(FORTUNE Magazine) – Last year Joseph Park, the 28-year-old CEO of Kozmo.com, bragged to Vanity Fair that if his one-hour video- and munchies-delivery company failed, he'd shrug off the loss as a useful anecdote for getting into B-school. Park says he was joking--but in addition to terrifying his partners, it did raise the question: How serious is he about turning his bike-powered phenom into a nationwide operation? Very. Word is that Park's two-year-old dot-com is readying an IPO. (The company is now in a "quiet period.")

True, thanks in part to smart marketing, Kozmo has achieved near-urban-legend status among the urban hip and lazy. It's now in six cities, including New York, Boston, and Seattle. But for Kozmo to continue its big-eyed expansion plan (to deliver virtually everything you'd find in a 7-Eleven, sans fee, tip optional), it will have to sink an Amazon.com's worth of market capital into a distribution network--and as it is, where actual profits will come from is unclear. (Park will say only that Kozmo's gross profit margins are 40%.) Its $150 million agreement with Starbucks to let Kozmo customers return movie rentals there will boost its visibility. Then again, the new breed of delivery dot-coms needs more than a high profile to succeed. Just ask Webvan.

--Dimitry Elias Leger