The birth of Cook Eat (Part 2/3)
It’s best to read part 1 first — get it here
Building something is hard. Nobody really realises all the challenges you will face as a founder—even despite reading a lot of material — until you’re so deep into it that the idea of giving up seems ever-more attractive. Most startups will never reach the fabled 🦄-status (we’re building a zebra, not a unicorn by the way), so between the high-tension arguments with team members, cash-strapped environment and insufficient information at your disposal a lot of the time, it can definitely take it’s toll.
The path that took Cook Eat to where it is today is riddled with laughter, shock, common pitfalls of startups and also (minor) successes. This path can roughly be divided into 2 phases, which we have taken to calling pre- and post-pivot. This post will be about the pre-pivot and the 3rd and final post of this mini-series will cover the post-pivot period.
The “Pivot”
While somewhat of an overused word in the startup dictionary, it describes perfectly what we decided had to do in order to be successful.
When your first business model isn’t working (and this happens more often than not), the CEO and team pivot to plan B.
We weren’t even aware that we had been following ‘plan A’, because we didn’t have a plan! 😑 For around 2.5 years we had been trundling along when we came to the realisation, through a series of events, that it wasn’t working; we were no closer to our vision than before and most importantly, anything that was output by our team wasn’t supporting of making our idea a reality. So, we pivoted to ‘plan B’.
We didn’t pivot the business model but we certainly pivoted in how we planned to make our vision a reality. What does that mean? Let’s explore that below.
The Roadtrip
The idea of Cook Eat was, from the start, already quite solidified. You could say that we were going to take a roadtrip (not this kind). It would be a pretty good idea to prepare a few things we needed beforehand:
- team: driver, passengers (the who) ❌
- vision: destination (the where) ✔️
- mission: reason for going there (the why) ✔️
- tools: the vehicle you’re taking (the how) ❌
- idea: the stuff you’re bringing with (the what) ✔️
As you can see we had the majority of things sorted but unfortunately weren’t quite ready to leave. Around September of 2016 Ela Haney and I, sitting together at one of our weekly meetings, came to this realisation almost instinctively — we looked back at the previous 2 1/2 years and faced the hard facts:
- ~450 signups to a mailing list 👍
- ~250 people who had used the platforms we had previously (1x Doodle, 1x Wordpress) in the past 😃
- we had spoken to nearly 1000 people and gotten resounding good feedback 🗣
…and yet…
- no platform online or a concrete plan of how to get one online 👎
- no development resources 💰
- a team of people (including us) doing various things that didn’t have any value 📉
So most importantly, we decided to change that. We did 3 things:
- slimmed the team down to just us two through being more strict (this wasn’t from one day to the next, obviously)
- started mapping out the design and features, with detailed specifications, for the platform build
- got accepted to Founder’s Institute for their first-ever program in Switzerland (Zurich) starting in March 2017
Smooth Tarmac
There will be occasions (somewhat rarely 😅) where good things happen or things go according to plan. You should learn to appreciate, but not take for granted, these small wins, as it will help your mindset in the most difficult phases of your startup. In our case we had several, small victories in our pre-pivot phase:
- successful idea validation through an MVP using Doodle
- initial market validation through a small Wordpress-based platform
- 2 award wins
- mailing list growth to nearly 500 without marketing spend
- acceptance to the Founder Institute program
Bumps & Roadblocks
With any startup you will go through difficult times 🙁 — you need to be prepared for this (mentally and physically).
A lot of the time, things go pretty well. You schedule in weekly meetings, your team is communicating frequently and efficiently (e.g. using Slack), you seem to be getting things done. In reality, this is a bit of a mixed bag:
- you communicate often — but what goals have you defined for your team?
- you meet at weekly meetings — but what tasks should have been done until when, and by whom?
- your team is growing — but do you have a plan for what team member is responsible for?
All of the above, as well as other topics, were issues for us too. At one point we had 8 people 👨🏻👧🏻 sitting at our weekly meeting; but none of us truly knew what the others had been doing or were going to be doing! The solution to these things is good, solid planning and a no-bullsh*t attitude towards reaching those goals and the commitment to them. It’s a process of trial & error.
Pitstop
Entering the Founder’s Institute program was a way for us to have a clear direction. At the end of 3 months, your founded company and it’s product (or MVP) get fully launched into the market, along with plenty of investment opportunities…or so we thought. Unfortunately, the program was not the right fit for us. Having already gone through many of the steps in the program that are required for “graduation” — branding & naming, market validation, revenue models etc. — repeating those steps seemed counter-productive. Another point of contention was the requirement of incorporation in order to complete the program — a step we actively chose not to pursue at that time (and still now) due to the regulations and costs surrounding the creation of a business entity in Switzerland.
Enter your destination in the navigation and hit GO
So what did we do? We bit the bullet! After some discussions we mapped out three possible choices:
a) cancel the roadtrip
b) get outside funding
c) self-fund the roadtrip (bootstrapping)
We decided to self-finance the creation of a minimally-viable version of our platform and launch this “pilot” to a selected group of users (more about that in part 3). This pivotal moment of the project was crucial in determining the next steps we would take in the coming months and would directly influence whether we would be successful in building our project!
Stay tuned for the 3rd and final post of this series
