#grubwithus

I've talked before about startups like Tint who've pivoted from consumer facing products (products that don't charge or make money) to business/service focused products (products that make money). Today, I wanted to talk about the other side of the equation, which I don't often see, startups whose product was making money who pivoted to a different free consumer app with less clear business models.

I missed the news, but apparently back in November 2013 Grubwithus.com announced they were scrapping their business model of enabling strangers to dine together and instead turning into a physical locations bookmarking app.

WhenI first heard about GrubWithUs I thought it was a great idea. Getting strangers together to eat together by taking care of all the meal logistics ahead of time. You basically pre-paid for your meal, showed up, ate, and met some new people. I also remember reading a lot of press about how they initially started out in Chicago by organizing their own meals this style and it took off there, which was also probably part of the reason they got into Y-Combinator.

We have always been passionate in our belief that technology and social media should serve to enhance your life offline, not draw you away from it. Grubwithus was founded with this intention, but due to certain limitations, we never felt like we were fully accomplishing this goal on a broad scale.

So we studied what was working and what was holding us back and we quickly noticed that while specific meals have their limitations (date, time, place, cuisine, theme, etc.), the aspirational aspect of trying a new restaurant does not. Users were compiling restaurant wishlists on their profile pages, and others were chiming in saying they’ve been and what they thought. Suddenly these “wishlists” were to-do lists that people were checking off place by place.

We surveyed the tech landscape and realized that no one was tapping into the concept of intent graphs, and we had our “aha!” moment and got right to work.

The result is Superb: a mobile app that allows you to collect the places you want to go, catalogue the best places you’ve been, and shows you places you have in common with friends. The app is location-based, and it goes way beyond food. From restaurants to street art, live music venues to hiking trails, Superb elevates the best spots around you based on overall community popularity.

Superb's simplicity is what makes it addicting. Users swipe right to mark places to do, swipe left to mark places they are not interested in and tap the center button to mark that they have already been to a place. If a user is interested in a place, Superb unveils others who are also interested, highlighting friends at the top for quick access to message them through the Superb Conversation feature.

Millions of people all over the country are turning to the Internet — so they can get off the Internet.

Unlike Facebook and Twitter, which focus on keeping peoples' social interactions online, a growing number of social-networking sites are helping users take online connections offline.

The idea is simple: make your initial meeting online. Then meet in person, in the real world.

Entrepreneurs are running with the concept. For instance, Eddy Lu and Daishin Sugano created Grubwithus, a social dining network that brings people together over tasting menus at restaurants. "Grubbers" can browse and reserve seats at meals online or from an iPhone, and then show up, meet new people, eat and chat.

Lu and Sugano came up with the idea after moving from Los Angeles to Chicago and realizing how hard it was to meet new friends.

"We're five years out of college, and it was really hard meeting new people in a new city," Lu says. "We tried bars and clubs, but it's so hard and inefficient. It's hard to make a meaningful connection."

Grubwithus took off.

"Immediately meals sold out," Lu said. "We realized this is a service people want — and need."

Since that first meal in Chicago in 2010, Grubwithus has expanded to more than 50 cities. Grubwithus tripled its users in 2012 and now have more than 80,000 grubbers.

Wednesday night I got to meet the founders of easel.io. This was one of the more unusual GWU I've been to, mostly because it was so expensive that it scared away the usual crowd. I decided to attend the night before, figuring that the intimacy would create a different dynamic with it's own opportunities and I was right. 

Yonas Beshawred was the other guy besides me and the founders to show up, all the way from the south bay even, and we hit it off talking about the intersection of ratings and cloud services. 

The food was great, it was Osha Thai after all. Over dinner I got a bit of an inside scoop about the YC S12 batch which was pretty enlightening. Hearing the easel guys talk about how their site has grown and the challenges they've faced. Gave me a lot to think about for after Tinj launches. 

Final verdict for the evening? Pricy, but worth it.

Created with cinemagr.am by @cwarzel

We'll be checking out out Modular Robotics, Foundry Group, and going to Simple Energy for our "Startups + Politics: Why you should give a shit" panel. Then we'll be capping it off with a Grubwithus meal.