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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

#41

Post by twic »

mswift42 wrote: post #12
gingerlime wrote: post #3

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.

Could you expand on that? In my experience, cooking is a significant preoccupation for middle-class British people.

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

#42

Post by twic »

l33tbro wrote: post #39

Post mordems like this make me sad. Not for the founder's bank account per se, but for the fact that he has all the wrong takeaways from his startup experience. You started off well. You did the market research. Great. You've clearly gotten people interested in the service. Even better. You demonstrated in your post that a clear-headed approach was taken and you objectively determined people would want your product.…

All the marketing in the world won't make any lasting difference if the product doesn't create value for customers. This product didn't.

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

#43

Post by theflyingkiwi42 »

idlewords wrote: post #38
theflyingkiwi42 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Blue apron freaked me out because they deliver a huge box that is 80% packaging and cold packs. Inside that box are many other little boxes that contain, for example, a single tomato. They require you to be pretty adept with a chopping knife and good at prep work, while assuming that the only ingredient you own is cooking oil. So you get cocaine-like bags full of two tablespoons of flour. It's like a sous chef simula…

"They require you to be pretty adept with a chopping knife and good at prep work, while assuming that the only ingredient you own is cooking oil."

Yes, that was pretty much what we experienced as well. The prep time was often much longer than 20~30 minutes, and really took the fun out of it.

Admittedly, it was all very tasty but for us, it created more pain than it solved. We tried Plated to see if it was better but it pretty much was the same experience.

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

#44

Post by twic »

vinceguidry wrote: post #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 w…

For "would-be entrepreneurs", can we substitute "people"? Is it the case that all people are either already self-critical, or immune to external criticism? That strikes me as a pattern i see a lot.

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

#45

Post by DontBeADick »

> 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 one of the tea kettles for free. Almost all of them chose white or black.

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

#46

Post by tdicola »

theflyingkiwi42 wrote: post #27
aye wrote: 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

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).

I think a lot of people like the idea of a fresh cooked meal a lot more than the reality of actually making it.

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

#47

Post by idlewords »

theflyingkiwi42 wrote: post #43
idlewords wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blue apron freaked me out because they deliver a huge box that is 80% packaging and cold packs. Inside that box are many other little boxes that contain, for example, a single tomato. They require you to be pretty adept with a chopping knife and good at prep work, while assuming that the only ingredient you own is cooking oil. So you get cocaine-like bags full of two tablespoons of flour. It's like a sous chef simula…

"They require you to be pretty adept with a chopping knife and good at prep work, while assuming that the only ingredient you own is cooking oil." Yes, that was pretty much what we experienced as well. The prep time was often much longer than 20~30 minutes, and really took the fun out of it. Admittedly, it was all very tasty but for us, it created more pain than it solved. We tried Plated to see if it was better but…

I found both prep time and quantity of food varied really widely. Sometimes I was chopping for what felt like hours, other times you just had to mix stuff together and fry it for five minutes. And then make a second dinner, because you'd been given two spoonfuls of seeds and a pearl onion.

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

#48

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

diziet wrote: post #32
dkarapetyan wrote: post #23

This 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.

On premise cooking lessons is not something that can scale / can be implemented easy. It also comes with a whole bunch of problems (letting a stranger into your home / kitchen while you are there , etc)

It's quite normal for the rich in the UK - as opposed to the merely middle class - to hire a personal cook to live on or near the premises and work full-time.

These people used to be called 'house keepers'. Some of them offer other domestic services and may be called 'butlers.'

That aside - there are some useful reality checks in the piece.

Back around 2000 I had a conversation with someone who was trying to launch a pickup-your-goods service for online shoppers. He said that out of everyone he'd talked to, I was the only person who told him it was a losing idea with no commercial prospects. (It sank without trace not long after the first dotcom bust. After about a decade of unstoppable brand building, Amazon eventually reinvented something not unlike it.)

It's interesting that he had the same experience of alleged market research and comments from prospective customers that gave him totally worthless and misleading information.

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

#49

Post by dkarapetyan »

diziet wrote: post #32
dkarapetyan wrote: post #23

This 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.

On premise cooking lessons is not something that can scale / can be implemented easy. It also comes with a whole bunch of problems (letting a stranger into your home / kitchen while you are there , etc)

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

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

#50

Post by idlewords »

dkarapetyan wrote: post #23

This 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.

One problem with cooking lessons is that a lot of cooking requires practice for you to be any good. And it's practice in mundane drudgery like chopping things to a uniform size, quickly.

Meanwhile you are five times as slow as an experienced cook, and the food doesn't come out as good. That's really frustrating, and not something one or two lessons can fix. You just have to chop your hundred onions.

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