Doughbies
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Doughbies was a San Francisco same-day cookie delivery service founded by Daniel Conway and Mariam Khan. Pitched as 'Uber, but for cookies,' it baked fresh cookies to order and delivered them in about 20 minutes via its app, at roughly $3 per cookie plus $5 for delivery. The company went through the 500 Startups accelerator and built a cult local following for its chocolate chip cookies.
02 / Doughbies FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Doughbies shut down in July 2018 despite being profitable, with 36 percent gross margins and 12 percent net profit. The business simply could not deliver venture-scale returns: demand was inherently limited because people only need so many cookies a week, and expansion into broader food delivery was blocked by the scale of incumbents like Instacart and Seamless. The founders chose to close on a high note and move on to something new rather than keep grinding a business that could never justify its venture backing.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Operations ended
Doughbies ended operations.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
The company announced it was shutting down immediately in July 2018.
- 02
No asset sale, acquisition, or creditor arrangement was publicly disclosed.