We killed our startup at SXSW
It’s been 2 years since we started Foodsitter with just a phone number and a super messy spreadsheet. For those of you that don’t know: our tech startup, an online marketplace for chefs, provided affordable in-home cooking services for busy families. Sadly this is where the story ends! Here is my own personal version of “Lessons Learned” and a few thoughts on how this journey has shaped our and others’ lives:
What happened?
To cut a long story short, things just hadn't “clicked” after 2 years of hard work. Foodsitter’s growth had been stale for almost a year and we just couldn't gain enough traction to support the business financially. Despite the usual ‘blood, sweat and tears’, all-nighters of coding and answering emails, talking to strangers about their cooking needs on the street and all the other crazy things, we just couldn't find the magic formula that would provide steady growth for our company.
In our most desperate moments, I walked through the grocery store like this:
Heck, if it had increased sales I would have probably tattooed the web address on my skin. When it’s your “baby” you’re ready to try almost anything to make it take off — no matter how crazy the idea. It’s all you can think and dream about. Luckily I was almost certain that a tattoo wasn't going to make a difference with our audience since needles freak me out.
About a month ago we were still going strong and believed that we can make it. We had heard countless times what a great concept it was, got good exposure through a popular Austin blog and local daycares, talked to plenty of excited people at SXSW, yet the numbers were telling us otherwise. At the end of the day, verbal excitement doesn't matter if it doesn't translate into sales.
Knowing that things weren’t looking too bright, we ended up bringing all our remaining chef aprons, grocery bags and flyers to the SXSW startup crawl to get rid off everything. And it worked! Everyone thought I had cool giveaways, and I thought “Thank goodness I’m getting rid off this.”
Maybe the idea was ahead of its time, maybe it was too complicated to schedule an in-home cooking session, maybe the meals didn't reheat well, maybe, maybe, maybe…
The lives we’ve touched, the friends we’ve made
Some of our amazing moms & clients went above and beyond by talking to me on the phone for hours to figure out which ‘maybe’ it could be (You know who you are and we will never forget what you did for us!). Well, we couldn’t figure it out… But that doesn’t matter anymore, because despite our story ending here, many families have thanked us dearly for having changed their lives for the better — and that’s a wonderful feeling that we’ll get to keep forever!
We’ve worked with the kindest & most resourceful chefs you could meet: they often emailed me feedback and ideas about what works and what doesn’t. Even thoughts about other ways to generate revenue or how to make the service more enjoyable for our clients kept coming. Some followed me from one crazy experiment to another, while sometimes hardly earning anything — all while putting Foodsitter’s wellbeing in front of their own! That’s selfless dedication that blew my mind.
Not only have we touched the lives of our families, but we’ve enabled some of our home cooks to get out there and show the world how talented they are. Several have thanked us for giving them the courage to finally follow their culinary passion. Chefs, you should be proud of yourselves for following your dreams — you did that — but we feel honored to have been the “door of opportunity” that opened up for you. My culinary friends, many of you were proud to be part of “The Foodsitter Family” and are good friends now. Thank you for having shared this journey with us — it’s been a heck of a ride! Keep on cooking :-)
We’re that weirdo family and we love it
The ones that are close to us know very well that all we ever seem to do is work, all we ever seem to be excited about is work and all we ever complain about is work. We move a lot (yes moving houses again in 4 weeks), never seem to settle anywhere and each year we pledge to find more time to socialize and hang out with you all. Our house is usually a mess and overall, our family life appears to be plain chaos. Countless times I have tried to socialize with moms on playgrounds, but it’s not my thing. “I can’t seem to figure out what’s wrong with my JavaScript code” simply doesn’t get the conversation going as much as “I watched Housewives last night”. Weird, right? On the outside we’re that weirdo family that doesn’t follow the status quo, but on the inside, we’re the happiest and most grateful family you could meet. We’ve poured all our love, energy and devotion into Foodsitter and have neglected our personal health & lives for the opportunity to work on this startup. We’ve loved every minute of it and are totally in peace with this somewhat chaotic existence if it means freedom to focus on what’s important for us: our entrepreneurial journey (and of course, our two sweet boys). And we hope you love us just the way we are.
Are we done?
Hell no! What happened with Foodsitter is NOT failure, it’s just life and we won’t let anyone convince us otherwise: we’ve cried, we’ve laughed, we’ve yelled at each other, we’ve blamed each other, we’ve fantasized how to spend the money if we make it, we’ve fallen, we’ve gotten back up, we’ve made a lot of new friends and most importantly we’ve learned a lot. At least we hope so. For as long as our health and finances allow it, we’ll stick around and will try to give it our all. Details about our new venture are at the end.
The most important things we’ve learned
1. Don’t freak out 2. Take care of yourself
During our first year some lady from Italy threatened to sue our company as we were apparently using a trademarked name. Well, it turned out she had no clue what she was talking about, the name wasn’t trademarked and I didn’t need to waste my energy freaking out about it. No matter how big the problem, the world won’t stop spinning and we’ve always found a solutions for everything!
Apparently “Take care of yourself” is a no brainer. You can’t build a healthy, successful company if you neglect your own health. Yes, yes I know there are hundreds of blog posts out there that tell you exactly that. Shocker. But I had to experience it myself to believe it. For two years I have not cared about sleep, exercise or healthy food (thanks to all the chefs who DID care and helped me). And believe me, I had to face the consequences: for a month I’d been completely burnt out, got sick a lot, couldn’t sleep at night (which made it even worse)…you can see where this is going. Now I am finally forcing myself to work daily, healthy habits into my work routine. Peaceful walks, green smoothies and time to relax my brain. It may sound lame but you all know that startups are intense and this is really necessary. So take care of yourself!
Funny Tidbits
One major advantage after closing our business: I can finally take my family to Chick-Fil-A without removing my Foodsitter car magnets and feeling embarrassed!
After we announced our business closure to all the chefs, some that never fully completed their profile with us (and thus didn’t get booked) emailed us “You guys rock! Thanks for everything you did for me.” Well, I’m not sure what exactly what we did for them, but yes, I’ll take the credit.
Thank You’s
There are so many people (and a fluffy cat) that have helped & supported us at every step of the way and deserve a special “Thank You”. I won’t list everyone, but we’re so grateful for every single one of you: friends that kept using our service, friends that listened to our up’s and down’s, anyone ever giving us feedback or sharing the excitement about our service with others. Advisors, startup founders, mentors, everyone at Capital Factory…there are so many of you who have touched our lives. You are all amazing. We keep you close to our hearts and know that you care about us — that is a wonderful gift. Thank you!
So what’s next?
We’ve embraced our technical roots and started building a Go (=Golang) IDE in the cloud. See www.gopherlab.com. This is clearly more ‘sexy’ than food and we’re ready to convince you that Go will be the next big thing. Happy to talk to anyone who is interested or curious. Email: hello@gopherlab.com Twitter: @GopherLab
After a tough 2 weeks, we’re back on our feet and are stronger than before. We will get up each morning, put on our geeky t-shirts and get the hell out of the building to test our new vision!
Peace. Out.
Katharina & Sergey Kolos
