// STARTUP COMPARISON
PedidosYa Market vs Google+
PedidosYa Market failed in 2023 due to Unit Economics. Google+ failed in 2019 due to Product Failure. Different causes, different sectors, different eras — but the same simulation outcome.
| METRIC | 🔥 PedidosYa Market | 🔥 Google+ |
|---|---|---|
| Sector | Ecommerce | Social |
| Country | Colombia | USA |
| Founded | 2021 | 2011 |
| Died | 2023 | 2019 |
| Raised | $300M | Internal (Alphabet) |
| Peak | 200 dark stores (2022) | 500M accounts |
| Primary Cause | Unit Economics | Product Failure |
// WHY EACH FAILED
🔥 PedidosYa Market
Unit Economics
Delivery Hero's Latin American brand PedidosYa launched PedidosYa Market — a q-commerce grocery service — across Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, and Dominican Republic in 2021, backed by $300M earmarked for LatAm expansion. By Q2 2022, Delivery Hero had already written down its European q-commerce businesses (Gorillas €1.2B, Glovo grocery) after seeing the unit economics collapse. PedidosYa Market was shut down in early 2023 as Delivery Hero initiated global profitability focus. 1,400 LatAm employees were laid off.
// LESSON
If your European q-commerce arm just wrote down €1.2B, launching q-commerce in Latin America with the same model is not a new bet — it is the same bet at higher cost. The unit economics that failed in Berlin also fail in Buenos Aires.
If your European q-commerce arm just wrote down €1.2B, launching q-commerce in Latin America with the same model is not a new bet — it is the same bet at higher cost. The unit economics that failed in Berlin also fail in Buenos Aires.
🔥 Google+
Product Failure
Google+ launched June 2011 with forced integration across Google products. Despite 500M accounts, daily active users were near zero — most accounts were created involuntarily through YouTube or Gmail sign-ins. A data breach affecting 500,000 users in 2018 gave Google cover to shut it down in April 2019.
// LESSON
Distribution is not adoption. Forced sign-ups are not users. You can mandate account creation. You cannot mandate that people care.
Distribution is not adoption. Forced sign-ups are not users. You can mandate account creation. You cannot mandate that people care.
// EXPLORE FURTHER