#suggestastory

[suggestaurant]

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!

that very evening two more restaurants were added to the roster. and after that, they more or less started rolling in.

[suggestaurant]

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.

*the views expressed in this blog (here and to follow later) about outsourcing are based on our specific experiences. we do not believe that all outsourcing is bad. situations differ and so do outcomes.

[suggestaurant]

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.

…but if launching a startup was actually easy, then everyone would be doing it.

[suggestaurant]

suggestastory: episode 9…and then there were four.

“i’m so excited i gotta smoke a cigarette.” said neal, beaming.

neal and jason were standing outside the ainsworth after a solid meal and quite a few beers. the evening had passed in a flood of excitement and plans. jason had told neal all about suggestaurant and, pretty much from the get-go, every sentence out of jason’s mouth was met with a ‘really!?’ or a ‘wow, that’s great!’

jason had had neal in mind for an addition to the team for a while. neal was trustworthy, a good people-person and the fact that their friendship went back to the early days of high school didn’t hurt either. for his part, neal had always wanted to start his own company. he, like jason and corey, had tried his hand at his own business — a company having to do with energy sales. but things had stalled there and he was on the lookout for something new. and that's when jason called.

it had originally, of course, started with poker, the great uniter of man (in this case, boys). in plainview high school, poker was king during the jason, corey and neal years so it made perfect sense that their friendship would blossom over the hours spent playing it.

after high school, everyone parted ways for college but jason and neal stayed in touch. and when the time came to getting a sales person for suggestaurant, jason knew that neal was the right man for the job.

so a few days after that cigarette outside of the ainsworth (and a few more cigarettes i’m sure), neal officially joined the team as the chief restaurant officer.

poker set won by jason during his poker days that’s still being used at all plainview alumni poker games.

[suggestaurant]

*** suggestaschool: week 7 * suggestion box ***

we got somethin’ real important to tell you so just sit down and listen… you know we’ve been together such a long long time (such a long 7-week time) and now we’re ready to lay it on the line you know it’s halloween and our heart is open wide gonna give you something so you know what’s on our mind a gift real special, so take off the top take a look inside — it’s the suggestion box

it’s easy to do just follow these steps

1: after ordering, click the ‘suggest’ button above your feed. 2: choose a friend(s) that you’d like to send your suggestion to and select the radio button either for ‘someone specific’ or 'someone & everyone’. 3: press 'suggest’ to put your suggestion in their box.