Launch Fast and Learn
The GatherMade Story
As Product Managers, there’s nothing more exciting than launching a new product out into the world. There’s also nothing more scary than launching a new product. Oftentimes, we spend ages chasing perfection - whether it’s cooking up the perfect name for the product, or coming up with the perfect design. But as GatherMade shows, starting with perfect isn’t what’s most important. Instead, you should get an MVP out to market quickly, collect feedback from real customers, and iterate. Executing on quick cycles of testing enabled the team to learn fast and ultimately led them to GatherMade.
When I first met Mackenzie and Joe in the summer of 2020, they had built a working prototype that they were calling Bozzy. They were one of a dozen startups selected by Pear VC to participate in the summer accelerator and I was introduced to them as a mentor. They knew that they wanted to build a company that addressed the needs of busy families, and their first hypothesis with Bozzy was that they could help relieve the mental load that parents carry.
Mackenzie and Joe envisioned Bozzy as a marketplace that would help busy parents take care of anything that could be done virtually. With the help of a friend, they built a prototype app for Bozzy that allowed families to enter requests and manage them in the app, and lined up some experienced moms to answer the inquiries. Some of the most popular asks were planning a birthday party and finding activities for kids.
I tried it too and it was pretty awesome to be able to outsource the long postponed task of finding and scheduling a piano tuner to somebody else. I could see how outsourcing some things to someone else would be great. But at the same time, I found it hard to describe what I could ask Bozzy to do for me, which meant that it wasn’t automatic for me to think of tasks to assign to someone else. And on top of that, there are many tasks - like cooking and cleaning - that need to get done in a household but just can’t be done virtually.
So Mackenzie and Joe started to think about other, more targeted ways that they could help families. One idea was around building a community that would give mom influencers the ability to reach other busy parents and share their expertise. They started the discovery process with user interviews. They wanted to know: Would busy parents value the expertise of the community? Would mom influencers need a platform to reach parents?
As they talked to families, they didn’t get clear signs that a community was a huge underserved need, but instead what they kept hearing over and over again was how stressful meal planning and preparation was. Could this theme be their new direction? They did a survey to learn how families approached meal planning and preparation and assess how much user need there was. Sure enough, the survey confirmed that meals were a constant pain point for their target market of busy families.
Mackenzie and Joe spun up a quick website on Wix and launched a pilot called Zesti starting with just 5 families and 2 chefs in 1 market. They did things that didn’t scale - emailing each person individually to remind them when the menu was posted, personally delivering meals, and following up after each order to gather feedback. Things went well and they grew more excited about validating their hypothesis.
Once Zesti had been up and running for a few weeks, they started to think about growth. Back when they were starting the pilot and looking for chefs, they had families reach out and tell them this was exactly what they were looking for. Mackenzie and Joe now invited these families to try out Zesti.
The new families loved the service, but the funny thing was, they didn’t like the Zesti website. They thought it looked too polished and corporate. They liked the idea that Zesti was someone in the community cooking for you. With that feedback, San Mateo Meals was born. It was the same thing as Zesti, only the styling of the website looked less polished and the name reminded families that it was a local operation. Each week, San Mateo Meals added more families and orders.
As they continue to grow, Mackenzie and Joe realized that the name “San Mateo Meals” wouldn’t scale up if they expand outside of the San Mateo area. They heard the feedback from their customers and wanted to retain the same ethos of community in their name. After starting as Bozzy, pivoting to Zesti, and renaming to San Mateo Meals, they have arrived as GatherMade.
The incredible part is that this whole evolution happened in the span of just a few months. While perfectionists could still be sitting there trying to get version A right, they’re already onto version D and much farther down the path to product-market fit. When you’re trying to get a new product out to market, do things that don’t scale. Don’t be afraid to make adjustments as you learn. The path to product market fit isn’t a straight line, so just get out there and start exploring.
If you live in the San Mateo area, you can try it out for yourself and leave your weeknight cooking to GatherMade. Trust me, the carnitas tacos are so flavorful that everyone in my family, even my super picky five year old, loved them!
GatherMade Evolution
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