Transcript

The daily impact that you have on people's lives. I would take somebody off the street who is passionate and believes in your vision and the product, but it was really what is the impact that we have on society. Awesome. Very excited to be here with Bhavin, Founder, CTO of GRUBBRR. Yeah, appreciate it, man. So it's kind of crazy. So we were chatting. So multi-time found myself, but moreso on the operational, fundraising, sales side of the house. OK, You're a sole founder on the technical side of the house. Yes. So if someone's out there and they want to start their own business, very technical, how do you go about building a business and building the operations? Like how do you think about that and how do you surround yourself with the right people? Great question. So I'll give you my personal experience. Yeah. I thought that when you build technology and when you build the product that's the end of the journey and you have the world, yeah. Then you realize that's 10% of what you have to do as a founder. Yeah. You still have to figure out sales, distribution, support, fundraising, collecting, which is a big thing, gotta make sure you get paid, and then getting customer feedback. Yes. And updating your product. So one thing I would suggest as a technical founder, don't try to perfect it. Build the MVP Find the first customer. That's actually great, right MVP minimum viable product like what is the simplest solution you can with that first customer to kind of create that money making engine and like what works so you can find like that product market fit out there yes so, I did that mistake of having the perfect product and as a technical founder, you want to fix every kink, every bug, and you think it's a product market fit, but when you get out, you realize it's completely different or you are 70-80% there and there's always a 30% gap. So knowing that right, that perfectionist mentality, which as a founder you have, no matter what, you have to fight that urge. We say like working with that customer, that first customer, that second customer. What type of feedback are you looking for and how do you utilize that properly? I'll answer that two different ways. So 1 you, you realize there's a business aspect of it, which is hey, I did refunds, but what about my partial refund? Or I'll give you another one. Hey, I do modifiers in my restaurant business, but I also have premium modifiers. But then pizza business, I want to split. So you'll learn all these business functionalities. But you'll also learn technically there are challenges like your products needs to sync, they need to update, they have to regularly not crash. So there are two aspects of it. and --they do. They're going to get those calls at 3:00 AM. Yeah, you know, and you're running the support, which honestly give you some of the best feedback. Yes, you gotta pick up the phone. Yes. And then don't be shy. Don't get over them. And you will, where you're trying to improve the product and you have a tight deadline, but you have to fix the technical scale of the product as well. That's awesome. Yeah. So then as you're building out your team, like how do you think about that culture aspect as you're building? Is that important? Not important? Culture is everything. I would take somebody off the street who's passionate and believes in your vision and the product versus somebody who is an MIT grad and knows everything about AI and coding. I would pick up the guy who is willing to work 24/7 and believes in your vision. I had that. One of my core values was grit. Grit, hospitality mindset, right? No job is too big or too small sometimes you gotta clean toilets. another time you gotta be the executive and make decisions. Yes, I'll give you an example my first customer was in Miami. I forgot the screwdriver. I went for the install myself. I did not have a screwdriver. And the restaurant owner sees that, but he sees how passionate you are. Yeah. I go to Best Buy or Home Depot, pick up the screwdriver and the tools, and come back. Took me four days to install the first kiosk. So ironically, you mentioned a screwdriver. I had a similar thing I had to get one right away going out to the Walmart next to me and pick one up for an install. I hired a third party contracts for the install, but they didn't bring a screwdriver. So like the littlest things you have to put like, make sure you bring a screwdriver and people like, why are you putting that on there, right? Look, I experienced it once. I don't wanna experience it again, right? Lesson learned. But I think the restauranteur sees your passion and you understand their pain, they're seeing yours and that's it. You work through it, right? And then you might have a drink or a coffee the next day. You laugh about it, right? But those build those bonding memories. You know, and as you build and scale, yes, that's awesome. So. Tell me a little bit about GRUBBRR though, like fantastic product, it's a kiosk, but obviously it's significantly more than that. So tell me a little bit about that. But also more importantly, just from an industry standpoint, where do you see it heading over the next two to three years looking? Again great question. I think restaurant industry technology is too siloed. Yeah, there are tools for every trade. So you have ordering, back of the house, front of the house, payments, POS, you have drive through, you have menu boards and now you have self-service. I think future is going to be one platform and the customer would like to get from one place. I'll give you an example. When you have a Mac or Apple user, everything you have around is Apple. One ecosystem, one ecosystem. I think that's why it's going towards. And the second thing is I think there's a SaaS overload. Customers are seeing that and I think there'll be some consolidation and people trying to sell one product, especially with AI and machine learning and automation coming in so fast. Yeah, that's awesome, Bhavin. Hey, appreciate it, man. This is great. Yeah.