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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

#161

Post by vonklaus »

peteretep wrote: post #110
ufmace wrote: post #97

Right after I read this, my immediate reaction was to feel kind of annoyed at the author. A little superficially, no tech or design talent in house, no food industry experience, and not much marketing and sales expertise, so what exactly does he bring to the table here, besides really wanting a startup? Also, this idea hits on one of those things that lots of people really want to believe that they would do - cook th…

> Right after I read this, my immediate reaction was to > feel kind of annoyed at the author. A little > superficially, no tech or design talent in house, no > food industry experience, and not much marketing and > sales expertise, so what exactly does he bring to the > table here, besides really wanting a startup? He addresses this specifically, talking about how it went against everything his Austrian upbringing su…

>Execution sounded pretty reasonable

>Misjudged the market

This business was a pure play "do this thing you already do, but now with a computer" model. Understanding the market IS the execution. He subbed out the design of the site and frankly most of the actual company. So really, the "execution" was essentially knowing product/market fit. I would argue the execution was, in fact, horrible. He did non-representative research, tried to start at full scale, and had no idea what sort of market he was operating.

>failed to pivot when his launch did 12 orders first week.

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

#162

Post by jordanbrown »

checker659 wrote: post #140
jordanbrown wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No joke, had someone on my team during startup weekend this weekend that could not let go of market research. It pretty much ruined the mural of the whole team.

What were you guys painting anyways? \s

haha it was my first and last time I attend one of those things.

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

#163

Post by DontBeADick »

steilpass wrote: post #107
DontBeADick wrote: post #45

> b) People are too optimistic about their future behaviour. I read about a focus group once where a company was asking consumers about different color tea kettles. They had tea kettles in a dozen colors and asked people which one they would purchase. The responses were split fairly evenly among all the different colors. At the end of the day, the people who participated in the focus group were allowed to take home o…

Nice story. Do you have the source to read it up?

I wish I did, I've spent hours trying to find it again. If anyone could link to the study I'd be eternally grateful.

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

#164

Post by chippy »

tptacek wrote: post #154
chippy wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know that book is "fantastic and totally worth the price" if you hadn't known about it before? Have you purchased and read it in the day between reading the article and writing your comment?

I don't understand your question, but I think the answer might be: yes, obviously, I found out about the book, bought it, read it, and liked it.

You write "which I hadn't known about before". I suppose it depends on what you refer to as "before". I assume it means before you read the article.

The other alternative is that it was not the book which you hadn't known about before - but rather that the article had the link to the book .... but in this case, what does "before" refer to? Did you submit another comment earlier in the thread?

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

#165

Post by mbohanes »

I am the author of this medium post. Thank you for bringing it to this forum and for the intense debate around it, some comments were highly interesting and brought me to re-assess my own lessons learned.

I will set aside some time in the next few days to write a response to most of the points raised. I'll then post the link here (or you can follow me on twitter @mbohanes)

Again, many thanks for taking the time.

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

#166

Post by mbohanes »

I am the author of this medium post. Thank you for bringing it to this forum and for the intense debate around it, some comments were highly interesting and brought me to re-assess my own lessons learned.

I will set aside some time in the next few days to write a response to most of the points raised. I'll then post the link here (or you can follow me on twitter @mbohanes)

Again, many thanks for taking the time.

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

#167

Post by infinite8s »

chippy wrote: post #164
tptacek wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your question, but I think the answer might be: yes, obviously, I found out about the book, bought it, read it, and liked it.

You write "which I hadn't known about before". I suppose it depends on what you refer to as "before". I assume it means before you read the article. The other alternative is that it was not the book which you hadn't known about before - but rather that the article had the link to the book .... but in this case, what does "before" refer to? Did you submit another comment earlier in the thread?

Well, the most logical reading of the grandparent is that he hadn't heard of the book before seeing the article, purchased and read it, and then submitted the above comment. Some people are fast readers :)

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

#168

Post by infinite8s »

jpatokal wrote: post #146
markdown wrote: post #104

An entrepreneur in New Zealand created such a service in March 2013. It's now worth $27m and is expanding into Australia. http://www.brw.com.au/p/business/mid-market/how_frustrated_c... http://www.myfoodbag.co.nz/

HelloFresh is doing pretty much the same as well: http://www.pehub.com/2013/09/berlin-based-food-site-hellofre... I signed up in Australia when they were doing a 50% off promo, figuring on getting a cheap box of groceries and then cancelling immediately. My wife loved it and now we're paying full price. Also, I found this bit about their target market weird: urban professionals, couples without kids or with one baby…

It's not only a matter of time, but taking your children to the store can also be an exercise in continuously saying no.

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

#169

Post by dkarapetyan »

tptacek wrote: post #58
dkarapetyan wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't have to be at your house. It can be at a dedicated location which does scale.

Doesn't that business already exist, and isn't it called "cooking classes"? Near as I can tell, none of them are drowning in cash. People generally figure out how to cook on their own. This gets into one of the points the post made: you need to verify that people actually prioritize the problem you want to solve. Cooking might fall into an uncomfortable crack, in this model, because the people most receptive to the b…

Sure and munchery is also called take-out food. It's not like silicon valley or sf these days is some kind of center of innovation. I believe the UX designers have a word for it, skeuomorphism. Everything I see in tech these days is some old thing re-packaged as an app. "cooking classes" as you put it falls in that category and is just as valuable as every other derivative thing in tech these days if not more.

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

#170

Post by petercooper »

mrfusion wrote: post #77
petercooper wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm in rural North America so that's a pretty amazing concept. Thanks. So this article is saying people can order the ingriedidnts for a single meal and have them delivered that day? That would definitely put him out of business huh?

Even in England, the population isn't dense enough except in, say, London to support same day grocery deliveries, it's usually the next day, with a minimum spend (not much though), and often a charge of £1-£5 depending on time of day.

The problem with London, however, is that even compared to other large world cities, the density of food stores is so high that it's easy to get ingredients.. and the sort of people who are active enough to cook their own food are also the sort who'd be happy to pop out for five minutes for ingredients they can touch and feel first.

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