The important point Ivan makes here is that the real question is "will YC increase the probability that my company will succeed." This is different from the "how much will YC increase my valuation." I get this question a lot, and I generally encourage founders to re-frame the question to consider this distinction.
Your startup Rickshaw shares with YesGraph that are customers are people that make apps. (and for those that don't know, both Divya and I went through YC twice). How much did that influence your decision to go again?
i ordered these meals last week; the quality was better than any meal service i've tried, including fully cooked (micrawave/oven reheat) meals. The problem with other meal services is that when meat and fish are pre-cooked and then re-heated in a microwave, they get rubbery; Gobble solves this problem by doing everything EXCEPT the actually cooking. People on this thread say that the prep work is part of the joy of cooking; to them, I say that Gobble is not for you. Gobble is for people that want to eat delicious, fresh-tasting meals, but on the time-line/convenience of take-out. Price-point is also similar to take-out. Gobble is not intended to be an alternative to home-cooking, it's an alternative for take-out. And for that purpose, it's awesome. One suggestion to the Gobble team: list ingredients, especially allergens (on the website as well as in the package). We had to call every night to find out whether each dish contained egg, because we have a severe allergy in the family.
Thanks for ordering the meals and for the support! You're right -- Gobble is a much fresher and healthier alternative to takeout that takes even less time than ordering/waiting and costs the same or less. You just need one pan :)
About allergies: We are adding that information to next week's menu (among other exciting improvements!). Stay tuned and you'll see a full ingredient list and allergy labels starting tomorrow.
So I tried it and here is the upside compared to takeout:
- It tastes better. There IS a dramatic difference in the taste when something is served hot straight from the pan as opposed to something that had been cooked 45 minutes ago and has been winding its way towards you in a brown bag
- You can control ingredients like butter/oil/spice etc. You can add/remove and customize it to your taste.
- It is fun. You can cook something tasty and unique and interesting and learn how to cook new dishes.
You can't really customize. You can customize at an extremely superficial level unless you go to the store and buy your own ingredients and are ok with throwing out the ingredients they sent you that you don't like. Which completely defeats the purpose. You can customize takeout the same amount, perhaps even more "hold the onions" "light on the spice" "sub beans for beef" "sub onions for mushrooms" I do it ALL THE TIME.
Perhaps because to me if I am going to cook something, I'm going to cook something that is to my tastes as well as how much cooking as I'm feeling like doing today. I see recipes as suggestions more than anything.
I also don't like my food hot. It tastes much much better when you let it sit for 10 minutes or so.
Ooshma, founder of Gobble who has a quick cameo in this video, is a total boss. The quality of women founders in YC is phenomenal, I'm proud to be associated. Though this is an extremely random TV spot, and I think it would be more interesting if Zosia Marmet asked Ooshma this question instead of the other way around.
Great response, you articulated a lot of my thoughts here much better than I could have. Creating different rules for different people is insidious. It's very very difficult for an individual to know whether or not they are an actual 10x-er, so everyone will just trend toward following the rules made for 10x-ers.
Physical face-time with your team is also very important, and there is some cognitive load on the rest of the team when you have to remember which days someone is supposed to come in, etc.
I'm not a fan of part-time, but obviously there are certain roles/companies in which it turns out to be an ideal situation. Of course, I know amazing designer who really does make this work well for herself and her company; however, I worry that she's the rare exception ;)!
Nugget of truth buried in the [fun but not-too-novel] article:
"real progress in the workplace, for women and men, will come when more men forge flexible work schedules and wash dishes in front of their children, then turn those experiences into corporate policies."
Sure, in many industries and many parts of country/world, there are still lots of battles to fight to eliminate discrimination and bias against women in the workplace. But here in the SF startup circuit, I find this to be the most relevant issue facing working parents. Because I'm a mom (and a valuable, contributing member of my company), people don't hold it against me if I need to take an afternoon off, pick up my sick kid from daycare, and then get back online at 10pm. Pattern matching tells them that it's necessary "for a mom." But if a male co-worker does the same, I don't think there's as much leniency. Pattern matching kicks in yet again, and instead of being compared to me, he's compared to other dads (many of whom might have a stay-at-home wife, allowing them to put work first).
Still, we are lucky to be here on the bleeding edge of this issue. I almost feel like this complaint is the femninist equivalent to a #firstworldproblem, while women elsewhere being denied real opportunities.
Are you kidding me? This is not a first world problem.
I'm a female entrepreneur in India. I've lived long enough in Silicon Valley for my husband (and co-founder) and me to be acutely aware of how we handle gender issues at home and work. But I face sexism on an everyday basis in society and in the tech circles here. That in itself, is the reason the "real opportunities" are denied for so many women in tech.
I totally agree - my point was that in many places outside of SV/tech, there are much bigger discrimination issues than the "men's work policies" issue. Sadly, it sounds like you've found the same to be true.
> I almost feel like this complaint is the femninist equivalent to a #firstworldproblem, while women elsewhere being denied real opportunities.
It depends on the setting/environment, but most important of all is that no matter how bad things may look at the moment they can change for the better.
Anyway, the comments in here reminded me of my childhood: both my parents worked full-time jobs, with my dad usually taking two-hour breaks from work to come home and feed me lunch. He then was going back to the construction site he was working on (he is a civil engineer) and would come back home much later in the evening because of that. If this could happen in a very male-dominated area such as a construction site from a former Communist East-European country, I hope it can happen in and around Silicon Valley as well.
true! i've done both - had a baby when my startup was 3 years old, and it made parenting much easier to have gone through that whole everything-at-stake emotional roller coaster once before. I had the same partner in both ventures, so it was particularly good practice. amazing how similar startups and babies are! (and Jeff's pain/pleasure pie chart could easily apply to either, imo)
Wrong. While one of the products Trulia offers is a subscription service for realtors, Trulia is independent and committed to providing the most accurate information to consumers (I'm YC founder from '06, and a am now a product lead at Trulia)
Great post! The thing that really rang true was the part about the fundraising/depression/derailment, and how that can lead a start-up to consider some random/terrible offers that would otherwise be totally bogus. Paul talked us off a few bad-acquisition cliffs as well.
We certainly went through all of that at Jamglue. It's absolutely true that being a founder, especially the fundraising part, requires a really thick skin.
Each time I think about doing another startup, I start having flashbacks to broken termsheets, bullshit EBITDA projections, and VC's telling us that they could introduce us to Quincy Jones (I swear, at least 7 different people told us this). When we came out of our fundraising stint (penniless), we realized that our product had suffered and we were completely broken people.
The ability to be self-aware about the emotional roller-coaster is invaluable, and essential to forward progress. Thanks for this honest account so that others can make some sense about what they are feeling.
this thing is adorable. i smile every time i tab past the IEEE article in my browser. now you've just gotta get Beyonce to sing about it (a la "video phone") and you'll be in business.
the post is somewhat rough, preachy, and jumps around a little bit. I would probably write it differently now after a year of start-up-ing. Also, feel free to make fun of me for using LiveJournal.
