Kevin Yu of SideChef: Five Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Startup

Believing big — Belief is one of the most powerful acts a person can practice in order to make anything into reality. This applies to all aspects of life but is crucial to building a start-up. When you want to build anything big, you need a group of people who fundamentally believe in the vision and future you are trying to create. This doesn’t mean you or your team can’t have doubts, but when those doubts arise, they will look to their intrinsic motivation of why they are doing it — their belief and motivation of why they want to power through to the solution will be largely influenced by this ability to believe big.

Startups have such a glamorous reputation. Companies like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Uber, and Airbnb once started as scrappy startups with huge dreams and huge obstacles.

Yet we of course know that most startups don’t end up as success stories. What does a founder or a founding team need to know to create a highly successful startup?

In this series, called “Five Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Startup” we are talking to experienced and successful founders and business leaders who can share stories from their experience about what it takes to create a highly successful startup.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Kevin Yu.

Kevin Yu is the Founder and CEO of SideChef, the all-in-one cooking platform that uses tech innovation to guide consumers through a seamless cooking process. Yu is a passionate innovator in the Food Tech space as well as a three-time TEDx speaker. He enjoys educating other entrepreneurs on best practices, creative thinking, and invention.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

My backstory is about a CEO who never wanted to be a CEO, nor knew how to cook, and ended up developing an award-winning cooking app and platform. I believe when you wholeheartedly chase a solution to a problem, everything around you begins to change. You’ll naturally attract others who believe in your solution, from talent to investors to customers. You’ll naturally become the person you need to be to make it happen and pull from your unique experiences and strengths to make it happen.

I’m very much a believer in people being a culmination of their experiences. I grew up in a first-generation Chinese immigrant family, where education was the paramount value, and as a male to be learning cooking in the kitchen in the 80s, was at the tail-end of priorities. Add to this, post-college, a career in the exploding video game industry, and having the privilege of working with the most creative minds at Blizzard Entertainment on franchises such as World of Warcraft, Diablo, and StarCraft, learning how to cook or becoming a CEO wasn’t even on the horizon.

The tipping point was when I truly realized I did not know how to cook, and the resources at the time were not catered to people who had zero cooking skills like me. Combining my lack of cooking skills, thirst for problem-solving, and video game background, I am now the Founder and CEO of a food tech company, chasing a fairly large vision of transforming the food industry and how people cook.

To some of you readers who may feel like you see the solutions to problems, but may not have the support or pedigree to attain the opportunities to realize those solutions — you’ve got to believe in yourself before you can expect others to believe in you.

What was the “Aha Moment” that led to the idea for your current company? Can you share that story with us?

In my twenties, for an ex-girlfriend, I attempted to cook dinner on Valentine’s Day and it was a complete disaster. Burnt food, forgotten ingredients, and mess all over the kitchen — you name it, it happened. The “Aha Moment” was when I realized it wasn’t so much that cooking was difficult, but more so that if it was guided with the right instructions and reminders it could actually be quite easy. The immediate parallel I made was by comparing it to GPS at the time, guiding drivers to any destination step-by-step. Thus, it led us to create the first step-by-step cooking app of its kind, SideChef.

Was there somebody in your life who inspired or helped you to start your journey with your business? Can you share a story with us?

Growing up in a first-generation Chinese immigrant family, my parents wanted to forge a better life for us and owned small businesses in order to make that happen. Hence, it was always natural for me to consider running a business. On top of this, being an only child meant it was usual for me to come home to an empty house after school and survive on Hot Pockets from Costco. In a weird inevitability, I’m now not surprised that I created a startup (which was all I saw growing up) that teaches people how to cook (something I never had) that is purely a digital service (from how impactful I saw how video game experiences could be).

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

We’re a company of 65 full-time employees hailing from 20 different nationalities. We are huge believers that diversity of experiences and perspectives paired with shared values has the ability to generate an endless stream of innovation. Our latest innovation is allowing any recipe on the internet to be one-click shoppable whereby recipe ingredients can be delivered or picked up from over 3,000 grocery stores across America (Walmart, Amazon Fresh, etc.). This idea was inspired by the different grocery shopping habits experienced all over the world by our diverse team and was an extension of how a recipe could not only guide a user through cooking but also seamlessly tie in each part of the cooking journey, such as grocery shopping. We love to embrace the backgrounds of the people and partners we work with, to build a better experience with the variety of new building blocks.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

At the core, we believe there will eventually be a one-stop destination for home cooking, similar to how we go to Spotify for music or Steam for video games. Today, deciding what to cook, planning when to cook it, gathering the ingredients, and then actually cooking is an incredibly fragmented experience. We’ve built SideChef to be this one-stop destination because it not only saves families time in planning and grocery shopping, it removes the various stresses around figuring out “What’s for dinner?” giving people more time back in their day to do the things that bring them joy.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

• Tenacity — The ability to persist between failures is the greatest responsibility of an entrepreneur because failure is inevitable. It’s the constant persistence through these inevitabilities on your journey that establishes it as a habit and results in success stories. For every “YES” I’ve received from investors, partners, and customers, I’ve received countless “NOs” to get there. In 2019, online grocery was forecasted to not exceed 13.5% of overall grocery purchases over 5 years, but yet in 2020, this percentage has increased to over 20% due to the pandemic, with over 31% of American households trying it for the first time during this time. The service or vision didn’t change, but the “NO” to “YES” did.
• Self-Awareness — Your company, culture, team members, and product/service will ultimately reflect the values of you and your leadership team. Looking around, our core development team members are ex-video game developers, and as a result, our smart recipe format became the most structured data format in the industry because originally it was built to teach someone with zero skills on how to cook e.g. myself. My belief that what it takes to build something that will help people access skills, services, or products is in no short influenced by growing up in a family where my mother started a local flower shop, and my father a convenience store. The better you know yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, the sooner you can actively compliment them with the right people, policies, and know the best products that you can build for success.
• Being comfortable with uncertainty — As a company “matures”, it will become more certain in predicting its delivery of products and services to customers and the financial returns it will make on its investments. Prior to that, it can be a rollercoaster ride of experiences, emotions, opportunities, and failures. As our company has grown and experienced growing pains, there will inevitably be ‘fires’ that need to be put out, anywhere from product development, tech, commercial deals, HR — you name it. As a leader, you should build systems that prevent these ‘fires’ from happening in the future, and this should be your objective when addressing them. But know, though the ‘fires’ don’t stop, they should change. If you are dealing with the same fires again and again, then you might need to change your approach. Last week’s problem should seem easier this week, and your problems this week should seem easier the week after. But at the end of the day, know that you are choosing a career of problem-solving, and if you are solving larger problems (usually attached to larger opportunities), you’re not only doing it right, but you are also becoming a human being who is truly comfortable with the uncertain.

Often leaders are asked to share the best advice they received. But let’s reverse the question. Can you share a story about advice you’ve received that you now wish you never followed?

Growing up, I was told ideas are tiny in value compared to the execution and I disagree, I don’t believe it’s so black and white. Yes, there are those who may have ideas and never act on them let alone execute them well. There are also those who work hard on execution but never had the opportunity to ask the right questions that would allow them to evolve their ways of working, and I believe this comes down to leadership and culture.

As an example, when I worked in corporate there were many industry opportunities I saw potential in that came to fruition and became billion-dollar industry-changing success stories, but I was unable to shift the minds of decision-makers due to my “lack of experience” or similar dispositions. This propelled me to find new ways to bring my ideas into reality — thus entrepreneurship.

Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey?

Converting “NOs” to “YESes” has always been one of the most difficult challenges in start-ups, and in my experience, this was particularly challenging with our first investment. Our first seed investors were investors that initially said “NO” and then a year later converted to “YESes” because they saw and felt our tenacity. I am proud to say that today we partner with Amazon, Walmart, Facebook, LG, Samsung, Electrolux, and many more. Most of our deals mentioned took almost a year to become YESes. I have learned that getting a “NO” should never be seen as a dead-end as that is the first milestone of the larger plan to convert it into a “YES”.

Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard? What strategies or techniques did you use to help overcome those challenges?

Two pieces of advice help me through the tough times. The first from a mentor: The people who succeed are not often the smartest, but the ones who had no choice but to succeed. The second from my father: Everyone can at most has 24 hours of challenges per day. The President’s 24 hours will look very different than a postal delivery person’s. What will your 24 hours look like?

First off, I don’t think any piece of advice is meant to be the end all be all way to navigate your life and that way of thinking can be frankly very dangerous, but good advice will give you a crucial building block to formulate your own strategy. These two pieces of advice has lead me to truly understand how important tenacity is as a core trait of success and having a perspective where that is the foundation of all decisions. Furthermore, it has also been a journey for me to learn how to enjoy the process, even during the toughest moments — for me, it’s the self-awareness to know when to approach problems differently and to continuously improve my problem-solving skills, and be solving different problems every time. This is an indicator to me that I am growing both personally and professionally and in turn, my business and my team are too. This kind of growth is always worth celebrating.

The journey of an entrepreneur is never easy, and is filled with challenges, failures, setbacks, as well as joys, thrills and celebrations. Can you share a few ideas or stories from your experience about how to successfully ride the emotional highs & lows of being a founder”?

Knowing what you’re meant to hold onto and what to let go of is a mindset I practice. In essence, this idea is applicable at work as well as any personal challenges, failures, emotions, and relationships. Letting go can be scary, so having the courage and awareness to know when, and most importantly, actually letting go of things such as failing business models, products, team structures, etc can be crucial in making progress and growth. On the other hand, when you have great talent, traction, or opportunity, it’s important to hold on and foster. This mindset has truly helped me grow SideChef to where it is today.

One story:

At the beginning of 2018, we almost went bankrupt as a company. However, by the end of the year, we not only earned three times the revenue of any other year but also became one of the largest recipe partners for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Being comfortable with the uncertain and to also guide and inspire my team to also be comfortable in these settings has helped us achieve great things.

Let’s imagine that a young founder comes to you and asks for your advice about whether venture capital or bootstrapping is best for them? What would you advise them? Can you kindly share a few things a founder should look at to determine if fundraising or bootstrapping is the right choice?

For both paths, believing in yourself before asking others to believe in you is crucial. Without it, whether it is fundraising or bootstrapping, other people’s questions or doubts can find a way to weigh you down — and the fact is you need to expect that there will be many questions or doubts when you begin. In my opinion, always try to fundraise when you can, it not only brings in capital but also builds a network and community that will be there to support you. But the truth is, for many, including me, you’ll have no choice but to start with bootstrapping until you’ve turned those “NOs” to “YESes” in the VC world. The more “YESes” you win over, the easier it’ll be to win even more, from both your customers and investors. Remember, be tenacious!

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Many startups are not successful, and some are very successful. From your experience or perspective, what are the main factors that distinguish successful startups from unsuccessful ones? What are your “Five Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Startup”? If you can, please share a story or an example for each.

(Copied three from a previous question)

1. Tenacity — The ability to persist between failures is the greatest responsibility of an entrepreneur because failure is inevitable. It’s the constant persistence through these inevitabilities on your journey that establishes it as a habit and results in success stories. For every “YES” I’ve received from investors, partners, and customers, I’ve received countless “NOs” to get there. In 2019, online grocery was forecasted to not exceed 13.5% of overall grocery purchases over 5 years, but yet in 2020, this amount has increased to over 20% due to the pandemic, with over 31% of American households trying it for the first time during this time. The service or vision didn’t change, but the “NO” to “YES” did.
2. Self-Awareness — Your company, culture, team members, and product/service will ultimately reflect the values of you and your leadership team. Looking around, our core development team members are ex-video game developers, and as a result, our smart recipe format became the most structured data format in the industry because originally it was built to teach someone with zero skills on how to cook e.g. myself. My belief that what it takes to build something that will help people access skills, services, or products is in no short influenced by growing up in a family where my mother started a local flower shop, and my father a convenience store. The better you know yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, the sooner you can actively compliment them with the right people, policies, and know the best products that you can build for success.
3. Being comfortable with uncertainty — As a company “matures”, it will become more certain in predicting its delivery of products and services to customers and the financial returns it will make on its investments. Prior to that, it can be a rollercoaster ride of experiences, emotions, opportunities, and failures. As our company has grown and experienced growing pains, there will inevitably be ‘fires’ that need to be put out, anywhere from product development, tech, commercial deals, HR — you name it. As a leader, you should build systems that prevent these ‘fires’ from happening in the future, and this should be your objective when addressing them. But know, though the ‘fires’ don’t stop, they should change. If you are dealing with the same fires again and again, then you might need to change your approach. Last week’s problem should seem easier this week, and your problems this week should seem easier the week after. But at the end of the day, know that you are choosing a career of problem-solving, and if you are solving larger problems (usually attached to larger opportunities), you’re not only doing it right, but you are also becoming a human being who is truly comfortable with the uncertain. (2 new ones particular to what is needed from an organization, which happen to be two of our core company values)
4. Believing big — Belief is one of the most powerful acts a person can practice in order to make anything into reality. This applies to all aspects of life but is crucial to building a start-up. When you want to build anything big, you need a group of people who fundamentally believe in the vision and future you are trying to create. This doesn’t mean you or your team can’t have doubts, but when those doubts arise, they will look to their intrinsic motivation of why they are doing it — their belief and motivation of why they want to power through to the solution will be largely influenced by this ability to believe big.
5. Speed — We remind ourselves often that any major company like the Amazons and the Googles of the world can always hire 100 experts to tackle any particular challenge they choose to focus on. But with size comes a slower pace. What we will always have as a smaller company is the ability to move with greater speed. We can test, measure, learn and fail faster to then adapt at a much quicker pace. Speed is our advantage and we always think of ways to be faster at everything we do, from responding to emails to cutting unneeded meetings, and knowing what items are bottlenecks so we can address them immediately. As a start-up, you should not only always be able to move faster than those with more resources, but it’s a must.

What are the most common mistakes you have seen CEOs & founders make when they start a business? What can be done to avoid those errors?

• Thinking that the road to success is easy — I have noticed that people often think successful businesses found a “silver bullet” solution, for example, Google is seen as a successful business because they found a “silver bullet” solution for making digital information easily accessible. However, for Google and for all businesses, success is usually a riddled path of failures, learning lessons, grit to persist, resilience, and staying alive. It isn’t at all surprising for me to look at a decision made a year ago and think ‘wow, if I looked at that out of context, it may have seemed like a terrible decision,’ yet it probably played an unspoken critical role in getting the company to where it is today.
• Not being ready to give up — Knowing when to give up is as important as chasing an opportunity persistently. Running a business is very much about balancing priorities, which are constantly changing every day. At one point, we thought a particularly lucrative business partnership would be a make-or-break opportunity, but they required us to exclude working with 50+ other companies. When it didn’t work out, we actually found that working with those other 50+ companies collectively would easily become the larger opportunity.

Startup founders often work extremely long hours and it’s easy to burn the candle at both ends. What would you recommend to founders about how to best take care of their physical and mental wellness when starting a company?

Have a support system and always practice self-awareness. A startup is always a marathon, no matter how quickly you may think you can reach your goals. I am a big believer in having the self-awareness to check in with yourself and identify what your physical and mental needs are. How to satisfy those needs to keep you productive and operating at your best, is key. Externally, you need a solid support network — a group of people who will not only continue to bring out the best in you but be there for your mental and physical wellness, not only when things are difficult but to also celebrate the wins together.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Empathy is the key to solving almost all human problems in my opinion. We live in a world where it can feel like we believe being right is enough to justify anything and everything. The problem with that is that both parties can be right at the same time. Without the ability to be empathetic to another’s perspective, especially knowing you are also right or correct, means there is little possibility and motivation for the resolution that leads to long-term connections and collaboration. Practicing empathy is a huge part of my leadership style, and I am a huge proponent to ensure empathy can be felt throughout the company culture through our policies, ways of working, and expectations. An empathy revolution would be wonderful and I truly believe we are beginning to see it further enabled by new technology mediums.

We are blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

I would love to have a meal with Kimbal Musk, as I’m a huge fan of the farm-to-table movement and would love to engage with him on how technology could play a larger role in the motivations of why people cook. What if people who cooked were as engaged as people who played video games?

How can our readers further follow your work online?

IG: @kevinyuarts: https://www.instagram.com/kevinyuarts/

IG: @sidechef: https://www.instagram.com/sidechef/?hl=en

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinyuarts/

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success and good health!