The idea is awesome but when I looked at your site, I was confused. I checked out Chef Indrajit Ghosh since I actually had a craving for Indian food tonight. When I went to his profile, he's listed under Little Delhi (my favorite Indian restaurant for delivery). Does this mean that I'm actually ordering from the restaurant?
Tanking the YC interview, some lessons learned
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Re: Tanking the YC interview, some lessons learned
#22What a great and honest post. Thank you for that. As for your company, it looks like an innovative and amazing idea. I, for one, would be a customer. Please nail San Francisco and then expand to my city. It's great to read that you've decided to keep going. A lot of companies rejected by YC have went on successfully; some have even re-applied several times before getting in. (I remember reading about a company in the…
I agree. I really like the idea. I'm already ordering some prepared meals from a caterer every week for my family and it's great.
Re: Tanking the YC interview, some lessons learned
#23What a great and honest post. Thank you for that. As for your company, it looks like an innovative and amazing idea. I, for one, would be a customer. Please nail San Francisco and then expand to my city. It's great to read that you've decided to keep going. A lot of companies rejected by YC have went on successfully; some have even re-applied several times before getting in. (I remember reading about a company in the…
Agreed.
I would love to treat our staff to a quality chef cooked lunch in the office every Friday for a reasonable price.
Hopefully you'll make it as far as Sydney.
Re: Tanking the YC interview, some lessons learned
#24A bit of friendly advice: you didn't link to Munchery at all in that article. The first time you mention it, it should be a link. :) Also worth noting that the Munchery page contains no way for other chefs to join.
Also the praise on the landing page ``I would say I will probably order again from them'' by an anonymous beta user makes the service seem pretty mediocre compared to the other quotes.
But I love the idea of it. I'm just north of SF (mill valley)---so close yet so far!
If Munchery continues to expand I could definitely see myself ordering from it.
Re: Tanking the YC interview, some lessons learned
#25I didn't feel too bummed about the reject. I feel like we didn't get in because: a) we are not first to market (it was immediately pointed out that there are many like us as soon as we sat down), and b) we are more of a service-oriented company instead of a product company. There are always exceptions, but investors typically want to fund product companies.
Because there are similar companies in this space, we need some unique insight in order to stand out (and our explanation on how we plan to give complete flexibility, or "leave it to the chef," apparently weren't convincing).
It's amazing how we picked ourselves up that very same night, had great discussions, revised our approach based on great feedback from other YC founders we met earlier in the day, and are moving forward. Thank you for all your support!
Re: Tanking the YC interview, some lessons learned
#26Hi, this is great and I'm already recommending busy friends to it who like to eat properly but time is limited. A big problem on the site for us is that we are all over the city, can you browse by delivery location? It would save a lot of time when choosing a chef.
Re: Tanking the YC interview, some lessons learned
#27I'm intrigued by the concept (food is important to me and your business has synergies with http://letslunch.com ). How does the logistics of delivering quality, unique meals, work? What would worry me is that cheap chefs will just list their restaurant menus, and then you truly end up with waiters on wheels.
We are vetting each chef profile, and applying Apple's infamous closed-door approach in an attempt to raise the bar on quality. There will be other features coming up that would give quality chefs much higher visibility than others.
Re: Tanking the YC interview, some lessons learned
#28The idea is awesome but when I looked at your site, I was confused. I checked out Chef Indrajit Ghosh since I actually had a craving for Indian food tonight. When I went to his profile, he's listed under Little Delhi (my favorite Indian restaurant for delivery). Does this mean that I'm actually ordering from the restaurant?
Yes. We like hip chefs who can cook great food and who happen to run restaurants. Notice how you wrote that Little Delhi is your favorite Indian restaurant for delivery! :)
Edit: chefs create custom meal menus on Munchery.
Re: Tanking the YC interview, some lessons learned
#29This is probably the best YC interview post I've read.
I really appreciated there was no tone of, "I got rejected by YC, now I need to prove I'm better than YC"; that's irrelevant. Its very matter of fact, poignant, and very representative of how YC interviews play out.
Re: Tanking the YC interview, some lessons learned
#30What a great and honest post. Thank you for that. As for your company, it looks like an innovative and amazing idea. I, for one, would be a customer. Please nail San Francisco and then expand to my city. It's great to read that you've decided to keep going. A lot of companies rejected by YC have went on successfully; some have even re-applied several times before getting in. (I remember reading about a company in the…
"A lot of companies rejected by YC have went on successfully; some have even re-applied several times before getting in." I applied with someone who is widely recognized as one of the smartest tech folks on HN. We got rejected. A couple years later I reapplied and got accepted as a non-technical single founder. In two years I went from getting shot down despite having a dream team on paper, to getting accepted despit…
>> It's kind of a long story as to why,
I'm also interested in this story.
This is one case where not seeing vote counts encourages me to write a comment that doesn't add value. Voting up the other 2 replies wouldn't be that useful. Would it?