Thinking into the Future: Bootstrapping Exit Story

Foozi is an app that delivers reliable food search results and allows the user to create plans with their friends using the invitation feature. We were able to reach our obtainable serviceable market in six months with our MVP. We were able to achieve our first 1,000 users in two months and then 5,000 in six. Through friends, we were able to have a programmer and buy the hardware needed to manage the data. We all the designing as we went, iterating and refining through the small sample size of users. We were able to reach out to the users directly to continue to get feedback on our MVP, slowly adding more features as we grew. It wasn’t always a hot bowl of San Francisco Clam chowder on a cold day.

As the CMO of Foozi, I worked hard to build connects between business owners with their customers. Restaurant owners valued closer relationships using their customers for better business. I continued to reach out to the community through social media and have become an influencer creating video content. Creating small promotional videos for our restaurant owners attracted a lot of followers to our business Instagram. We showcased the features being used in short 30 second videos in a Marketing campaign. This is how people began to become interested in our product by marking social media itself. We would have never had learned this if it wasn’t for one of our first customers.

Early on, I learned that listening to our first customer helped me understand a leverage point to attract users. Anderson is a small business owner trying to make a living from his cultural food. Simply put, he’s an old school guy that doesn’t understand how to reach a younger audience. He felt that all young people now only use delivery services through trending delivery apps taking 30% off his profits. This model isn’t sustainable in San Francisco, and I could see his frustrations.

I was then able to introduce the social media aspect of Foozi to him, allowing him to advertise his dishes through the app. Users were now able to search dishes that were unique to him, allowing his business to grow. Like many other customers like Anderson, we had the niche to appeal to the dining experience. Users were now excited to return to dining in than taking out. People loved the idea that they could search for their favorite dishes and have all the information needed to create dining plans with their friends.

After 10 months, we are at 15,000 users in the Bay Area with 100 or so restaurants as customers, earning about $15,000 a month now. With all signs of growing and being self-sustainable, we continue to project forward.