#suggestablog

the trusted options for dealing with a breakup...

suggestablog episode 15…starting over.

it had been almost a year since we started working on suggestaurant, and now we found ourselves almost at the beginning again…but worse.

a year ago we were fresh-faced and bushy-tailed. we had optimism galore. our bank accounts were full. and everyone was on our side.

after a year of blood and sweat and yelling and tears and sleepless nights, we were still not entirely done with the front-end (oh yes, remember our ukrainian friends? we were still going back and forth with them on a daily basis with no definitive end in sight). we had already spent a considerable amount of money on various marketing tools and more than expected on programming costs. neal and corey had quit their full time gigs to devote their total attention to the cause with the hope that we’d be well on our way by now. restaurants that we had signed up 6 to 8 months ago were getting restless. and new ones we were signing up wanted to know a launch date, which we couldn’t provide. and finally our cto, the guy that was going to bring this all home for us in the next month or two had just walked out, leaving us with a jumble of code we couldn’t understand or implement.

the first week after his departure was rough. mainly on jason and corey who had been with guy from the very first meeting and down to the house visit. jason had fought the hardest to give him another chance (or four) when things were looking bleak.

dina, watching them from the side, couldn’t help but smile (a little) at the fact that they were taking this exactly like a rom-com breakup. they would talk for hours of betrayal. of their feelings. of how they thought he was ‘the one’. if jason hadn’t been lactose intolerant, there would’ve been a ben & jerry’s shortage in nyc.

guy’s expression (top) at seeing jason and corey (bottom) at his door.

suggestastory: episode 14…love at first site, part III.

‘are we just going to his house?’ corey asked. he wasn’t joking.

‘we might have to.’ jason replied. he wasn’t joking either.

dina looked from one to the other and nodded. we were running out of options.

it had been a solid two weeks since we last heard from guy…and it wasn’t for lack of trying. we had started out with emails. when those went unanswered, we threw in some texts. then a couple of phone calls. by this point we were getting genuinely worried. we even googled his name to see if there were any news articles on him — programmer wins millions! programmer gets hit by bus! programmer launches social food delivery company…

it wasn’t that guy was the most responsive person of all time, but he was fairly good about replying to an email within a day or two. so two weeks of total radio silence was definitely out of character and why jason and corey found themselves outside of his apartment. (we were considering going full force but decided that less people was better in this case.)

to their surprise, guy opened the door…and he looked totally fine. well, minus the complete look of shock on his face. after a few moments of silence and staring (looks that said ‘is that really you?’ from both directions), he invited them in. the conversation from there went fairly well. although guy didn’t really offer a concrete reason for his absence, neither jason nor corey pressed him on it because he reassured them that the programming was on track and that we’d have a live site by the end of the summer (which was about 5 months away). after discussing a plan of action, everyone parted on good terms and with much hope for the future.

over the following weeks guy proceeded to be at his most responsive and most active. we got updates on progress, met a few times to go over various parts of the site that needed discussing and in general went full steam ahead. then things started to slow again.

daily correspondence changed to bi-weekly, then weekly. meetings got pushed back. texts started to go unreturned. also, although we were supposed to be launching in just a little while, the backend, despite all of our many discussions, hadn’t seemed to progress much at all. we were getting fed up. and whispers of discontent began to grow louder.

we finally made the decision to have one final talk with him, give him one final chance…and depending on the outcome, cut the cord or launch (eventually…if we got the site finished).

and right when we were considering a second house call, we got an email. the email was short and to the point — he didn’t want to work on suggestaurant anymore, he was out. before signing off, he gave us a name of another programming company that he had worked with in the past that he was certain could pick up the thread and bring us home.

suggestastory: episode 13…settling in.

when 2013 hit, we were all in the groove. jason, corey and neal were out selling on most days. when they weren’t selling, they were entering menus. really, it was mainly neal and jason selling while corey spearheaded the menu entering. meanwhile, dina continued on battling with the front-end programmers. and guy worked on the back-end.

every so often the team would get together for meetings, go over everyone’s progress. these meetings would take place at either dina’s apartment or at the atrium.

as many new yorkers know, there are many such atriums around the city. for those of you that don’t, imagine the food court of a very expensive mall. that’s kind of what an atrium is.

our atrium was semi-conveniently located in the center of the city. we’d get there, find a table, grab some extra chairs and settle in for a few hours. there was free wifi, various coffee-type places to choose from and bathrooms for our convenience. all in all, a perfect recipe for a temporary office.

the only issue was that our office had a revolving door of visitors. some were quiet and there to work. some were there to meet a friend. and some were just hanging out. and the noise level varied accordingly.

there was one group of people that came there to play chess on occasion. not sure if they were of the kasparov variety so only minimal concentration on the game was needed or if they just came there to chat and chess was just the pretext, either way, two things were clear…one was that they really loved to chat…and two was that at least one in their number must’ve been hard of hearing cause their conversations, magnified by the acoustics in the atrium, could be heard from the bathroom…and probably from a few blocks away.

they usually arrived when our meetings were in full swing so we carried on, talking over the din…partially and inadvertently also listening to their conversation. sometimes offering advice or commentary (amongst ourselves).