#suggestaurant

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).

suggestastory: episode 12…when winters were cold.

while dina spent her days obsessively refreshing her email waiting for programming updates and guy contemplated the back-end, neal, jason and corey went out in search of restaurants to sign.

it was late november of 2012…the weather, unlike the springtime we’re experiencing now, was actually wintry cold. but worse than spending 8–10 hours walking the streets of new york in the sleet and snow was trying to get that first elusive sign up.

out of our little sales force, only neal had actual professional sales experience. but even so, the pitch had to be ironed out on the fly and each sale varied tremendously.

some restaurants shooed us out as soon as they heard we didn’t want a table for three. some waited long enough to hear the opening of the pitch only to tell us (oftentimes very unceremoniously) to beat it. some actually patiently listened through most of what was said only to say that they already had enough delivery sites. or that the owner wasn’t in but they’d get back to us. or that they would wait till we were live. or that we didn’t have enough restaurants signed up… (well yeah! say yes and we’ll have some!)

weeks went by and we started wondering if we’d get any signs up. and then, one day, this very day three years ago actually, suggestaurant walked into a new asian restaurant downtown. it was mid-afternoon, chilly, of course. it was jason’s turn to do the pitch and so he did. before he even officially finished it, the owner, a young guy, stopped him and said ‘let me get a pen.’ and that was that!

suggestastory: episode 11…p(t)sd…or, our first big mistake.

we’re going to start with the moral of the story here…if you have a complex site idea with many working components, do yourself two favors…1) hire a front-end and back-end programmer (or a team of them, whatever you can afford) to work together…at the same time. and 2) spend the time and money to hire an actual programmer you can see and talk to. outsourcing of any kind (domestic or overseas) is not worth it. not the money you think you’ll save and certainly not the time you think you have.*

i wonder if we would’ve listened if someone had told us…

but anyway.

now that the team was in place, we really got to work.

one of the things that was happening behind the scenes while the search for a programmer was underway was the designing of the site. there were bi-weekly meetings in every coffee shop and gin joint around the city that would have us. we texted, we emailed, we conference called.

the general site design was more or less settled on around the time our cto joined and, with a couple of (more) meetings to hash out some back-end thoughts and ideas, we were ready to begin programming.

it quickly turned out that although guy did know some front-end, he much preferred to spend time on the back-end. and since the back-end promised to be a doozy, we took his advice to hire a firm to take care of the rest. the firm he suggested was one that he had worked with before. a european company with call centers in the u.s.

the first order of business was converting dina’s illustrator files to psds. we asked how much it would cost…’we do it for free!’ they said. how could we say no to that?

we sent over our files with extremely detailed instructions. they were complex. we got a quote and a turnaround time. things were progressing well.

it started to get complicated when we got our first batch of html/css files back. there were a lot of things to check and a lot of corrections. we went back and forth. the price was upped here and there, the timeline extended. what should’ve taken only a few months took 11. (yep, you read that right.)

the large time difference between them and us didn’t help at all. oftentimes, only one email was sent/answered before they closed down for the day. we’re not sure if they did it on purpose or if they were just working and leaving email replying to the end but we often didn’t get any emails at all until around 8am our time and by the time we read them, checked whatever was required and got back to them, they were gone. weekends were out of course. the call center in the u.s., which sounded great at first, turned out to be nothing more than the purveyor of very superficial information about the company in general with the only way of contacting people involved with the actual project being via email. also, talking to the actual programmers was out of the question. maybe they didn’t speak english. or maybe they weren’t allowed to fraternize with the clients. either way, the only person one could communicate with was the account manager, who didn’t know much (any?) programming herself and had to relay any questions we had to the actual programmers, resulting in more delays. so a simple question could easily take 24 hours to be answered.

towards the end of the project, when we were so close we could smell the fresh air wafting in but the final tweaks were taking weeks upon weeks, we were told (upon asking why a delivery date they set themselves wasn't met by over a week)  — and we quote here — ‘we have never worked on a site this complicated so we have to learn as we go.’ not exactly something you want to hear from a professional front-end company advertising their ability to handle and do everything. in actuality, what we were asking them to do was to test the code on a few different browsers and make sure that things more or less looked the same.

we would’ve vented to our cto about it but, by that point, he was long gone. but more on that later.

suggestastory: episode 10…love at first site, part deux

while the events of the past few posts unfolded, we were working behind the scenes continuing the search for a programmer.

aside from the two previously mentioned leads to nowhere, things weren’t really progressing…until they suddenly were.

the wall of radio silence broke one day to let through a reply from a man named…well, let’s call him guy. he styled himself ‘a serial entrepreneur’, having worked on a few handfuls of startups. his biggest claim to fame was being part of a pretty large work-search internet company.

he sounded perfect!

jason and corey met him in a bar. over scotch on the rocks they discussed the merits of startups, various thoughts on programming in general and specific thoughts on programming suggestaurant. guy spoke with ease and conviction. the meeting (and scotch) went well and everyone agreed that a second date was in order. this time, dina joined in.

the setting was another bar. the subjects similar, the drinks the same. dina asked if guy ‘knew front-end programming’ and got a raised eyebrow in response. was there anything this man couldn’t do?

we (suggestaurant) left the bar elated. talking over each other while we walked to the train, stopping for extended periods. a walk of 5 minutes turned into 45. he liked us and seemed very interested. we loved him!

after that, we met him a few more times to make sure it wasn’t the scotch talking. neal came along too.

finally, after a few more solid dates, we decided to make our status official. the offer was put forth and duly accepted…and by the end of november, guy rounded out the crew as the chief technology officer.

we were on top of the world! five of us going forth to launch suggestaurant and become millionaires. easy peasy.