Live data from Hacker News

Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr

medium.com

11–20 of 175 posts

Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr

#11
post #9
post #6

So why is plated doing so well?

Why don't you go out and do the research, find out if Plated is, actually, doing so well, and then come back with some actual findings, rather than a flippant dismissal of this article?

According to CrunchBase [1]:

    Most Recent Funding
    $15 Million Series A on August 9, 2014
Not bad!

[1] http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/plated

Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr

#12

Funny, I just bumped into a startup[0] that seems to do the same thing, and looks like it received some funding[1]... I wonder how well these guys are going to do. [0] http://signup.marleyspoon.com/ - it's operational in germany at https://www.marleyspoon.de/ [1] $1.5M Seed according to https://angel.co/marley-spoon/

Cooking is much more a thing in Germany than in the UK, so it might just work.

Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr

#13
> even if your company isn’t tech-heavy (such as Dinnr).

I feel like this would be a giant red flag to me. You are essentially a logistics startup, and you believe this is not "tech-heavy". Logistics is likely one of the most complicated tech-heavy problems being solved right now.

Things like pricing(30% margins in grocery food sounds very high), recommendations etc. Was there ever a way for food bloggers to have their recipes automatically pulled into Dinnr for readers to purchase?

This is almost a 100% tech company. I wonder how much of underestimating that, combined with the founders possible(I'm guessing) lack of tech knowledge contributed to the failure.

Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr

#14
post #11
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you go out and do the research, find out if Plated is, actually, doing so well, and then come back with some actual findings, rather than a flippant dismissal of this article?

According to CrunchBase [1]: Most Recent Funding $15 Million Series A on August 9, 2014 Not bad! [1] http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/plated

VC investment does not a successful business make...

Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr

#15
post #11
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you go out and do the research, find out if Plated is, actually, doing so well, and then come back with some actual findings, rather than a flippant dismissal of this article?

According to CrunchBase [1]: Most Recent Funding $15 Million Series A on August 9, 2014 Not bad! [1] http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/plated

Doesn't necessarily mean they are doing well. After all, Color got $41 million and . . . Color, remember them? http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/color-labs

Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr

#16
post #13

> even if your company isn’t tech-heavy (such as Dinnr). I feel like this would be a giant red flag to me. You are essentially a logistics startup, and you believe this is not "tech-heavy". Logistics is likely one of the most complicated tech-heavy problems being solved right now. Things like pricing(30% margins in grocery food sounds very high), recommendations etc. Was there ever a way for food bloggers to have the…

> This is almost a 100% tech company. I wonder how much of underestimating that, combined with the founders possible(I'm guessing) lack of tech knowledge contributed to the failure.

I think you are right about logistics being tech-heavy. But, I also do not think that having more knowledege/understanding of tech would have "saved" Dinnr. The tech and logistics (i.e., not being able to scale, fill orders, etc.) were not what did them in – lack of customers/market is what seems to have done them in and I do not think tech alone would solve that problem.

Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr

#17
post #14
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to CrunchBase [1]: Most Recent Funding $15 Million Series A on August 9, 2014 Not bad! [1] http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/plated

VC investment does not a successful business make...

That's precious. Dude, its about the journey, man. Take the 40 Mil spend it on booze. Live fast, pivot and ride the wave to the soft landing. Then do it again. Beats a real coding job any day.

Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr

#18
post #2

> No way it would be an investment that would give investors a 10x return. I think this kind of expectations ruin good business ideas. A thing like Dinnr may have worked well if run for years, not just tested out for 18 months. It may have not produced a 10x return, but it may have been enough for four people to live on and, maybe, then expand to another city and have four other people live working at Dinnr 2.

Maybe, but if it was your money paying their salaries, would you pay them to find out if it works on year 2?

Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr

#19
post #13

> even if your company isn’t tech-heavy (such as Dinnr). I feel like this would be a giant red flag to me. You are essentially a logistics startup, and you believe this is not "tech-heavy". Logistics is likely one of the most complicated tech-heavy problems being solved right now. Things like pricing(30% margins in grocery food sounds very high), recommendations etc. Was there ever a way for food bloggers to have the…

Based on the post, I would guess not very much. It mostly sounded like they were unable to get people to pay for their service, not that they had problems fulfilling the orders they did receive and at their scale (23 orders on Valentines Day), I doubt a super sophisticated pricing algorithm would have helped.

This would maybe be a "100% tech company" operating at the scale of say Amazon. Over-engineering the technology would have been a huge waste of time and resources.

Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr

#20

Funny, I just bumped into a startup[0] that seems to do the same thing, and looks like it received some funding[1]... I wonder how well these guys are going to do. [0] http://signup.marleyspoon.com/ - it's operational in germany at https://www.marleyspoon.de/ [1] $1.5M Seed according to https://angel.co/marley-spoon/

Cooking is much more a thing in Germany than in the UK, so it might just work.

Do you know of a resource that describes these various cultural differences? I could research each country/region individually but your post made me wonder how to develop a knowledge of these country-to-country differences that can be used to assess feasible of a product/venture
Post reply on HN