How does grubwithus make money

It started slowly, but then picked up steam. Still, the economy could prove a challenge to the site. It will be hosted by First Round Capital for University of Pennsylvania students interested in entrepreneurship. Although Grubwithus is setting up that meal in part because of its relationship with First Round, it arranges meals for businesses, schools, nonprofits and other organizations, as well as its members.

Eddy : Yup. Andrew : Why did you nail it? What were the questions that got you in? Eddy : I think our concept just resonated with a bunch of the partners. So, we had a great experience for our interview.

Andrew : Alright, you spent a few months, its three months right, at Y Combinator? What changed in those three months about the vision for the product or about the approach to getting new customers?

It was just like you guys are making this thing way to complicated. If you want to do some of this cool stuff after people have gone to Meals and are users, fine but just for these initial users just make it simple? I thought I told you to fix all you stuff. Andrew : Was he right? Andrew : About cutting down the shopping cart?

You just knew you were going here for a social experience instead of all this other, unnecessary stuffs. What was that door there? The person in the office next to me just slammed the door.

Why do you do it, then? Why do we, as entrepreneurs overcomplicate our problems? If you could think back on this one thing, how do you get to that place? How do we get more users on our site? How do we retain them? How do we, you know. Like, oh yeah, our growth is stalling.

I think if we added this feature, or if we did this, it would be so awesome. I have a friend who is a caterer. But he throws these huge parties. And once I sat down in the kitchen after the party that he was running was a hit.

It was actually for some TV show on Showtime where the pornstar was going to find love, and not be in a porn relationship, it was all kinds of stuff. But he threw this party off and he goes, look. Everyone has their dream for what it could be. You have this dream for how to make it go viral.

You have this dream for how to get repeat business. You have this dream for how to up the revenue, maybe per user. And if you put all these dreams together, you have a nightmare. Am I understanding it right? Is it just too many things all at once? Andrew : You can absolutely say that and actually, anyone now who goes to Grubwithus. There is nothing to complicate what you need them to do.

They know exactly the path to go on. I understand now the product. I understand how you got your initial users. I understand how you got the restaurants. How do you go bigger? Andrew : What makes a bad meal experience? There was, at actually our very first [?? Just you know, creating that wonderful real life experience for people will just help spread the word virally. Right after you guys finished Y Combinator, or maybe even while you were still doing Y Combinator, several people who were associated Y Combinator started doing lunches and dinners.

In fact, Jessica Livingston did one for Women Founders. I saw on your website that he even did another one, sometime like Raise Money for Awesome Awesomeness. Something like that. So he had a lot of fun with it. That helped. Eddy : For sure. Andrew : What else, tell me about that, the impact of that.

Eddy : And people like you hosting meals, thank you for that. That will definitely help. It definitely helps because they have such big audiences. So I think, you know, we always try to partner with cool things and we always try to have themes every month, you know, like this month it was like a Farm to Table theme so that, you know, we try to get different audiences, right?

Not just in tech but like different genres, you know we had a veggie week were we had prominent vegetarians on our site and things like that. Eddy : Yeah, I mean, they definitely, I mean, we try to encourage people to do recurring meals and just like, you know, and even brands. Really get to know your people. Andrew : I saw that you guys on the site are recruiting brands. Brands and affiliates. Eddy : OK. Andrew : By the way, the reason that I ask that is because I try not to do interviews with start ups.

Anyway, going back to the partners, what are some of the partnerships? You know? Andrew : You know what? To get someone to get five people, ten people to come out to dinner with the past guests is fairly easy.

Eddy : Yeah, it is. Eddy : You know what? Eddy : Got it. Andrew : You will? All right. Affiliate program, has that been effective for you? We just launched it recently. The chicken? What about the chicken that pops down when I go to grubwithus. Eddy : We literally pushed that thing yesterday. A couple of our employees upstairs are laughing.

Andrew : Are they listening in on this? Eddy : They hear you talk about the chicken. Just reinforcing that friendship and just getting them to go to more meals together and what not. The first fun way we want to do it, instead of rating the people you eat with and what not, was just have this fun virtual gift that you would give away to the people that you had a fun time with at a meal. Andrew gave you three chickens and this is what he thought about you.

So, just a fun way to engage people post-meal to know that they made an impact on you and this is your thank you. Andrew : Then, maybe we go have another meal together and [grow up with us] or go out for drinks somewhere.

Got into the fights, got into the in real life social network, why it started. Let me see? Is there anything that I missed?

Anything that the audience of entrepreneurs would need to hear? Eddy : I think we got it. Andrew : When you charge the meal that you put together for me, by the way. Andrew : Better be. Better be.

Eddy : [Pretty good. Thus, utilizing its new growth capital effectively will be important and, to that point, the team plans to use its financing to develop its restaurant portfolio, create additional marketing channels, continue to enhance the user experience of its website, along with beginning to drive expansion into international markets — an area where Michel Daher can no doubt provide guidance.

In the near term, the startup plans to launch complementary business segments, including last-minute group get-togethers and happy hours in an effort to capture new users and continue appealing to its existing user base. The startup has an effective business model, which one can see carrying over well to other verticals. It looks like that bet was probably wrong. It doesn't seem to be lack of publicity, either: TechCrunch wrote five separate posts about the niche-of-all-niches app, taking Grubwithus' that-can't-be-true functionality quite seriously:.

The startup has constructed a model that aims to send groups of friends and strangers to a new restaurant by giving the merchant guaranteed business in the form of a prearranged number of seats under one prix fixe bill, while exposing hungry diners to like-minded new friends and new local restaurants. All users have to do is show up with an appetite, ready for some conversation, and Grubwithus takes care of the details — finding your table mates, check-splitting, tipping, etc.

If you've ever tried to eat dinner at a restaurant, but you couldn't figure out how to pay, and also you don't have anyone to eat with, this app will maybe be for you, who knows. But according to our tipster, Grubwithus is somehow not convincing people that this would be fun:.