Subject: SpoonRocket postmortem
Hi investors,
It is with a heavy heart that I have to say sorry. Sorry for letting you all down, sorry for losing your money, and sorry for not being able to turn this into something great we had all hoped for.
I wish I could pinpoint to the one thing that we did wrong, but the truth is that we just did too many darn things wrong. In a business where the margin of error is paper thin, we simply did not execute with enough finesse and precision to make it work. It wasn't that we didn't try hard enough or hustle enough or work hard enough, we probably tried too much and kept making mistakes over and over again. All of our mistakes resulted in a lack of focus on the thing that got SpoonRocket its initial traction in the first place ($0-$2M ARR in 3 months), and that was to provide an awesome meal delivered to your door fast, good, and cheap. Our product was just not cheap enough, just not fast enough, and just not good enough. Lots of people liked our product, some even loved it and are sad to see it go, but it just wasn't at the point where most everyone loved it...not even close.
By the end of it all, we had tested so many different things that SpoonRocket's product offering became a mosh pit of mediocrity and nothing in particular was remarkable. And then, we had gotten into this rat race where we kept adding new and random items to the menu because for every item we added, we saw an incremental increase in conversion. In fact, it got so bad that the idea of selling skateboards on the app was being tossed around at one point. It was like the heroin we couldn't quit because it added a little bit more sales, but overall took away our focus from doing things that mattered to make the product and experience itself better. We became too distracted with searching for the next local maximum rather than optimizing for the global maximum.
The product suffered as a result; our food was not as consistent as it should be, our delivery experience was not as smooth and refined as it needed to be, the packaging was not as clean and beautiful as it should have been. The list really goes on, and beyond just the product. If we had focused on nailing a product that was really good, really fast, and really cheap, we may have had a fighting chance instead of the fate we're suffering now. We really messed up and got addicted to throwing crap on the wall to see what sticks; now all we're left with is a wall full of crap. I still believe the idea of a quality meal at an affordable price delivered in 15 minutes is still possible and has huge potential to be a profitable business, we just weren't good enough to deliver it ourselves. The food business is such a specific type of business that we really should have done a better job seeking out mentors earlier in the food production/operations space.
Different moments from the past 3 years keep playing back in my head, and I would think, "yeah if we had only done it differently then, things would be different now." But of course, hindsight is always 20/20. We may have been the first to deliver hot meals as fast as we did, but as I've always said, the history books only record the winners. We are not the winners this time around. Anyhow, thank you for your support all along and wishing we could have done a million things differently, I'm sad the story had to end this way. That said, please reach out if there's anything I can clarify or help with.
Regretfully yours,
Anson Tsui
Hi investors,
It is with a heavy heart that I have to say sorry. Sorry for letting you all down, sorry for losing your money, and sorry for not being able to turn this into something great we had all hoped for.
I wish I could pinpoint to the one thing that we did wrong, but the truth is that we just did too many darn things wrong. In a business where the margin of error is paper thin, we simply did not execute with enough finesse and precision to make it work. It wasn't that we didn't try hard enough or hustle enough or work hard enough, we probably tried too much and kept making mistakes over and over again. All of our mistakes resulted in a lack of focus on the thing that got SpoonRocket its initial traction in the first place ($0-$2M ARR in 3 months), and that was to provide an awesome meal delivered to your door fast, good, and cheap. Our product was just not cheap enough, just not fast enough, and just not good enough. Lots of people liked our product, some even loved it and are sad to see it go, but it just wasn't at the point where most everyone loved it...not even close.
By the end of it all, we had tested so many different things that SpoonRocket's product offering became a mosh pit of mediocrity and nothing in particular was remarkable. And then, we had gotten into this rat race where we kept adding new and random items to the menu because for every item we added, we saw an incremental increase in conversion. In fact, it got so bad that the idea of selling skateboards on the app was being tossed around at one point. It was like the heroin we couldn't quit because it added a little bit more sales, but overall took away our focus from doing things that mattered to make the product and experience itself better. We became too distracted with searching for the next local maximum rather than optimizing for the global maximum.
The product suffered as a result; our food was not as consistent as it should be, our delivery experience was not as smooth and refined as it needed to be, the packaging was not as clean and beautiful as it should have been. The list really goes on, and beyond just the product. If we had focused on nailing a product that was really good, really fast, and really cheap, we may have had a fighting chance instead of the fate we're suffering now. We really messed up and got addicted to throwing crap on the wall to see what sticks; now all we're left with is a wall full of crap. I still believe the idea of a quality meal at an affordable price delivered in 15 minutes is still possible and has huge potential to be a profitable business, we just weren't good enough to deliver it ourselves. The food business is such a specific type of business that we really should have done a better job seeking out mentors earlier in the food production/operations space.
Different moments from the past 3 years keep playing back in my head, and I would think, "yeah if we had only done it differently then, things would be different now." But of course, hindsight is always 20/20. We may have been the first to deliver hot meals as fast as we did, but as I've always said, the history books only record the winners. We are not the winners this time around. Anyhow, thank you for your support all along and wishing we could have done a million things differently, I'm sad the story had to end this way. That said, please reach out if there's anything I can clarify or help with.
Regretfully yours,
Anson Tsui