The one with hackathon

Act 1

Jason attended a hackathon during the weekend. The idea is to build a product in 3 days and judged by some industry expert like venture capital executives. Jason paired up with Su Wong and Ben to launch a on-demand personal chef app, and won the hackathon competition.

“We have tallied up all the votes, and the winner for this year’s Hacker Weekend is.. Chefy!”

Jason, Su Wong, and Ben stood up with excitement. The crowd cheered as they walked up to the front and received a Hacker weekend trophy. Brian, a Hacker Weekend judge and venture capitalist, shook their hands and congratulated them.

“Very good job guys, the product idea is great and has a lot of potential, let’s set up some time next week and discuss next steps.” Brian told the crew with a smile, and handed them each a business card.

Later that night, Jason, Su Wong and Ben went out for drinks. The three had just met during the weekend for “Hacker Weekend” event - a two-day event that gathers people to form a team, and build an idea from scratch and presents to judges who might fund the idea. During the event, Jason proposed an idea to create an app that allows users to order a personal chef on demand, and he called the project “Chefy”. Su Wong, who studied marketing, and Ben who worked in business development, both thought it was a neat idea and joined the team.

For the next two days, they worked long hours to vet out the new idea. As a developer, Jason aimed to build out a prototype while Ben is interested in validating the business model. Su Wong, who just graduated from college with a degree in marketing, thought it would great to set up Google Ads campaign for Chefy. The three talked over the different their individual plans and how their actions will help each other, then hit the ground running. The “Hacker Weekend” event is hosted on large floor of office building, each team has its own dedicated conference room. Jason and Su Wong stayed in the conference room working on their computers, while Ben went outside to interview potential customers.

To their surprise, the preliminary business validation went well above their expectations: Ben interviewed 10 different people, some of them participants of the “Hacker Weekend”, and some of them random strangers on the streets, 8 out 10 expressed interest in the app that allows them to book a personal chef. They expressed interested in having a personal chef for various occasions: kid’s birthday party, retirement party, small close friends’ get-together etc. On the marketing side, Su Wong posted an ad “looking for chefs to join an on-demand chef platform”, and after a day, she received two chefs responded to her message expressing interest to be on the platform.

“Both supply and demand are validated!” Ben did a fist bump, expressing his excitement.

For Jason, he was happy that right before the demo time, he was able to put together a prototype website that demonstrates the idea - it has a page that shows all the chefs around the area, and it allows users to click into a chef profile to view more details. He’s confident that with the prototype app, their business validation data, and the emails from the chefs, they can stand out in the competition.

Stood out they did. They won the first place in the “Hacker Weekend” event, part of the rewards is to have access to 2 Venture Capitalist meetings to discuss next steps, and $5000 dollars worth of AWS credit. Jason felt great about winning the competition, and most of all, he felt the potential of Chefy. He met Su Wong and Ben again at the bar “Public House”, next to the event space, the feeling of excitement was still present among them.

“Great job everyone, for winning the Hacker Weekend!” Su Wong said with excitement. She can barely hold her happiness and couldn’t hide her pride on her face.

“Hell yeah, to us! And hey Jason, great job on that app buddy, I don’t know how you do it.” Ben hold up his beer, and winked at Jason.

“Haha it’s just a prototype, there’s still lot of work to do.” Jason hold up his beer as well.

“Sounds like we want to continue working on this?” Ben said, half buzzed, “Honestly I think it’s a great idea, I’m be totally down pursuing this!”

“Yeah me too! This is exciting!” Su Wong nodded.

“Yeah why not!” Jason smiled.

The three cheered on their beer once more.

Act 2

Jason, Su Wong, and Ben decided to continue to work on the chef app after the competition. Jason is the developer, Su Wong is on marketing, and Ben is on business operation. They start with excitement and start an LLC.

The trio started the journey of Chefy with excitement. Since they all have full-time jobs, they agreed to meet at a Starbucks inside Ben’s neighborhood every Saturday morning. Before their first meeting, they agreed that Ben will register an LLC under Chefy and make Ben and Su Wong business partners.

The first challenge during their first meeting - how much of Chefy should each of them own. Jason felt a bit silly to discuss this because they haven’t built anything yet. Su Wong is new to startups and just excited to be part of building something. Ben insisted that they resolve this, feeling that a clear ownership gives each person clear motivation to work towards a goal.

“Let’s make it equal for each of us, then?” Jason suggested, feeling that’s the most straightforward thing to do.

“Hmm, I am not sure overtime our contribution will be equal,” Ben frowned, and thought for a moment, “but I guess that’s the best choice for now.”

With that initial partnership agreements, the three starts to work. After the first meeting, Jason starts to build out an actual web app, and Su Wong starts to build out different marketing campaigns she can launch on Facebook and Google, while Ben starts to reach out to chefs as well as partners.

Being a developer and accustomed to Agile Methodology, Jason starts to put tasks into a Trello board, an online that mimics sticky notes. He quickly wrote out the first few tickets as it’s straightforward - basically setting up the baseline for the entire project. However, as he writes out more tasks on exactly what the website can do, questions start to pop up.

“Hmmm, how can consumer pay a chef on our website?” Jason asked.

“What do you mean?” Ben looked up from his computer when he heard the question.

“I mean, do we allow a user to directly pay a chef via the website? Or we have them settle themselves after event is done?” Jason pointed out that allowing people to pay via the website makes the work significantly more difficult, but it might be necessary if they want to make money.

Very soon they realized that there are many other details to clarify. One is around chef accessibility - how far advanced can a user book a chef, and does chef have to leave within certain miles in order for a user to book them. Another one is around pricing - at what price point do they charge consumers for a chef, for example, is it hourly wage or price by type of events, and does the price include groceries. The biggest challenge they thought about is around customer disputes - what happens if they have an unhappy customer or unhappy chef?

As they discuss all these questions, Ben recorded them in a spreadsheet, with every detail he can possibly capture. Looking at the ever-growing spreadsheet, Ben seemed focused and deep in thought.

“I think we can’t get all of these done in a short time, but we can iterate on it.” Ben wrapped his arm around his waist, his right hand supporting his chin.

“Yeah, we need to think about what our MVP looks like.” Jason said, he saw Su Wong’s confusing face after he said that sentence, and explained that MVP stands for “Minimal Viable Product”. Su Wong had a big “Ah ha” moment and nodded.

“Yup, and business starts with customers, I will take these questions and contact potential customers.” Ben sounds determined, “I’m compiling a list of emails to reach out to for user interviews, etc.” Ben re-focused on his computer, “We can do this!”

“Yes we can!” Both Jason and Su Wong echoed. With some Jazz music in the background, the three put their head down again in front of their computer screen, and set out to march on this start up journey.

Act 3

Problem starts to show as they work on the app: after they divide “equity” among the three people, they aim to have to product market fit. They experience the lack of direction for the product and eventually failure - they launched a website only realized that neither chefs nor customers want to use

Things are coming along. Jason started to build out a feature that allows users to log in, and Su Wong started to work on design and marketing website for Chefy. Ben continues to interview more potential customers and chefs, reaching out via email or phone, he has a gut feeling that the demand is there - people would love to hire a chef for special occasions.

Jason enjoyed the Saturday mornings and sometimes nights on the weekdays to work on a different project. He’s currently working at an insurance company as a software developer, and things move really slow there. Working on Chefy actually gave him an outlet to learn and try new things. Plus, he really enjoys working with Su Wong and Ben, he likes the time when they talked about what Chefy can be - an app as popular as Uber, and people will think about Chefy whenever they think about cooking.

Two weeks into Chefy on that Saturday morning, Jason arrived at Starbucks early and started working early, and he saw Su Wong is there too. he’s almost wrapped up his current work - users now can log in either using an email or Gmail, or Facebook. He wants to talk to Su Wong and Ben about next steps. A few minutes later, Ben arrived at Starbucks.

“I got some great news!” Ben said while putting down his bag, without even saying hello. “Typical Ben”, thought Jason, with a chuckle.

“What is it?” Su Wong asked eagerly.

“Well, Su Wong thanks to your Google Ads. One chef saw the add and reached out to me via email. Last night I got on a call with him and we talked for like two hours. He immediately saw what we are after and he said he has been in the personal chef business for 5 plus years, and this is a HUGE problem for him.” Ben emphasized on the ‘huge’, and continued, “I asked him to join us here at Starbucks next week to share more. I really think we have something here.” Ben’s face lighted up again.

“That’s awesome!” Jason agreed, he also felt a strong sense of encouragement after hearing Ben’s words. If a personal chef sees the opportunity and then they must be on the right track, Jason thought.

Later Jason continued to share his progress on the app development, he showed the team what he had been working on (user logins) - Ben and Su Wong were very excited about the progress - and then he brought up the question of “what to build next”.

“We need to figure out what MVP is”, Jason said, “like, what are the features we want to build before we launch the website.”

All three of them lost in thought for a bit, it’s a big question that no one has a clear answer yet.

“Well, let’s do this,” Ben took out a sheet of paper, “let’s write down what needs to happen for people to book a chef, and based on that we can figure out what to build.”

For the next three hours the three spent time brainstorming “what needs to happen for people to book a chef”, the three agreed on some features but have different opinions on others. For example, they agree that people must be able to view a chef’s profile and available schedule, but they disagree on whether the website should allow chefs to customize their own menus, or have a standard menus across chef. Ben and Su Wong feel that customized menus is important, while Jason voted for having a single menu, arguing that having customized menu will be too much work, given he’s the only developer.

“Okay, let’s write down all the features we discussed and track them, and we can revisit them next week.” Ben suggested.

Act 4

Next Saturday, the three met again with the feature list and talked to the chef, and they asked the chef his problems, and after the discussion, they agreed on a MVP: help connect chefs with potential customers.

It was May, and summer is around the corner. The weather is sunny on the Saturday. Bright and early Jason went to Starbucks, and saw Ben already there, typing away at his laptop.

“Good morning!” Jason said cheerfully.

“Good morning!” Ben replied back, looked up, “Big day today! Chef Tom will join us and chat about Chefy!”

“Nice!”

“Yeah he sounded pretty excited on the phone.” Ben replied, “I’m excited to work with him and see what features he think is useful.” Su Wong walked in the Starbucks as Ben finished his sentence, the three have always been very punctual. The three chatted about their week for about 15 minutes when a slim, tall man showed up. He wears a tattoo sleeve on his right round and looked like in his 30s, golden hair, and have a pair of sharp eye. He looked around the Starbucks then at his phone, as if he’s looking for someone. Ben noticed him and looked at Jason briefly signaling that might be chef Tom. Ben walked up and talked to him. It was chef Tom.

“What’s up guys, I’m Tom.” He gave a firm hand shake to Jason and Su Wong, and then sat down at their table. Jason noticed that his leg shakes a bit, and it seemed that he had trouble standing still.

“Nice to meet you in person Tom!” Ben said with excitement, “We would love to talk to you about Chefy, and get your feedback as a chef, basically...” Ben went on to give his typical business and vision pitch, while Jason and Su Wong listened. Chef Tom was listening to what Ben had to say but his mind seemed to be drifted else where. Jason guessed that he might be tired from his shifts, or maybe he’s always like this?

“So tell us what are somethings we can build to help you run your personal chef business?” Ben asked eagerly.

“Well, I gotta tell ya, being a personal chef ain’t easy. There are many things I have to keep track you know.” Tom started, “The biggest problem is to find gigs, I have a website and Instagram account to connect potential customers, but the results aren’t very consistent. Sometimes I get 10 customers a month, sometimes I get 2. If it’s a large event, I will have to hire other people to help me, I got buddies that I can call but still they might not be available. On top of that, I have to keep track of how people are paying me, sometimes they don’t give me a check or send me money right away.”

Ben, Jason, and Su Wong lost in thought for a moment. There are many problems a chef faces that they haven’t thought about. They went on discuss “problems chefs face” for an hour. Time seemed to pass quickly. Eventually they settled on the first problem Chefy aims to solve - connect chefs with potential customers. Tom agreed that it was a good first approach.

“Alright guys, I have a pick-up basketball game to go to,” Tom stood up, “It was a great talk, if you guys can pull this off, it will be really big. Keep it up!”

They thanked Tom for his time as he left the Starbucks.

“That was a very good conversation!” Su Wong said, “I’m glad that we get to connect with an actual chef!”

“Yeah agree! So what do you guys think? How can we focus on connecting chefs with potential customers?” Ben looked at Jason because he’s the developer on the team.

Jason thought for a moment, he was trying to grasp what MVP should be in order to solve that problem.

“Maybe as a start, we just build a website where chefs can post their menu, and their schedule, and customers can request booking their time.” Jason said, “That’s a big feature, but it’s possible to build within three months.”

“Yeah, and when it launches, we can invite family and friends to book chefs on our website!” Su Wong added, she already started to formulate marketing ideas.

“That sounds great! Let’s do it!” Ben said cheerfully, “Like chef Tom said, this can be really big, I believe we can do this!”Act 5

After three months they launched their MVP with Su Wong’s marketing campaign. The reality hit hard: even though many friends & family expressed interest earlier, no one actually booked a chef. And only 4 chefs joined the website once and never checked again. Meanwhile, right before the launch, Ben had a family emergency and paused his contribution to the project. After three months the project fell apart.

Weekdays passed fast, with the rough MVP plan in mind, the three worked every Saturday to get the MVP ready to launch. Ben contacted a dozen of friends and family, they all expressed interest in trying out the new chef on-demand service, Ben also worked with chef Tom to find potential chefs to bring on to the platform.

Su Wong has been busy designing marketing pages for Chefy while trying to get Google and Facebook ads ready. She also did research on other similar companies and found some other competitor - a company called FlexShift connects restaurants with bartenders and chefs alike, it’s a similar gig economy but serves a different customer population. There are some concerning trends, as Su Wong found out, for example when comparing “personal chef” with “restaurant chef”, the search is substantially lower, like less than 1% of “personal chef” comparing to “restaurant chef”. Still, the three were very hopeful because restaurant business is a big industry, and even if they can capture 1% of a big industry, they reasoned, it will still be a lot of revenue.

The largest amount of work seems to be on Jason, the only developer on the team. To launch an app is a lot of work - building the backend application and servers, creating the frontend webpages and styles, and deploying it to the Internet. To simplify, Jason decided to use Heroku as the quick deployment provider since it’s the easiest solution he can find. And he spent the rest of his time focused on feature work. Even with the amount of feature work, Jason still had to work after work in addition to weekends. But he likes it though, he’s learning a lot and making development decisions without having to go through many supervisors - unlike his current job. Jason felt free in making those decisions, besides, the thought of launching a startup and becoming a full-time founder energized him.

After 5 weeks of continuous development, the site is finally ready - it can allow chefs to sign up and post their menus and schedules, and customers can sign up and book their time. Meanwhile, Su Wong has built out a marketing page the redirects customers to the actual site, with Google Ads and Facebook Ads already launched.

On the launch day, Ben sent out the email to all his family and friends to sign up for Chefy, and he called chef Tom to tell him that the site is officially live. Chef Tom sounded very excited and promised that he will get a lot of chefs come on to the platform. Ben, Jason, and Su Wong are all very excited, and the three went out for lunch on that Saturday.

“Cheers to Chefy!” Ben raised his glass of mimosa and looked at Jason and Su Wong, “We did a hell of a great job guys! I have a good feeling about this.”

Jason and Su Wong also cheered with hope, and they anticipated a great success with Chefy. They all believed that it can turn into something huge.

However, the reality has proven otherwise. 2 weeks after the launch, the mode of the three has dramatically shifted, and it’s not only due to the product itself.

Ben’s mom has fallen seriously sick, and because of that, he has not been present for the latest Saturday gathering. He apologized to Su Wong and Jason for not being able to make it to Starbucks, and Jason felt bad for Ben and told Ben that they will take on his responsibility. However, neither Su Wong nor Jason has a business background, and they found it difficult to continue on the business outreach, which is crucial for growing the initial set of the business.

On the business side, things have not been turned out to be the way they expected. Chef Tom has a very small network of personal chefs and he only managed to bring 4 chefs on to the service, and even with the 4 chefs that are on the service, their profiles look drastically different - one chef wrote a 1000 word essay in his profile, while another chef put nothing in his profile at well. Jason though he could have made the application flow a lot better.

Maybe it’s due to the lack of chefs, no customers have signed up any chef’s service. Many family and friends who said they will be interested didn’t actually book a chef at all, and the wider audience didn’t respond to Google or Facebook ads at all. What did they miss? Could they have looked the trends comparison and realized that was a big red flag after all?

For all gig economy startups, they all face a chicken-n-egg problem: the service needs to have enough supply to attract demand, and it needs to have enough demand to drive supply. To build something like Chefy, it takes more than just building the app and sending out invitations to friends and family’s. To solve such chicken-n-egg problem, it requires a substantial amount of capital, and a great deal of customer care: to design a seamless experience for customers to book and experience a top-notch personal chef experience, and to have chefs easily interact with customers.

What’s more, for the three people, the family change of Ben took a toll on the team: with the unsuccessful attempt of initial launch, the team got discouraged and looked for ways to pivot, but at the same time Ben has been unresponsive. Family always comes first.

After two months since the initial launch, Ben finally sent out an email suggesting that they pause the operation of Chefy. It was a hard message for all of the three because they have been working on this for 5 months. From the high of the Hacker Weekend, to the hope of building a new product, and then to sadness of experiencing failure, it has been an emotional roller coaster. However, all three felt that they have learned a lot from the experience, and have no regrets. Failure is not what’s scary, what’s scary is not trying.