Annetta, a good friend and colleague, asked Alex and me to speak in her Social Entrepreneurship class at UAB. Perspectives she wanted us to share include how to talk to users, mission & social responsibilities of business, as well as pivoting. We are no experts in any of these by any measure, but we are diligent students of Entrepreneurship. My PhD advisor once advised me: “The best way to learn something, is to teach it.” So I gladly and selfishly said Yes to Annetta, taking the opportunity to speak to her students a way to clarify my thoughts.
(1) Pivot
When we first hatched our idea about Milkman in late 2019. We had a vision that was grand and ambitious. We even cheerfully cobbled together a video to show the world:
It didn’t take long for us to figure out that we were trying to do too much. To compete in the physical world of food curation and delivery was capital intense and risky, and required experience that neither of us possessed. In the space of meal curation, we already had the once-popular brand Blue Apron and the like, who were dying a slow death. In the space of delivery, there were already behemoth competitors such as Shipt, Instacart, UberEats, and Doordash. (Not to say that David cannot combat Goliath, but it took biblical efforts, quite literally. There are, however, successful examples of David – think of Stripe competing with PayPal.)
We quickly decided that we needed to focus. Trying to tackle the entire food supply chain is trying to walk to the moon. We examined the links of the supply chain, reflected on our advantages and opportunities. We believed our opportunity is food retail transactions going digital and becoming intelligent, and captured data can be an immense asset for retailers. Our combined advantages are data analytics and software development skills. The weakest link, if we want to penetrate the supply chain, would be the interface where users start their shopping trip. A meal planning app that helps fulfill people’s shopping basket.
Value proposition is clear: to help people to decide “what’s for dinner”, to help people eat healthy, save time, and cook adventurously. Within a few clicks, users got the week’s meals planned, automatically generated shopping list and prepping list, and easy-to-track nutrition. The shopping cart holds the key to our Revenue model. If we can influence users and curate for users what to shop, money can be made through loyalty programs with brands or retailers.
I wish this is a fairy tale where I can conclude with saying “Mealvana and its users lived happily ever after…” The truth is that we are still fighting a path forward. Yet our experience may offer a case study for fellow entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs-to-be.
Though titled “pivot”, I think of our experience not as much “pivoting” as “focusing” and finding our “niche.” Peter Thiel in his Zero to One book said “every startup should start with a very small market. Always err on the side of starting too small.” Geoffrey Moore likened the strategy to “the D-Day” in Crossing the Chasm. Guy Raz, host of my favorite podcast How I Built This, referred to this strategy as “Go In Through the Side Door” in the podcast’s namesake book. So if there is one message for you to take away, I hope that would be to find your niche, your beachhead, or side door.
Before you accuse me of false marketing, I hasten to point out that many successful “pivot” stories were examples of finding the niche, because niche is not always obvious. Twitch was once Justin.tv; Instagram was Burbn. Their ability to discover the niche, to zoom in and edit down their products made them successful. Will you ever grow out of the niche? Maybe. Look at Amazon, which started with selling just books.
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