I can't help but have a very negative reaction to this, not necessarily at the author, but at the startup ecosystem as a whole. These are posted as "lessons" as if they were difficult to learn, when this really should be labeled "things no responsible person would ever not know before even considering raising money." Of course you should be self-critical of your product, of course you should test with real customers, of course you need a technical co-founder, of course you should pick a market with a bigger niche than tech-saavy-foodie-cooks-in-major-cities. Every mistake was classic marketing grad trying to do startup things in a bubble environment. These are the types of "lessons from my failed startup" that have been written a thousand times before. I fear over-exuberant and irresponsible entrepreneurs will repeat these mistakes for as long as startups exist.
Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr
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Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr
#22> 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…
I do not agree - they never even got close to the point of this being a tech heavy logistics play. 26 order on v-day does not require much tech. Maybe some paper and pencil and a spreadsheet if you feel so inclined.
I agree that if he got a ton of orders and had the market excited for it - he might have failed from a logistics problem of not being able to serve the customer effectively, killing the brand.
Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr
#23This is only one level removed from what munchery does and I actually would pay for this service if it was in SF and they also offered on premise cooking lessons or something along those lines. This is still in my opinion a pretty good idea and has wings.
Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr
#24> I really would have needed a critic who said:
> “Look, you have the following problems:
> 1. Show me your market research.
> 2. You do realize there’s no comprehensive online supermarket in Sweden, right?
> 3. What are your assumptions about the customer’s problem?
Yeah, after trying, I've found it's very difficult to get people to listen to this kind of advice and give it the weight it deserves. I feel like most would-be entrepreneurs either can already think in this manner themselves and so don't need me or anyone else to do it for them or are destined to learn how, expensively.
Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
> Do you know of a resource that describes these various cultural differences?
Unfortunately not. In this case it's just personal experience. I am a German who has been living in the UK for 4 years now. Over here everything is more fast food and 'instant' oriented than in Germany.
Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr
#26I like post-mortems but I vehemently disagree with the author's approach of trying to draw more general conclusions, to appeal to a startup audience.
What specifically happened? What were the recipes like?
Did anyone like the food?
Your experience is the most valuable thing you gain from a failed experiement. I urge you not to try to distill it into business platitudes. Be specific and descriptive!
Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr
#27Earlier 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
We tried plated as well as blue apron.
In reality, both of them were way too much work. We were excited to try them but don't miss them at all. I think the blog describes it well: this is not a real pain point (at least for us - 2 adults, one baby).
Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr
#28"Having such detailed feedback wouldn’t require diving into the data, but having someone spend an hour stress-testing my thinking and assumptions would have been gold dust and could have prevented a lot of effort wasted." Hrm... I get asked (on occasion) to do this sort of 'stress test' on someone's idea - and usually they don't want to hear the negatives anyway. Sometimes it can morph a not-great idea in to a better…
Absolutely, and mirrors my experience. It seems the more the stress test shows big flaws in the idea, the more the founders want to retrench down to "you just don't understand how great our idea is and how infallible we are". At some level, it's the fundamental nature of entrepreneurship to soldier on when everyone counts you out, but more often than not, fundamentals are fundamentals and maybe you should pay attention to them.
Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr
#29What's an online supermarket?
Not sure if you're serious, but I'll bite. It's a grocery store (typically one of the big 'real world' ones) that also takes complete orders online and delivers them to you. It's a big deal in the UK with most major supermarkets now having an online component.
Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr
#30This post links to an e-book by @robfitz called _The Mom Test_, which I hadn't known about before. It's fantastic and totally worth the price; also, that guy can write. I can see so much of my own bad pitching in the "how not to do it" examples he gives.