(Photo: Zazzle)

"What's a joke about Hoboken?" we mused aloud upon sitting down to write this post. "What isn't a joke about Hoboken?" shot back our news editor, without missing a beat.

"Fast Company thinks Hoboken has its own tech scene on its hands," we responded.

"When have they ever had anything on their hands?" retorted The Observer's real estate reporter.

"If I write this I'll never be able to go to Hoboken," we considered.

"As if you'd want to," spat the same reporter.

We weren't just soliciting jokes about Hoboken for the fun of it. In fact, we were doing so for a very important reason--namely, a Fast Company piece published recently that rallies around Hoboken as a burgeoning "hip and young and hungry" tech beacon.

As evidence of the Garden State's growing startup presence, the author offers up the popularity of the New Jersey Tech Meetup, which has swelled to almost 2,000 members, as well as the recent successes of New Jersey startups like Audible and Diapers.com.

Hoboken is just a 15 minute train ride into the city, which means residents can have easy access to Manhattan's amenities while enjoying roomier apartments and the myriad comforts of the suburbs (Chili's!).

But not everyone was thrilled with Fast Company's quick and dirty write up of the New Jersey Tech Meetup event. "You seem to have missed the 'heart' of this meetup. Innovation!" wrote a commenter named Susan Newman. "From the mingling, to start-ups to guest speakers, what we are all learning is what each other is doing in New Jersey and what the coolest new ideas are out there being developed."

New Yorkers have a tendency to look down their noses at Hoboken, which has probably been described somewhere at some point as Manhattan's red-headed stepchild. But--due to their proximity to industries like, according to Fast Company, "pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and manufacturing"--the New Jersey Tech Meetup offers a different breed of entrepreneur, one that those used to attending the massive New York Tech Meetups might find refreshing. Betabeat even attended a New Jersey Tech Meetup in Hoboken a few months ago, and found it quite delightful.

"What's another joke about Hoboken?" we asked the thinning newsroom.

"I don't know, my friends from high school live there," replied one Betabeat reporter.

Hoboken: The Kind of Place Your High School Friends Live™

Fresh redesign! Get it while it's hot!

Being early to market isn't always an advantage. Especially when you may have been a little too early for mass consumer adoption--and are owned by the VC arm of A big corporation like Cantor Fitzgerald. Enter Delivery.com.

Delivery.com, a website that connects its half  million users with local merchants to get goods delivered, was launched back in 2004 (same year as GrubHub). You can think of it like a hybrid of modern-day Seamless (which was born as a corporate catering company in 1999) crossed with Kozmo.com, since the site also connects users with local merchants who sell groceries, alcohol, flowers, pet supplies, and deli items. But there's no army of messengers in green and orange. In Delivery.com's case, the stores themselves do the delivering.

[Let's all give a moment of silence for our dearly departed Kozmo.com, shall we?]

Now that the convenience economy (err, laziness market? we're still l0oking for the right word) is bubbling over, sites like Seamless (née Seamlessweb), Grubhub, Amazon's Diapers.com and Soaps.com are all spending heavily to become the slothful person's service of choice. Even the Zaarlys and TaskRabbits of the world--which let you hire someone else to, say, deliver you a pack of gum--are rapidly multiplying.

To get its head in the game, Delivery.com launched a redesigned site today along with a number of new features. The site, which Betabeat (a long time New Yorker and big time Kozmo fan) had actually never heard of, did gross revenues of $50 million last year and expects to double that this year, but wouldn't disclose profits or margins except to say that the "lion's share" of its business comes from restaurant delivery.

Unlike competitors, which spend on aggressively signing up new locations, Delivery.com has a network gives commissions if you recruit a restaurant to their site, which might be why they're growing slower, with 10,000 restaurants listed (compared to Seamless's claim of 40,000).

The redesign lets users see relevant content based on their location, view recent orders, reorder favorite orders with the push of a button, and more. Then comes the new features...

There's a virtual punch card for discounts! Loyalty points that can be directed to charities! Delivery.com Office for group ordering! A partnership with Verizon FIOS to let you order from your TV! Service to let you order from your hotel room! And did we mention the daily deals!

"What’s hot in the environment is deals," Jonathan Mark, VP of marketing told Betabeat over the phone. Hey, if you're competing with everyone else, might as well add Groupon and its clones to the mix.

Mr. Bharara and Mr. Lore (right) via NJ.com

If you've seen the ads for Soap.com on the subway or noticed a growing number of deliveryman hauling boxes with the Soap.com's colorful logo into apartment buildings, that's Quidsi. It's the same Jersey City company behind the mega-successful delivery sites Diapers.com (for baby care), BeautyBar.com (cosmetics) and Wag.com (pet care). Soap.com sends you stuff you don't have time to pick up from the drug store.

It's e-commerce play in an app economy that may be more closely associated with the dotcom era, except, you know, with much better margins. Quidsi, launched by friends Marc Lore and Vinit Bharara, is also known for its Zappos-rivaling customer service and rapid-fire delivery times, a particular obsession of Mr. Lore's. That might be why Amazon, which owns Zappos, purchased Quidsi for $545 million last November.

Quidsi is now a wholly-owned subsidiary, but operated independently from Jersey City. Betabeat talked to Mr. Lore about the right reasons to sell, what he misses (and doesn't miss) about startup life, his angel investing philosophy, and his latest vertical, YoYo.com for kids toys, which launches today.

A lot has changed since the last time we spoke!

The strategy of Quidsi remains the same. Basically it's all the disposables shipped to you—70 percent of the country overnight--and the rest in two days, so super fast ship times, great return policy 365 day no question asked, average speed of answer continues to come down on calling customer service. We believe we have the right model of getting all the benefits of a mass merchant by having a shared shopping cart and shared account and a shared shipment, but all the benefits of a specialist by having these different websites where we can really take advantage from a merchandising standpoint by tailoring the taxonomy to the specific vertical.

So you’re using the same shippers and warehouses for economies of scale?

Yeah exactly, we leverage all that on the back end. On the front end, we have these very specialized, personalized designed sites. For example on YoYo, we’ll have hand-picked and child-tested toys that we think are great by age, so if you’re looking for a quick gift, it will be easy to find the top toys in any price range or age group. We have a really interesting toy finder that really takes the user interface to a whole ‘nother level—the wish list functionality and stuff. Moms that are already shopping with us on a regular basis will now be able to add to their basket seamlessly--up to 20,000 toys.

How’s Soap doing right now? I’ve been seeing a lot more boxes delivered to condos in Brooklyn.

Soap’s doing great. It’s a little over a year old and it’s way ahead of where Diapers was and Wag is doing better than Soap did in its first two months. So each site seems to be doing better than the one before it.

Do you have any metrics you can share?

You know I love to share that stuff, but I can’t really, now that we’re part of Amazon, give you any financial details. Quidsi is the holding company that Amazon acquired and home to all the different brands. Along with the launch of YoYo today, we’re launching our corporate site, Quidsi,com,  which will give background into all the brands and culture of the company.

How does the arrangement with Amazon work?

We operate fairly independently here out of the East Coast. They’ve given us some leeway here to carry our vision as we laid it out. We’re pretty happy about the way things are going. You definitely have  oversight, but they’re given us a lot of rope to execute the vision that we’ve put forth.

I noticed you ventured into angel investing recently. Is that something you’re going to be doing more of?

Yeah, it’s definitely something I hope to be doing more of.

You and Vin invested together, right?

Yeah, Lot18, they’re a great company, I think they’re going to do really well.

What are the type of startups you’re looking to invest in?

I don’t think there’s any one thing we’re looking for expect for a small team with a big upside potential and a lot of momentum, but I think the team is the only constant that you’ll find across our investment.

Do you plan on staying with Quidsi longterm?

Yeah, we have no plans to leave. We’re still having fun, we want to see this vision all the way through. There are a lot more sites in the pipe that we want to see launched.

Why do you think Quidsi has fared well as an M&A deal for Amazon?

I think they probably bought us and we probably sold for all the right reasons. It’s a good marriage. A lot of times companies buy companies and don’t know why they buy them or they do, but they want them to change how they were operating, which always causes friction. That hasn’t been the case.

What were the right reasons to sell?

We saw an opportunity with Amazon to increase the probability of getting there and to increase the speed at which we could get there. It’s kind of hard to pass up the opportunity. I’d be lying if I said it was exactly the same. There are certainly things that you miss, but on the flip side, there are things that I don’t miss.

What don’t you miss?

I don’t miss having every year to go out and raise money and go out and sell the VC community and to deal with all the aspects of going through the process of raising money. I don’t miss that. I do miss the excitement and risk-taking element that comes with whether you’re going to make it or not or raise the money you need—the unknowns.