Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Meet More People And Have More Fun
We humans love to eat. Actually, we need to eat. We also tend to eat three times a day (or if you listen to Taco Bell, you should add Forth Meal). We always think about food. You're probably getting hungry just reading this! Food is necessary for survival, but we've turned it into something so much more enjoyable..usually. We'll go out to celebrate a friend's birthday with food, or take a date to a fancy dinner, but what about all those times in between? How many times have you eaten an uninspired, mediocre meal by yourself at home? I've done way too many times myself.. Instead, why not eat with a neighbor who's cooking authentic Dal Makhani? You can actually get to know your neighbor for once as well! Or why can't we find out about the people down the street who are watching American Idol together and eating homemade mac n cheese? If I'm going to watch it anyway and I need to eat anyway, I might as well enjoy it with people! That's why were creating this site. We want to meet more people and have more fun. Eating is something we have to do every day of our lives, so why not make it memorable?
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Changing The World..Of Eating
If you're in Tech, you probably read Techcrunch. They just had their annual TechCrunch 50 conference, where 50 promising startups reveal their products for the first time. One major criticism from the conference judges this year was that too few companies were trying to 'change the world'. Basically, most companies were focused on some specific niche or improving an existing product instead of becoming the next Google or Facebook. Well, here I am, proud to say that GrubWithUs is indeed aiming to change the world..of eating! While good restaurants will always exist, we're here to replace the uninspired, mediocre, overpriced, unfriendly restaurants that permeate our cities. If you only have a $6 budget for food tonight and you don't want to cook, instead of going to one of these depressing sinkholes, why not find a home cooked meal on GrubWithUs, bond over an activity, and make new friends? We're also trying to change the world by getting people offline and having real-life connections! We think too much time is spent making online connections, instead of having real-life experiences that you might actually remember 20 years from now. So help us alpha test at http://grubwith.us and join us on our quest for a dining revolution!
Friday, September 25, 2009
Being Scrappy
I'm sitting here at the Virgin America terminal at 2:01 AM writing this blog. Virgin's only $29 flight is at 6AM and no one loves me enough to drive me 50 miles to the airport at 4:30AM. I am definitely not spending $16/day to park my car, so a buddy of mine drove me to the airport at night. Here I am, sitting on the same bench as a homeless looking guy and listening to another dude vacuum the whole establishment. Now they're buffing the floors. I'm mentioning this because I thought I was being scrappy, but it's probably just mostly pathetic.. Anyway, much has been said about entrepreneurs and being scrappy. One of my favorites is Paul Graham's essays about being relentlessly resourceful http://paulgraham.com/relres.html. I totally agree that scrappy entrepreneurs are usually more successful than their counterparts, since they know how to get a lot out of very little. What I don't understand is why most people aren't scrappy. It just seems so intuitive to fight and twist and claw to think of every possible way to survive when you're backed into a corner. Do 'non-scrappy' entrepreneurs just bend over and take it? Daishin didn't know photoshop, but he learned it. He didn't know CSS either, but he learned it. I didn't know one thing about jQuery, but I knew I had to figure it out. I've always hated sysadmin work, but if there's no one else to configure apache, guess who has to do it? I can't stand founders who outsource ALL their technical work to someone else and just work on the 'business'. There are definitely some exceptions, but why spend thousands per month on outsourced development to deplete your capital and shorten your runway? If you're in a technical startup, then act like a technician and read some tutorials and start coding. Your 'business' vision will probably change anyway. And what's up with people needing $9 million in revenues to be profitable?? We just hosted our first few meals as a private alpha test of our website, and we were joking that we were already profitable because everyone that came over paid $2! When you're being scrappy and the two of you are the only developers, business people, accountants, lawyers, and marketers, being profitable can mean earning as little as $16 dollars!! So there you have it. GrubWithUs is cash flow positive!
Friday, September 11, 2009
Calling all Los Angeles foodies!
If you like cooking and are in the Los Angeles area, we need your help!
We are in the infant stages of our web start-up company and are looking to test our product.
If you are interested in cooking and hosting people at your house, this is perfect! You can make money doing it also.
For more info, check out www.grubwith.us/about
Please email info@grubwith.us to hear more.
In your email, please include the following:
Age/Gender/Occupation
We will contact you if you are a good fit!
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Get a Mentor!
We're humming along at GrubWithUs, getting feedback from our initial testers, but our two guy programming team has always known one key problem with our site: Marketing. Sure, we can do the code, but we didn't have much experience with getting our site distributed.
We decided to go to Twiistup, a tech conference in Los Angeles, with no expectations except to meet people that would be willing to test out our site. What we got in return was a bunch of testers, but also a high-profile tech personality that was uber interested in our site. He's an experienced entrepreneur and also a great marketer, which is a perfect complement to the skills we lacked.
Since Twiistup, we've already exchanged numerous emails, had a face-to-face meeting, and set up another meeting with another potential mentor. Having an experienced and interested mentor watch over us has really made us focus on our direction and cut out a lot of fat from the site. Our initial site design was cluttered with all these features that we wanted, but with our mentor, we've learned to just clean up the site and focus on the core functionality. (If you want to check out the site design and help us alpha test, you should email me at eddy@grubwith.us. We'd love to have you!)
Anyway, many of us can hack, but having that experienced, passionate outsider critique your product is invaluable.
We decided to go to Twiistup, a tech conference in Los Angeles, with no expectations except to meet people that would be willing to test out our site. What we got in return was a bunch of testers, but also a high-profile tech personality that was uber interested in our site. He's an experienced entrepreneur and also a great marketer, which is a perfect complement to the skills we lacked.
Since Twiistup, we've already exchanged numerous emails, had a face-to-face meeting, and set up another meeting with another potential mentor. Having an experienced and interested mentor watch over us has really made us focus on our direction and cut out a lot of fat from the site. Our initial site design was cluttered with all these features that we wanted, but with our mentor, we've learned to just clean up the site and focus on the core functionality. (If you want to check out the site design and help us alpha test, you should email me at eddy@grubwith.us. We'd love to have you!)
Anyway, many of us can hack, but having that experienced, passionate outsider critique your product is invaluable.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Two Guys One Cup
Obviously when you devote 15 hours a day to a self-funded venture, you're going to have to skimp a little. Over the course of three years, I think we've gotten very, very good at the whole bootstrapping thing. I'm writing this post because of our latest hilarious episode of being extremely 'cost effective'.
We work on our startup at Starbucks everyday. Our strict weekday regiment consists of:
-Meeting at Starbucks at 7AM
-Leaving to eat lunch at 1PM
-Going to another Starbucks at 2PM
-Exercise at 7PM
-Eat at 8PM
-Finish up at another Starbucks at 8:30PM
I know what you people are saying. "Three visits to Starbucks??!?? That's a lot of drinks! Instead of paying Starbucks all that money, why don't you just rent out an apartment and code there?" No no, young grasshopper. Here we take advantage of a slight Starbucks loophole and spend about $2 per person per day.
Starbucks has a very generous refill policy on iced teas and iced coffees. It's only $0.50 per refill, so in the morning, ONE of us buys a $2.10 venti iced tea and we SHARE the drink. I drink from the cup, Daishin drinks from the straw. We take turns buying refills. When it's time to leave, we take the usually empty cup with us and save it for the next location.
Of course, you must have very little shame when doing this. We work at Starbucks so often that most of the employees know us, and sometimes they automatically give us two straws when we order. It's kind of hilarious and sad at the same time, but hey, extreme bootstrapping is a hard skill to master.
I'm writing this post today because of an incident that happened at Starbucks 10 minutes ago. My ears are finely tuned to hearing the word 'Free', so at the peak of Starbucks rush hour, I hear these magical words from Stephanie, one of the baristas, "Anyone want a free venti Frappaccino?". I immediately tell Daishin to run over to the bar and grab it. Like Barry Sanders in his prime, Daishin jukes and weaves past the slower, more sensible patrons and proudly asks the barista, "Did I hear something about a Frappaccino?" In another embarrassing moment, the barista laughs and says, "Yeah, I thought you would hear that. Go ahead and take it".
I think all the customers were still in shock at the speed and shamelessness of claiming the drink, but whatever. We were able to score the Starbucks gold standard, the $4.30 Venti Frappaccino, for free. And it will allow us to extend our bootstrapping by another day. Thanks Starbucks!
We work on our startup at Starbucks everyday. Our strict weekday regiment consists of:
-Meeting at Starbucks at 7AM
-Leaving to eat lunch at 1PM
-Going to another Starbucks at 2PM
-Exercise at 7PM
-Eat at 8PM
-Finish up at another Starbucks at 8:30PM
I know what you people are saying. "Three visits to Starbucks??!?? That's a lot of drinks! Instead of paying Starbucks all that money, why don't you just rent out an apartment and code there?" No no, young grasshopper. Here we take advantage of a slight Starbucks loophole and spend about $2 per person per day.
Starbucks has a very generous refill policy on iced teas and iced coffees. It's only $0.50 per refill, so in the morning, ONE of us buys a $2.10 venti iced tea and we SHARE the drink. I drink from the cup, Daishin drinks from the straw. We take turns buying refills. When it's time to leave, we take the usually empty cup with us and save it for the next location.
Of course, you must have very little shame when doing this. We work at Starbucks so often that most of the employees know us, and sometimes they automatically give us two straws when we order. It's kind of hilarious and sad at the same time, but hey, extreme bootstrapping is a hard skill to master.
I'm writing this post today because of an incident that happened at Starbucks 10 minutes ago. My ears are finely tuned to hearing the word 'Free', so at the peak of Starbucks rush hour, I hear these magical words from Stephanie, one of the baristas, "Anyone want a free venti Frappaccino?". I immediately tell Daishin to run over to the bar and grab it. Like Barry Sanders in his prime, Daishin jukes and weaves past the slower, more sensible patrons and proudly asks the barista, "Did I hear something about a Frappaccino?" In another embarrassing moment, the barista laughs and says, "Yeah, I thought you would hear that. Go ahead and take it".
I think all the customers were still in shock at the speed and shamelessness of claiming the drink, but whatever. We were able to score the Starbucks gold standard, the $4.30 Venti Frappaccino, for free. And it will allow us to extend our bootstrapping by another day. Thanks Starbucks!
Monday, June 15, 2009
Never Eat Alone
You know that popular business networking/motivational book "Never Eat Alone"? Well I've never read it, but I'm pretty sure I don't have to pay $14.95 to get the point. Other books the author should write are "Never Watch a Movie Alone", "Never Play Board Games Alone", and "Never Get Stranded on an Iceberg While Being Chased By Six Polar Bears Alone". Anyway, the point is that many things suck if you're doing it alone, but eating alone really sucks.
In grade school, my favorite classes were lunch and recess. In college, my favorite classes were lunch and sleep. When I started my career in Consulting, my favorite time was definitely lunch, when 12 of your favorite coworkers would spend 1-2 hours not doing work. When I decided to work at an Investment Bank, lunch consisted of going across the street to pick up food, then running back to your desk to eat alone and stare at the screen for another 12 hours. It was the first time that lunch wasn't fun.
Food is such an important component of our lives that we should definitely enjoy it whenever we can. I've had my fair share of dinners alone in my apartment and it's never pleasant. Since I'm only cooking for myself, I'm too lazy to cook up fresh food and end up getting take-out or heating up some Lean Cuisine. That's why we're creating this site.
We're creating a place where anyone can basically create a restaurant at their home, center it around an activity (such as watching the NBA Finals - Go Lakers!!), and have your paying guests and new friends come over to eat a great home cooked meal. Never Eat Alone!
In grade school, my favorite classes were lunch and recess. In college, my favorite classes were lunch and sleep. When I started my career in Consulting, my favorite time was definitely lunch, when 12 of your favorite coworkers would spend 1-2 hours not doing work. When I decided to work at an Investment Bank, lunch consisted of going across the street to pick up food, then running back to your desk to eat alone and stare at the screen for another 12 hours. It was the first time that lunch wasn't fun.
Food is such an important component of our lives that we should definitely enjoy it whenever we can. I've had my fair share of dinners alone in my apartment and it's never pleasant. Since I'm only cooking for myself, I'm too lazy to cook up fresh food and end up getting take-out or heating up some Lean Cuisine. That's why we're creating this site.
We're creating a place where anyone can basically create a restaurant at their home, center it around an activity (such as watching the NBA Finals - Go Lakers!!), and have your paying guests and new friends come over to eat a great home cooked meal. Never Eat Alone!
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