go meet him somewhere.<p>So $6.99 to ensure I got the package when I was home? Yes, I&#x27;d pay it. Luna: Come to Austin next.

I&#x27;m not sure that people will go through this app and pay another $6 on top of the original shipping fee, and enter an oddball shipping address. They may pay it if it&#x27;s an option at checkout, as at that point they are weighing the shipping costs as a total and looking at things like overnighting a package, or two-day shipping etc. If it was a markup for nighttime delivery at checkout, and you just enter your home address one time, that would be the most painless implementation. To get there, that means they&#x27;ll need to partner with Amazon, UPS, FedEx, etc, rather than acting as competitors. If these companies are not interested in night-time delivery or unable to do night-time delivery for labor reasons, they may be quite willing to earn a markup by partnering with Luna. They already have similar relationship with USPS which handles last mile deliveries, which is what it looks like Luna is going for.

Excellent Idea! My Amazon Prime account makes me automatically turned off by delivery charges. $6.99 is too steep per package for me (mainly due to the low cost of the items I purchase), but I would definitely enroll in some tier type pay package. $X for Y total deliveries or $1.75X for 2Y total deliveries.<p>edit: clarity

This is a cool idea, and one that I would definitely pay for in certain circumstances (basically any situation where I end up having to drive to the UPS facility). However, I&#x27;d want to be sure that I can actually use the service under those circumstances.<p>My difficulty is when a company like Apple sends a package as &quot;signature required.&quot; First, will I be able to specify the Luna address, or will I be required to have the billing and shipping addresses match up? Second, will the Luna representative&#x27;s signature be counted as an authorized signature for UPS&#x27;s purposes?<p>Both of these things are mostly out of Luna&#x27;s control, unless they enter negotiations with these companies. And while this should be a no-brainer for UPS from an efficiency standpoint, you really can&#x27;t underestimate their ability to make bad decisions.

I have to say this is pretty awesome. I currently pay $8&#x2F;mo for my USPS PO Box, but I&#x27;m wary to send expensive packages there since they have a tendency to misplace packages. So far, they&#x27;ve only lost one package, but there are many times where I&#x27;ll go there and they can&#x27;t locate a package. If I return several weeks later, they managed to find it.<p>I&#x27;m not a big fan of one time fees, but I can definitely see myself paying for a monthly subscription plan, similar to Amazon prime. Any thoughts of this in the near future?

I&#x27;d much rather have my packages delivered to a secure, conveniently located facility that notifies me of the delivery and that I can visit to pick up my package at my leisure. But then, I&#x27;m more concerned with completely offloading the stress over when my package might be delivered, whether or not it might get stolen, and whether or not I have to be there to sign off for it.<p>Still, this appears to be a useful step up from having packages delivered at random times throughout the day.

I&#x27;m worried about my security with this application. I&#x27;m essentially telling strangers with a delivery van that my home will be empty until this time.<p>I&#x27;ll deliver to my Office for now. I&#x27;m excited about this service but skeptical.<p>(EDIT: Upon re-reading this comment I noticed I came off sounding like this service might be a scam. I&#x27;m moreso worried about MITM and subpoenas)

San Francisco - the delivery driver capital of the world

Awesome idea!<p>How do you guys deal with faulty products? I know UPS and FedEx cover product issues brought on by the S&amp;H process.

This is a cool service for urban areas, but I wonder if it&#x27;s really true that UPS or FedEx wouldn&#x27;t just do this if it became popular. For example, I recently discovered that with FedEx you can now schedule a delivery for 5-8PM for $5, and often UPS will deliver things during the evening, I assume because people are more likely to be home then.

I could see this working for very large bulky things you don&#x27;t want to carry home, but for all small to moderately sized items, you can just have stuff shipped to the office.

We solve that by delivering to our office. Works like a charm.

I snubbed the idea until I realized the obvious acquisition target is Amazon. How long are you estimating until they offer? After the NYC rollout?

I think that they are empfasizing the iphone app too much. I do like the service. Delivering stuff when people are actually there.

I find UPS generally delivers to residential areas between 6:30pm and 8pm.

How long can packages be stored with Luna before you deliver them?

I would use this in Canada (Vancouver!)

Why so many delivery startups? Are these real problems needing solutions or entrepreneurs chasing the perception of a market that, in reality, does not exist?<p>Quick story: A good friend of mine thought he saw an opportunity to make money when 3.5 in floppy disks came out (yes, this is ancient). He found a supplier of bulk disks and placed ads in several magazines offering 50 and 100 disk packs at a good deal. One of the magazines printed weekly. A week after he placed his first ad a competitor came out offering a similar deal. A couple of weeks later, another. And then another. And so on for several weeks. At the conclusion of his agreed-upon twelve week run for the ads he did not renew the contract.<p>He sold exactly ZERO disks.<p>He watched as every single one of his competitors pulled out as their contracts ran out.<p>His conclusion was that these entrepreneurs simply followed each other into a non-existing market. He was first. Others saw what he did and thought there was money to be made. They all followed each other taking a virtual dive off the edge or a cliff. Nobody make a dime.<p>Ever since he told me that story years ago I&#x27;ve kept an eye out for that kind of behavior. I&#x27;ve seen it many times and in different industries, some with massive capital investments. One such example is the consumer 3D madness that keeps coming back to bite those who try it. But they keep trying! Amazing.