TEC Week 7: Cooking up a Good Startup

Wow that went quickly. If my calculations are correct, this will be my penultimate blog post for TEC, so I thought I would have a little fun with this one (not that I don’t usually try to make my blog posts fun).

One of the recurring activities I’ve mentioned in my blog posts this summer is my attempts to take up cooking. As the summer progressed, I gradually got more into it and tried fancier dishes moving from simple pasta and tomato sauce to stir fries, homemade Chinese food, and…more elaborate pastas. I’ve really started enjoying the whole process, not just consuming the end result, which got me thinking about how my culinary experiments relate to my professional experience with TEC this summer.

In many ways, learning to cook is like starting your own business. You start off by observing what’s going on around you and saying to yourself, “Hey, I think I can do that,” or “I bet I can do that better.” You begin gathering the resources you need to make your idea a reality. For cooking, it’s going to the store to find the right ingredients. For startups, it’s learning about your industry, finding the necessary skills, and obtaining funding. In a way, VCs are like a supermarket for entrepreneurs because they can offer numerous resources like funding, advice, and networking. It’s usually wise to shop around for the best deal, but unfortunately, there are no reward card specials.

Once the pieces are in place, it’s time to start executing. At first, it’s hard to know if what you’re doing is right. Is this chicken fully cooked? Does my website draw in new customers? You can read books or seek out advice from others, but ultimately it’s about trial and error. There’s no right or wrong way to do things, it’s all about finding your niche and style. Things may not work out perfectly the first time, but you can learn from your mistakes. You can’t be afraid to fail. You just have to get your product out there and iterate. If you stick with it and adapt, you will slowly get better and build your culinary repertoire and revenue streams.

Picking up cooking or starting your own business is easier than ever. With globalization and improvements in technology, costs are lower than ever. You can get cheap utensils and ingredients if you go with generic brands. You can also get cheap computing power and software using cloud computing services. You can’t always do everything on your own, so sometimes it makes sense to outsource tasks. For example you might buy a sauce from the store or hire a developer for a project. You’re never alone either. Millions of recipes can be found online for free while sites like Odesk are good places to find cheap outsourced help. You should be careful though, as Tony Hsieh advised, not to outsource or cut corners on your core competency. This could be the quality of beef in your stir fry or Zappos’ warehouses.

There is a sizable psychological barrier to entry into both cooking and entrepreneurship. If you’ve never done it before, it can be intimidating because you don’t know where to start. It’s tempting to take the safe route and eat out or work at a stable job. Once you dive in though, it can be very rewarding. Even though your dishes may not be restaurant grade and you may be taking a pay-cut at your startup, there’s something innately rewarding about creating something with your own hands and being able to enjoy the fruits of your labor. Plus you can have more fun goofing around in your kitchen or your startup office.

I’m sure it takes a certain type of personality to enjoy cooking or entrepreneurship. However, for that select group of people, it’s very exciting and a lot of fun when done right. Fortunately, I think I fall into both categories.

Come back next week for my final post! In the meantime, here’s some photos of dishes I’ve made this summer. Comments welcome!

Culinary Experiments

Note: This was originally written by Summer TEC Intern Steve Liu on the True Ventures TEC Program Blog. It was reprinted here with his permission.