Update Meeting with Simon Zhou

Update Meeting with Simon Zhou

Date: 2/9

Notes

• Would be good to visualize it → unsure how wine delivers to wineries and how that process occurs
  • Where is the wedge (how different restaurants acquire wine)
  • What is our hunch on where the pain points occur (is it fancier restaurants? → think about the types of restaurants that face the problems and for from there)
• A lot of smaller companies → how to get an MVP as quickly in front of users to begin iterating
  • What a lot of technical founders get wrong in the beginning → overly focus on initial offering
• Chicken and egg (supply versus demand) → hunch is that it is good to start on the wine side
• What if Flemings/other restaurants work with the same restaurant chain?
• Regulation question → trying to understand the lowest friction way to gain foothold in this type of marketplace without having to deal with regulations
• Interesting to hear about → what is the end user profile (who is the ideal customer profile (ICP)?)
  • Initial sense/hypothesis around who has the most desperation for what you’re building
  • Have conversations with smaller scale/ less on the fancy side restaurants too
  • Am i building something they don’t really need (nice to have) or something they really need (mission critical)
  • Have an initial ICP on both ends (restaurants/ wineries)
  • Asking questions around scale on wineries side (ex: how many wine bottles do you sell at different times of the year?)
    • What are the different types of restaurants/distributors that they work with?
  • Restaurant side a bit more straightforward in terms of questions
    • How do you source your wines
    • How many wineries do you work with
    • Do you work with an intermediary in between
    • How much would they pay for help with this process
  • Start with number of wine bottles that maps to unit of sales
  • Understand on restaurant side volume that they sell at different times of the year
    • Are there any patterns between i.e. Flemings and another restaurant with a similar profile
• Cold out reach versus friendlies → be aware of the different reactions and feedback that you will get from both
  • In the early days → assess for authentic early desperation
    • Only working through network/friendlies → won’t necessarily get the same brutal, honest feedback
  • Oftentimes hard to do cold outreach to build marketplace though
• Sense of entire industry → works a lot in terms of referrals and relationships
  • As long as you bring on one, will probably be easier to bring on more in the same region
• Working through network probably won’t refine the ICP on both sides → only cold outreach will because they are the ones who will give the important feedback (this is important to me I really need this versus I don’t need this)