How This Company Cooked Its Way To Success On Dragon's Den

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Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

Hello, everybody. We're talking with Siddhi Mittal. Hello, Siddhi.

Hello.

Where are you, Siddhi? Today?

I'm currently based in London.

London. And now I just learned something. I didn't know this. I did not know what the British version of Shark Tank was called, but it's supposedly called the Dragon's Den. This is correct. Right. So that's probably a better name for it than Shark Tank, but you went on the British version and won in 2021. And so, you know, so let's talk about before that and after that. Because that, you know, that's by the nature of the beast, it has to be a pivotal moment, moment in your life, you know. And so how did you get to the point? How did you work your way up to where you were in that situation?

Of course. So actually, fun fact, Janice. Den was established way before Shark Tank and it was the original. However, I did not know that. However, given we are in the UK and generally people here are. If you think of a spread versus UK, things are just smaller. The population is smaller, 60 million versus 300. Your credit card debt is smaller, like by a 10. And also Dragon's Den is like a little bit more like intense, where they just want like the biggest bargain versus fund as big as UK US companies. However, very interesting. So I guess how my journey started on Dragon Sense. So right before Dragon send was 2020, the year of COVID And we are a platform, we are a consumer marketplace where you can book a private chef anywhere in the uk. So guess what happens when Covid happens. It was illegal to book a private chef. No one could see each other. And suddenly that year, there was no revenue, there was nothing. So I was sort of sat with.

You had a unique business that not only was it hard to do, it was illegal during COVID Exactly.

And we had quit our jobs just a year before or like a couple of months before. So then we sort of sat there thinking, oh my gosh, this is, I think, pretty bad. However, we kind of thought, oh, all right, like, let's just sort of go with the flow. No one can do anything, so let's just make the most of it. So during that time, we started sort of trying all these different things to get our chefs more jobs. We also realized that the cost of Instagram followers became like it was like cents instead of like couple of dollars. So we started doing cooking classes every day, anything to grow marketing and also create different product lines. But obviously it was all very small scale just to exist. Now during this time we decided we were going to say yes to every single opportunity that came our way because we were basically back to zero. There was nothing going on for us. And during this time, Dragon Scent essentially scouted us. They go after a lot of companies. It's not that we're special. I think they just find out what are the young companies out there, send you emails. And we got one of those emails and essentially they said, hey, do you want to come on to Dragon stuff? And I think at that point when I saw that email I was like, what kind of weird companies go on these TV shows, you know, and like pitch themselves? That's a bit strange. So then we said yes.

Now you were, when you said young, how young? So the young company because you're getting started, but I mean young in age.

I mean I see as the company age was half a year and our ages I believe was like 26.

Yeah, yeah. And so like they found you on Instagram or social media, I guess probably somewhere.

Exactly.

Uh huh. And so were you a big watcher of the program?

I was a big watcher of Shark Tank, but not of Dragon's Den.

Isn't that funny?

It is funny.

You know, I was thinking about like America's Got Talent with Simon Cowell. That started in the UK and it was such a big hit in the uk. He came over to United States thinking, you know, they're going to be, you know, I'll be taking the highest bidder. And he went around every network and got the door slammed in his face. It was just Fox was coming on the scene as a fourth alternate network and they were desperate for programming. That's how he got the Fox deal. But other than that, you know, we would have missed out on, you know, one of the big, big shows or.

That's crazy, right?

So Shark Tank. You did know about Shark Tank and had you thought about getting on Shark Tank?

No, I just thought what kind of people go on TV to pitch? That's wild.

Yeah. And so how, how was that? Were you the one that actually did the pitch of your, your group or, or.

Yeah, so it's two of us co founders. After we said yes, they're actually like put you through a lot of hoops and they do a lot of due diligence and make sure that everything checks out. And then both of us went in there on the day, ended the pitch. So it's like a whole day of pre interviews, like rehearsal. And actually the pitch is about two, two and a half hours long, or at least it was for us. Whereas when they showed it on TV it was like 15 minutes. So it really was sort of like a real life simulation of people just asking you a lot of questions about your business and the numbers and all the shebang.

Now that had to be useful for you. And one of the things about selling a company, that companies really find out how to run their company when they decide to sell it and then they go out and they market it to a bunch of these hedge funds and investment companies and they bring in all their high priced financial, their best financial minds and really grill questions. And then if you're running the company, you say, oh, this is what's important. We didn't think about that. How about this, that, and, and you can go away and not sell your company, but take that information. It's like a huge consulting experience on how to make your company a whole lot better. But that had to be tremendously educational experience for you going through that process.

It really was. And I think what you touch upon is so true because while we prepped for this, we asked a lot of people to do more questions. And I think people from like the backgrounds of consulting or on finance or just investors. And I think listening to those questions the first time you just think, oh my God, I never thought of that. Like when someone asked us, hey, so how are you going to find this many chefs across uk and suddenly you just think, wait, let me. Hold on a second, let me stop there, let me now actually run through my numbers. And I think that program sort of forced us to say, actually wait, if we're after 100 million company or a billion company, that means X number of orders, but one chef can do X number of bookings. Okay, so actually we only are looking for, let's say 2,000 chefs. And that's pretty doable. But I think we had to go through the whole thinking process, which we did, which was a great exercise in us to understand how viable the company was.

And so Citi, when you get into a situation like that, you know, that's great training for you as a CEO entrepreneur for the rest of your life, because you're going to be faced with situations you never opportunities too that you never knew you could never plan for. And that's one reason I think we've got value in doing this podcast, is to put people to make people aware of these kinds of things that you may or may not face, but let them know that you just go in with your same attitude and your same spirit, and just. It's like any problem or any situation, you unravel it step by step, get advice, and you just take one step forward at a time, and then you find out you come out the other side. And in your case, you came out the other side and you won the dirt thing. And so that had to be an overwhelming bolder confidence.

Yeah, it was super. I think it was super exciting that we won for sure. Especially because we sort of predicted two people we wanted, and those are the ones that gave us offers. So it was like, okay, awesome. We did this. But I think at the same time, we were very aware of sort of what it takes. I think going through that day, I just kind of wanted to get out and say, oh, my God, I need a break. So I think it was really good that we won, but we were also really aware of what raising investment would look like in future. It requires a lot of prep and requires grit.

Talk about that for a minute.

Yeah, so, for example, in the den. So it's not just about knowing, let's say, your numbers are knowing your business. So one of the things that was super interesting, I love to crack jokes. I love to kind of get in there, have a little bit of banter. It was tough. These people were out there to just, like, you know, tell you what was going to go wrong with your business or question you. And I think even when you know an answer, like, sometimes the way someone will ask you a question, like, shakes you, you just think, oh, my God, do I know this answer? And I think it's in that moment where you could either become a little bit apologetic or you can kind of sit there, say, be aggressive, like, try to tell them why they are wrong. And I think watching the episode, and even in that moment, I realized that there were these times where you just had to be super calm. There was like a combination of being respectful, where you say, okay, I hear you, but let me tell you why I know it to be this way, because this is my research. And I think that was like a really interesting moment where I realized it wasn't just about the knowledge, it was about how the nuance you use to communicate with someone.

Yeah, well, when you put your finger on an incredibly important issue, it's what the eggheads in the universities call intellectual, you know, or emotional intelligence. Like, you can go through tough times without panicking, you know, you don't have to have the panic response. It's basically like you say time, take a breath, you know, absorb it, have a calm response. And you know, you don't have to throw a knockout punch just because someone threw a knockout punch at you. You know, you can dodge it, pick your, you know, pick your spot and.

Exactly.

But that's, you know, that's great training, great awareness for all kind of situations you have to deal with as a CEO going forward. So the, you know, the thing is the experience of being in the, the driver's seat as an entrepreneur, CEO will te. It's like being a parent. The kids will teach you what you, a lot of what you need to know. It's like, you know, at six in the morning, you need to get up, mom, you know, you know, and then, you know, you need to change my diaper. You know, then they're crying, you need to get me some food here. And they drive you nuts. And then pretty soon you turn into a disciplined parent. But you know, I don't think parents are necessarily that disciplined when, when they bring the little package home from the hospital. And so the same thing with CEOs, I don't think CEOs are naturally entrepreneurs that discipline, organize, keep up with the books, keep up with the taxes, keep up, you know, learn how to, you know, treat your, your people in a certain way, have incentives and.

You know.

Make sure they understand the vision of what you're doing. All of these things you grow, grow into and you got, you have to be patient with yourself and let yourself grow into those roles, don't you?

Completely. I actually love that analogy because I think that really describes the journey of at least me being a first time founder, where a lot of the things that I've learned is because either I got it wrong or I never knew how to do it or like it'll just be something completely new. So I think, yeah, I love that analogy and I think figure it out as you go. We have been trying to do.

Yeah. Now when you got, before you got, let me ask you this, the idea you had, your concept was a association of private chefs and organizing that is kind of like an Uber for private chefs. It seems like something like that. And, or, anyway, so I'm sure how many times were you told that was a stupid idea before you got on, on the Dragons thing?

I think just about anyone that you try to talk about it, you will kind of look at you and say, ah, that's interesting. And suddenly you just think, okay, so you think it's shit. But you're just being polite. So all the time. I mean, like, every day. All the time.

Yeah. And so at least that had to change after you went on the show.

Yeah. So I'd say. What? Yeah, I think that's a good point. I think society responds a lot to. There's a reason people go out there and collect awards and, like, go to Ivy Leagues. I think society really does respond to these accolades. So what Dragons Den helped with was it's sort of validation that, oh, these people like you, so you must be doing something cool. And I think it got. And I think for the first time, instead of us having to do the pitch again and say, people could just kind of say, oh, actually, I saw that. I get it, because it was like a 15 minute slot where we could sort of explain what it was about. But, yeah, it did help because just saying Dragon's Den made people more empathetic to our cause and it helped having a business which people knew about a little bit more.

Now where. How do you think your formative years sent you on this direction? You know, what happened in your formative years that kind of sent you in this direction as you're going through your schooling and you're, you know, still, still with your parents and still at home and all of that?

Yeah. So I come from India, where my dad is an entrepreneur, but it's not as sexy back in India. It's more a businessman and you're sort of like going through the mud and just building, like a big company and you're doing everything you can to make it exist. And I think as we grew up in India, and now that I've been to New York, America, where I went for uni and London, I think I can reflect a little bit more back to my brinking, which was so different than how people are sort of here. And I think one thing was that there were no invisible rules. So I think, like, because my dad was a businessman, even when we were young, he'd say things like, get up there and go ask that. Like in a restaurant, he'd say, go ask that waiter to customize this dish. Now, in uk, people will say, oh, my gosh, don't do that. You just think about the restaurant. Whereas my dad looked at me, he was like, no, go ask the question. And he made me go out there and talk to all these different people about the weirdest questions. And because he just wanted me to know that I can. Just because I ask the question doesn't mean someone else will say no. And just because I ask a question doesn't make it awkward or weird. And I think it was. Obviously back then I hated it. But I think now I realize that's really lowered by inhibitions. So now if you tell me, how are you going to go contact someone or how are you going to find that partner? I'll just go do it. Like, I will go cold email. I will reach out to people I know, people who know people who know people. Just like any path that takes you there, I will do. And I think all of these things were really baked into us when we were growing up. And I think another example is sort of focusing. So I think education was important in my family, of course. So my mother, like, super educated. However, my dad was more about the street smarts. So I think. Let me give you an example. So we used to go to school, and if you were a little bit late to your school, let's say you missed like the morning bell, you would get fined 100 rupees in India, which is like $2 in America, but you'd have to pay that. And then at some point, and I remember my dad sort of just saying, okay, so how if my daughter sleeps in for 30 days and she gets extra, extra one hour of sleep in the morning, can I just pay 30 times 100 rupees up front? Because that's. So that's just 3,000 rupees. But it's a very cheap cost of letting my daughter get an extra hour of sleep every single day. And I think obviously the school was livid. They were like, what are you teaching your daughter? But in that moment, I got it. I was like, right. He just made a very quick roi. And this makes sense. And I feel like it was practical learning like that. That sort of instilled in me. Yeah, slightly more like, I don't have rules. I think I make my rules. And I think you're meant to do whatever in life you need to do to get things done. And I think that was sort of instilled by my parents.

Did anything. Did this, the fact that you were his daughter, have anything to do with him trying to get you to come out of your shell? Were you the oldest? Were you the. Was it a big family?

Three. Three kids. So I'm the middle daughter.

Ah, so you're the troublesome middle. Middle. Maybe that's why he tried to do it.

I just thought it was great training. Like, I think firsthand I realized, okay, cool. There's a way out of every single problem. And there are multiple ways to solve something, you know, one is to go to school early.

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Dude, you have, I don't know what the culture is in India, but did you have problems growing up trying to make your way in the world? And did you find the world confusing or tough or perplexing or getting along with, you know, you know, did you have a sports or you have things where you could throw your energy into and establish yourself or was it just school work or what?

No, not at all. So I am a competitive Bollywood dancer. So I think dance was like the one big thing where all of my energy was channeled and it was what I did after school and it was like my passion and it was something I love to do. But while in school I was definitely more belligerent. I think I never understood why people studied so much to, to come first in class because I never saw what would happen once you came first. So I was someone who was like top 10, 15. I just did not understand why I should study more to come first because that person who got first didn't get anything else that I didn't get at 10th, you know.

Yeah. And that's funny because I grew up a competitive Bollywood dancer myself.

Oh my God. Right there. Can you tell me a little bit more?

I didn't, I didn't sell that very well, did I? Okay, you didn't. You didn't believe that for a microsecond. Okay. All right. Now, when you decided to go to school, you know, after, you know, college and university, what were you looking for?

Right. So as an Asian kid, I was told I had to go to college. And when I went to college, I just thought I was going to college, period. And it is wild to me that at that point I had no articulation of what exactly I needed from college. Because now in life I reflect a lot. But back then it just felt like one of those paths I had to go through and actually my mom is a housewife. Coming from a small town in India, successful women were mostly housewives. I didn't even know I could do anything else but be a housewife. So I was going to college in Columbia in New York, and I just thought, awesome, I'm going to college and I'll probably just go back to India and be a housewife.

Yeah, but you didn't.

Yes.

And so talk about how what you did before Shark Tank, where you got your experience in your, your, your education.

So I went to Columbia University in New York. I studied computer science, artificial intelligence. And this was from 2009 to 2013. The moment I started studying, I mean like the moment I hit New York, I just got exposed to a whole new environment. And that was the first time I realized, oh my gosh, people can do anything. There are so many things out there that I can do. And through my college I realized, oh, my friends are applying for internships. Let me do, let me do the same. I realized trading is really exciting. So I then found my way into finance on a trading floor because I thought it was loud, brash, really fun and I wanted to do it.

Yeah. And do you have a knack for that?

Yeah. So I, I think in trading what I realized, a lot of my personality, it just complemented it. Like I found a niche that just fit. Like they were appreciative of people that were aggressive or loud or like actually very data oriented or quick with numbers. And I found myself at home and yeah. So I got a job in New York. I realized it was like the best thing, super exciting. I, as someone starting out in finance, imagine like you don't even know what these numbers mean. Like for me, I was running risk for 500 million. What does that mean to like a 22 year old? I don't know. It was really fun and I think one day I could be up a million or down a million. And I think I could have a thesis. And I could say, I believe this will work because of this reason and because of that let me buy or sell something in my portfolio. And that was very liberating because I loved having conviction. And I think it was like the first job that allowed you to do that on some massive scale. Yeah.

Yeah. Now let's go back to Columbia. It's, you know, a tough school and lots of personalities, lots of socially maladjusted professors and a lot of professors just working out their time with tenure until they can retire and not excited about teaching. And that's true of every College. And so when you go, you know, you run into. With this enthusiasm and this naive attitude about life is exciting and everything. What was the worst things that happened to you while at Columbia?

So I thought, I think number one, which is very. I should have almost foreseen this, was like, things got really hard really quickly. Like, I used to think of myself as intelligent person. And then sophomore year happened and I just realized I was an idiot. Like, there was no, like, the coursework of computer science and artificial intelligence. Like, it just stopped making sense. And I think I remember getting to senior year thinking, can I fail a course and then still graduate? Because this is getting pretty damn hard. So I think that was like an eye opener, that not everything is easy. Like, you really have to work for it. And I sort of did. Sort of didn't in some of the courses, but it got really tough. Like, it was hard.

Yeah. And so. So talk about that.

So, for example, like, in my senior year, there was this, like, course on natural language processing and artificial intelligence. And back then it wasn't as sexy. So. So back then, imagine, like my professor had this whole course, and then they told us 50% of your grade is your, like, this programming assignment. And in that assignment you have to take, like, at some point while coding, the program had to learn itself and, like, solve this chess and win at it. And honestly, I got to like 50% of it. And I was like, I think that's all I can do. I don't understand how the program will learn by itself. And I think I kind of sat there thinking, maybe I'll just get 50%. And I did, and I passed that class. But I still do not know what was taught in that course till date. Because it was tough. It was really tough.

Yeah. And so what, you know, socially, was it a tough adjustment, the New York lifestyle and, you know, things that were expected?

I wouldn't say tough, but I will say the social norms were completely different. And although originally I was completely unaware, I think I just. I spent a lot of my college in a bubble. Like, I. I just did things that I wanted to. But then I think when it came to, let's say, socially, I don't know. Actually, Mary, I'm saying that, and I'm like, no, I don't know. I think it was okay. I just thought everything was exciting. I was. I had my peers. And I think I do know when I graduated, I found myself surrounded by a lot more brown people. And I just thought, wow, where did my diversity go? And I think somehow maybe because I did a lot of Bollywood dancing and a lot of Asian Bollywood dancing. My circle just became a lot more people than looked like me. But I think overall, I don't remember having any social anxiety or social. Yeah.

So you went into the trading.

Yeah.

And you were there for what, six years? Something like that.

So I got a job. I then got deported to London.

Or transfer.

I would have been deported as an immigrant, visa is always an issue. So they gave me the option to move to London. I said yes. And I did that career for around six and a half years. Yeah.

Now why are you not doing it still? Why was that not good enough for you? Because people spend their entire life doing trading.

Yep. Good question. When I joined it, I loved it. And for me, at that point, success meant earning money directly proportional. And I thought, amazing, I'm going to earn a lot of it. And after four years, when things started to look really good and my paycheck got pretty big, I started to realize there was something very uni dimensional. Like I went into work every day and the whole purpose was to make money and there was nothing else that I was achieving in, in and around that equation. And I think at that point I started to question. I actually watched the show on Netflix called the Queen of Catway, where this black African kids, they have, they play chess and, and they have ambition to like, take over the world. And I started crying. And I remember thinking, oh, my God, I have no ambition anymore. And I think I just wanted to do something that had bigger purpose. I wanted to build something that had more lasting meaning than just make money every single day. Because that's what my job asked me to do.

Well, I guess that ruled out you starting your own hedge fund.

That would be very hypocritical, wouldn't it?

I don't know. I don't know. I won't say that. But now when you. How long did it take you to go from that point to where you had this idea about the chefs? I mean, have you. Have you been. Do you have dinner party? Have you grown up having dinner parties and working with private chefs and things like that? How long did it. How many ideas did you go through?

So I used to have a notepad of like hundred plus ideas where anytime I'll see a problem around me, I'll think, ah, that could be a good idea.

So talk about that. How did you start doing that and when did you start doing that?

I started doing that sort of like four years into trading. I thought, okay, if I want to make a ch like If I want to really build a company, I need to have an idea. And ideas are not going to grow out of anywhere. So instead of just committing all the way, let me just go through life every single day and look and observe. And if I feel something's broken, it's going to go into this, like, notepad of ideas. And by the way, there were a lot of terrible ideas that went in there. For example, once I was. I was stood at this airport and it had, like, the most terrible layout where the baggage could claim was completely different to where I entered. And I wrote in my notebook of ideas. I said, airport should be made more efficient so people can get through checkout faster.

Yeah.

And that's a terrible idea, like in my mind, but I still wrote it because I was trying to build the muscle of observing when things were wrong or could be made better.

Yeah. Now, who did you come up with that idea to, to start making that list? Or did you see it on Netflix?

I mean, everything is a borrowed idea. And to be honest, right now it feels like it was my own idea, but who knows? Maybe I stole it from somewhere.

We're going to give you credit for that.

Okay, great.

But how long did it take you to get up to where you had a hundred ideas? How long did it take you to where the chef idea did that immediately identify? We've got a winner here.

No, not at all. So I have this sort of list of ideas. I probably kind of chilled on this list for like six months, a year. I did it passively on the side.

Did you show it to other people?

No. I was so embarrassed. I just thought, like, I don't know, like, you know, it's like so embarrassing that I'm coming up with these stupid little ideas. Of course not. No one ever saw it.

Wow. And so how did it. How did it work? How did you turn it into where the chef. Private chef came out the top?

So at some point I went through this exercise of, okay, let me look through these ideas and start ranking them on some sort of scale, like, effort it will take. How good they could be, how big they could be. Is it actually a pain point or is this made up? How easy would it be to test?

And now you thought of this, you thought of this banking system.

This had definitely.

Now, now this is a little too sophisticated. You had to steal this idea from somebody.

I did steal it from somewhere. So I actually went through, like, it was like some accelerator for, like, how. How you can create a startup. And they came up with like, a very basic Ranking system. And I was like, well, that's better than nothing. And I stole it. It was great.

Yeah, yeah.

And in that ranking system, the chefs came to the top. And the reason was, I want, like, out of all these other ideas where the market scope, et cetera wasn't great. This was a personal problem because I did grow up in India with chefs and cooks. It's very normal when you grow up in an Asian country, you have home cooked food, but then when you go to developing countries, suddenly it's just restaurants or takeaway or you have to cook yourself. And I knew firsthand that hospitality sector is actually one of the lowest paid professions in uk. So it just kind of didn't make sense that I can't have home cooked food because all these people, people think everyone's Gordon Ramsay in a private chef just costs like so much money. But I knew for a fact that wasn't true. So there was a gap. But B, I knew firsthand that stuff like this works. And, you know, people have people over. It's amazing to just have home cooked food. So I think I had this, like, special unique insight and it won on a bunch of other matrix planes. So it was like, top of my list.

Yeah, I. I had a friend of mine, he bought. He built this huge, monstrous house in Florida. And then he thought, okay, now I'll take the next. The great kitchen. I'll take the next step. I'll get my own private chef. And then after he gained 30 pounds the first month, he had to fire the chef.

Oh, my God, that's amazing.

It's better to bring in the chef periodically rather than have your own permanent private chef.

I would imagine I should hire you as our salesperson. Love it. That's a great angle to it.

Now, how did you go from, okay, I raided this thing and it's kind of emerged. At what point did you say this out loud to somebody else? This chef thing could be good.

So I made a friend at my work back then and I told her I think life is too short. This job kind of sucks. We need to go do something else. And I have a reason.

Why does that job. Wait a minute. You're making a lot of money. You're your own boss. You go in there and this job kind of sucks. You're hard to please.

Yeah, I think it was sort of a first world problem, I'd admit. But I think at some. Yeah, I think in different points in life, you need different things. And I really wanted to build a company and I wanted to build a Very big company. So at that point that job really wasn't cutting edge and this friend actually turned around and said, oh, I love this idea. There could be something really big that happens. She was my friend, also PR and then ended up being my co founder. Her name's Simon.

Yeah. And so it's amazing how empowering it can be. I heard a long time ago that fortunately I heard it early in my career that most revolutions, you know, if you're going to build a business or you're going to start a revolution, you know, it's one way of looking at it. And I heard early on, fortunately that most revolutions are run by with very few people at the core. You know, it's not managing thousands and thousands of people every day and you have a, you know, it's kind of quiet at the core. It's like a nuclear reactor, you know, it's very quiet at the core and then it spreads out, you know, so it's really empowered. Talk about how empowering it is to find that first E person and how it changes your every day really. Because you wake up, you get an idea. Now you can mount the idea off of them and they could, you know, you, you know, it's can kind of create magic and keep the percolation going. Talk about how that changed things for you.

So before Heinen it was just me and a bunch of my ideas and I didn't know if I could do it and I think there was a lot of self doubt and I also imagined myself just thinking, I think I assumed a lot more worst case scenarios and I think I just kind of didn't want to do it myself. So I just thought whatever. But the moment I found the first person or like I obviously spoke to a few other people but Heinen and her energy, the moment I just saw it, she saw a world with me that didn't yet exist. And it's as though we were peeking into the future. We could just see what life would look like for people who have birthdays or hire Airbnbs and can just have this amazing service as easy as ordering Uber. And she shared that enthusiasm with me. It was everything. So I feel like that was, it was special. It turned me from a sad little person with the idea who wanted to escape to someone who was super bullish and ready to do it.

Say that again. Say that again. That needs to be said. A sad little person. Start with a sad little person.

It turned me from a sad little person with a little idea to someone who was confident, ready and very bullish. To take on this, to take on the world actually.

Yeah, you know, like Tom Petty. I don't know if you know Tom Petty, but he's gone now. But he had a long career in music and my brother worked for him for 40 years and he said that when they got started, when they got this one drummer, Stan lynch, he said once we got Stan standing behind me on all the performances on that drum kit, he said I felt like we could go conquer the world. I felt like I had a jet engine at my back, you know, like nobody's going to mess with us. We got Stan back there on the drums and shout out to Stan lynch, by the way. And anyway the, the, the one per. The energy. It's one way of telling if you've got the right person working with you in your core is do they bring energy? Do they create energy with you? Do they like, you know, charge you up, you know, with the. And that comes from not this, their personality or just. But like ideas and enthusiasm and you could, you know, they, they make you better because they're provoking you to greatness and they inspire you with ideas they have and how they see it. But if you don't have that person, probably need to get rid of them, you know, or you not count on them to be the core, you know, have them around. But that's probably the key indicator that this is a person who's going to be in the core, don't you think?

I completely agree. You can't. Couldn't have said it any better. I think with Heinen we weren't two, we weren't one plus one is equal to two. It was exponential. I think I just felt we together were 10 and it was incredible. It is incredible.

Yeah. You look for that and it's not. I'll tell you where you look for that. You know, you like Berkshire Hathaway with Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger and you know, they had a decades long relationship like that. It created magic. They were. And so that's one of the things where Charlie Munger used to say that a lot of people work hard. A lot of them have, you know, a great idea. But he said that the missing thing is every, you know, the successful people also have good fortune and I think a big part of the good fortune is stumbling across the right person to work with. You know, I just think, you know, of all the advantages you could have, that's hard to replicate, you know. So as you, you went forward now how did you go from that point to where you Started to get. What was your battle plan? You started to line up chefs. You started. When did you have your first sale?

Quote, unquote, Almost very quickly when we met, because we decided demand is always more difficult than supply. So, aka, if someone needs to give you money, you need to get them to part with their money, and that's going to be the hardest. So we just sort of went out there to all the peers, which mean you could afford this because we worked in that environment. And we very quickly created sort of a PDF, wrote down a bunch of dishes, because we knew we didn't have to have a fancy website. We actually didn't even have a chef. And at that point, we sent this PDF of dishes to our colleagues and we said we would allow you, like we would love, if you book a private chef at cost and if you're interested, place an order. And a couple of them did, and then they paid for it. So actually that was our first sale. And then when we had this first sale, which was very quickly after both of us decided to work on this idea, we realized we had to go find a chef.

Yeah.

And so was that hard, honestly, finding the initial chef? No, because that was always going to be the easy part. There are always going to be people who want to earn money, but people parting with money is harder. So I think initially that bit was fine. I would say the hardest bit was after the initial test with peers, finding the first person we didn't know who would book the service. Like, how do you do that? That is crazy.

How do that now? Is that a referral? Now you do that from referrals, because that's usually the best way to do.

Is the best way to do it. I think back then, either we weren't that sophisticated or because dinner parties, you.

Know, let me make a point, let me make a point there. And that is that entrepreneurs need to realize you're going to have to sell and you're going to have to understand the sell thing, read sales books, because realize you stay in business in sales. If you can get referrals, if you can't get referrals, you can't do a good enough job where people feel good enough about you and then you ask for the referral, you're not going to have anybody else to go to the next time. And so as you where you ran into, that was a lack of knowledge about the sales process and that how important referrals could be for, you know, you can always cold call or run ads, but that's more expensive, less return than word of mouth. So go ahead and talk. How did you expand into that, your client base?

It's actually so interesting because now we know about referrals. I just think, oh, great, 60% of our business is word of mouth. But now that you ask me about their beginning point, it never even crossed our minds. And I think at that point we just saw, right now we have a website. How do we make this live somewhere? And then we just waited and we kind of were like, okay, let's bump into some people, tell them about this idea. It really was very ad hoc. I remember, like inquiry coming through this, like, platform and it was like a quite random, but it might have been like, we really don't know the source. It just kind of was. We didn't even run Google Ads and that person actually said they wanted a chef and they partnered with our money and we like fell off our chair. We were like, oh my God, we've done it. We found an unsuspecting stranger to come buy something from us. This is so cool. So I think it was very random. However, that was our first booking. Then the next day we woke up, the person all over Instagram turns out was an influencer and had eight other friends. So suddenly the next day, we saw eight people on like Instagram using this and talking about their amazing Bachelorette and the chef. And I obviously thought I was going to build a billion dollar company in like a year because it was so insane. And I thought every booking was going to be like that. I'll tell you, that's not how things go. But yeah, that was the first booking. I think it happened and it was very cool. We realized that's what unlocked actually a second word of mouth for us, that we realized influencers will be really big. When people watch something on social media, they have the proof and they trust the person they will come inquire on. Why hangry? So after that we got a couple more bookings on the back of that, which was very cool.

Now, how did you develop your network of chefs and how many did you have on board by the time you went on the Dragons, whatever it is?

Dragons Den Dragon was right after Covid and it only aired after Covid lifted. So actually back then we didn't have that many. So currently we work with over a thousand. But before Dragon Stand, it was, I'd say like 60, 50, 60 chefs. Maybe 30, 30, 40.

And so you have how many now?

We have close to a thousand chefs.

I mean, you're like Uber. I mean, you're like Airbnb now. I mean, you know, is that all in the uk?

Yes, currently all of the chefs are in the uk.

How did you, how did your expansion go? I mean, I would imagine you're pretty much cover the UK now, is that right?

So we cover all across uk. Venice Riot. I think so initially.

Who would, who would think there's that much demand for.

Or.

Well, wait a minute, we didn't say. We didn't say they're cooking English food. We said they're cooking.

Correct.

I was going to say who would say there's that much demand for English food? But anyway, there.

It's very funny you say that though, because when we started, I am a immigrant Asian, my co founder is Chinese, German. We didn't have any English food on the menu because we didn't know any. It was just Indian, Chinese, Thai, Japanese. Forgot about British entirely.

You're probably not going to bring in a private chef or shepherd's pie or fish and chips.

You would be surprised how people love to have some Sunday votes. But yes, I think relatively speaking, people do like to book more sophisticated cuisine and non British.

So how, how, how fast did that expand around? How, how much of an issue was for that? What, what did you, what stumbles did you make as you expanded around the country and those long distance bookings?

I mean, what I'll say is like, oh, God. Getting chefs has been like a whole learning process in itself. And we went from thousand chefs is.

A lot to keep up with, you know, quality control and you know, you got people going and coming all over the place.

Yep. So now things seem a lot more calmer because we've learned our lessons. But back when we started, I remember we used to like, we have this hypothesis that if a chef is really good, they can do every single cuisine because why not? It's just as easy as throwing some things together. Yeah. Like, it's not bad. And then we had a cooking. We had a booking where. Not a cooking, a booking where we sent a chef and that chef and it was like the wor. We had the worst review ever and turns out the chef does more healthy meal prep, nutritious food. And this customer wanted traditional Indian and it went so horribly and I just remember thinking, I really want to die. Like I don't want to be on this phone call. Like, I am so scared. Is the customer going to come through this phone call and like what, what is going to happen to me? And the funny thing is I survived. I realized that not all chefs can do every single cuisine. And then off we went, tagging every single chef that we hired with the cuisines that they were really good at. And I think that was, like, one failure. But we've had so many of these, like, failures while, like, getting chefs, for example. At some point, I thought, every single chef should cook for me. And that's how I'll tell that a chef is really good. It sounds. It sounds sensible. However, I started doing this thing where I would have some random ingredients in my fridge. I'll tell them sort of, hey, like, why don't you put something together because you're a chef, like, it'll work. And it was a disaster. Like, sometimes chef didn't show up, and I was just left with all these ingredients in my fridge. And I was so unhappy. I just thought, God damn it. I just wanted a chef to trial so my kitchen, like, some food was left over for me. And that's when I realized that model doesn't make sense because I am, again, trialing chefs based on some random ingredients. And I. And, like, our process of screening wasn't that great. I just assumed if they come to my kitchen and cook, they're going to be amazing. But I forgot the initial screening. Like, are you a human being? Are you sensible?

Are you involved? Yeah.

And it was really scary because one check once turned up to my co founder's place and then demanded to be paid for the Uber. And my co founder said, no, that's not how it works. And then they went to her really weird, where they got really upset that the pots and pans weren't correct. And after that day, we just thought, right, okay, this is really weird. We need to actually have a very strong process where we check their cv, we actually speak to them about their experience, because the goal is to have professionally vetted chefs on this platform. And I think after making a bunch of that faux pas, we realized, cool. Now we do a video call, we go through their resume cv, we talk to them about the dishes, where have they cooked, what do they make? And after you speak to someone in depth, you really start to realize which are the ones that are not suited for the platform and which ones are good or they're going to do a great job. So our screening process is really tightened up, and I think it took us about sort of two years to scale from like, 20, 30 chefs to, like, thousand plus now. But we've gotten to a point where, like, the cycle is working, where we get chef applications rather than us going out to chefs. You know, it's nice. Yeah, yeah.

And so have you found. Talk about your, your growth, your growth chart? How, how, how has that accelerated? What did you use the money for that you raised on? Are you a good investment? Were you a good investment for those two Dragons?

So we actually did not accept the money on Dragon's Den because the rates aren't very commercial. You can actually go out there in the market and raise at better amounts. So we did accept on tv, but then we decided that we weren't going to go ahead with it. We did raise around $3 million afterwards. So in two tranches. One was from Angels and then one was from Y Combinator, which was. Which is like a startup, which is a startup accelerator in us in Silicon Valley. So we are definitely a great investment and we have half of that money still left. And what we have deployed that money on is building product. So making sure that the website is super easy to use. If you land on it, you can find all the chefs near you. You can chat to chefs, you can actually customize the menu. You can say, hey, it's my birthday, like my 50th. I have 20 guests. Some of them are gluten free, whatever this looks like. So this platform is really beautiful and slick. That was the core of it. Marketing is a big piece. And I think, although we started a lot of referrals and it takes time to build word of mouth where if someone tells their friend they might have a birthday in the next three to four months, it's not as immediate. It's like Airbnb, where people use it, like maybe once or twice a year. So I think obviously marketing, like, finding what are those core channels that will give us a steady stream of customers on the demand side. And then I think it's just people. So, like hiring for customer service and operations internally.

We are the size now that. Have you, have you got the United States expansion on your horizon?

It indeed is on the horizon. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, you're the size now that you can approach the Airbnb people or the vacation rental people, and there's only like a million of those kind of companies around the world and tie in with them. It seems like it'd be a domino effect once you, you know, start getting that, those associations going. You don't have to just add chefs now or add bookings. You can add, you know, rental agencies and. Absolutely, that's a great idea. I'd like to get a percentage of the profits from that.

I love it. You know, like, owning equity is the dream. I love that you asked. I will keep you in blue.

You know, the thing is, with your great training and writing code for AI, you can just write a program and AI will teach itself how to improve your program and do the expansion. You'll be self learning.

Self learning? Only if I finish that course back in university. But that's okay. Things are easier now.

Well, you could hire somebody to write code for you now.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah, they're. They're like chefs. They're a dime a dozen. You know, in fact, I read an article this week in New York, I mean, in the Wall Street Journal that computer scientists graduates are having trouble finding jobs. So, you know, there you go.

That is wild. Yeah, cool.

It. It is. It is wild. You know, so you think of all the jobs that, that there'd be. Be plentiful out there, but so it just shows. You can't predict. You have to think on your feet. And so anyway, I'm not going to keep you any, any longer. We'll. We'll save some stuff for your next. Once you get into the United States and expand to all the continents.

Absolutely. US is definitely next on our agenda.

Well, do. Do you think you'd ever have the guts to expand into India?

I love the way this question is phrased.

Yeah.

Someone just asked me this today and honestly, I kind of had to, like, take a little bit of a second and I looked at them and I just said, first us. And the reason is like, you know how Larry, I spoke about invisible rules and like, just like kind of go. I just think India is this wild market and like, there are no rules and. Yeah. And I think I grew up in it. It's an awesome country, but it scares me a little bit. And I feel like we will have an easier time expanding in US And I feel like, I don't know how. Well, companies do really like going into that world and you really have to understand that market well. So in future, yes, it is a big opportunity, but I think there are other demographics where people will be easier to. Yeah. Make customers off.

My recommendation for you is you keep getting bigger and bigger and let your management team expand. And then once you have someone on board who's proven, who develops this insane desire to take your company into India, you say, go get it.

I love it. That's so true. Yeah, I like it. Mary. Yes.

Yeah, send somebody else, you know.

Okay, I like that. Yes. I think that is a great strategy. Yeah.

Yeah. So anyway, I, I'm proud of you. I'm excited about what you're doing and I'm looking forward to Expanding to the United States. And so I can book one of these private chefs.

Yes. It's going to be awesome. Very cost effective and delicious. And you're not going to gain, like your friend back there in Florida did by hiring a chef for a month. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for having me.

Yes. And I'm gonna. I always let my guests have the final word. And we like to. We like to have a little bit of a extra benefit for the people who stayed with us all the way through. So what would you say? Pass on to the people that, you know are impressed by what you've done, are inspired by it, and would like to do something similar.

So all what I'd love to say is you really get one life. And you should just think, if today was your last day, would you be content that you went out there and tried and, like, took the shots?

Yeah.

And if you can say yes, that's great, but if it's a no, you should just go out there and try to do the stuff that really scares you, because there is an equal probability of it succeeding than it is of failing. And people dwell a lot on the failures. But there's so much success to be had if you just, like, take that leap and you believe it can happen. So go out there and do it if you feel you need to.

And I would say what I would add, from what I'm seeing with your story, is that you did it not passively. You did it actively, even when you didn't have an idea. All you had was this desire, this turning inside, like, this job, I've got to do more. But you didn't wait for it to come to you. Like, you waited for your first clients, otherwise you would have never had the idea. You know, you had a paddle at 100 ideas, then you took another step that I'd like to point out that you found a rating system. You didn't know how to rate it or something, but you saw a rating system that'll work close enough, and that allowed you to evaluate what you had and to get a factual reason for moving forward. And so take charge, be aggressive. Come up. Come up with some ideas. You know, if you want to do something, do something, and go with what you've got. You know, follow your instincts, but keep moving forward. And it's just amazing what you've been able to do. And a thousand chefs, you're on your way. I'll look forward to seeing you in the United States. This is big. Thanks so much, city. Goodbye.

Thanks so much, Larry. Bye.

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