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Gagan Biyani

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27
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2016-04-08
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2016-04-08
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1
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  1. “Hey, thanks so much, Harry. Really enjoyed speaking with you and thank you for putting all this work into this podcast and helping other entrepreneurs out there learn how to be successful.”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Yeah, I mean, I think we want to build the biggest restaurant in the world. And I think that you will see over the next five years us grow from a company that people kind of, I think the people who really use Sprigg understand it. I think most other people are kind of like, well, you know, it's just a digital restaurant. What's the big deal? But I think as we grow and scale, people will start to have the same kind of commentary about us that they've had about Amazon, which is a very retrospective commentary, right? It's like after the fact, oh, this makes a lot of sense. I get it now. And my view is that five years from now, people are really going to understand and Sprigg is going to become a household name in most major cities around America.”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Oh man, you know, I think there's certainly a real positive to being someone who is aggressive and hard charging and wants to win. I think that's certainly a characteristic that I exude. I think sometimes that can result in moving a little too quickly. And I think patience is something that is I'm learning is just as important as aggressiveness. And I'm learning to have both at the same time. And it's definitely one of my biggest lessons for myself and particularly when managing a team. It's very different when you're managing yourself or just five people. You're working together. Everyone, you know, it's very different. But now we have hundreds of employees at Sprigg and you just have to be much more patient and responsible about how you make decisions and how intentional you are about planning.”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Yeah, I mean, honestly, there are a number of people. I think early on in my career, ADO RESI from the founder Institute was probably one of my biggest mentors. He taught me everything I knew about raising capital, everything I knew about building a company. And then from there, I think more recently Simon Rothman at Greylock has just been an incredible advisor and investor to me as we've built SPRIG. I mean, I talked to him every week. I was joke. He's the man, he's the voice in my head because we talk by phone every week and helps me think through all of our tough decisions at Sprigg. And I'm starting to build a relationship with the team at Social Capital now, and they're slowly starting to have the same kind of impact that Greylock's having. So it's pretty amazing to have the opportunity to work with, you know, three really great organizations throughout my career.”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “My favorite book, fascinating question. So one of my favorite books is this book called The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, which is an international relations book I read.”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Yeah, I wish that we had started the process of publicly talking about our mission earlier. I think that we always wanted to do the right thing, but we were a bit shy early on in talking about it. And you'll see, we've started talking about a lot more, but actually you'll see even more over this year us just really clearly sharing with the public why SPRIG is an important company for the world. And I wish I had done that earlier.”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I think I just had a new one last night. I'm a simple guy, so it's just grilled chicken with broccoli and sweet potato puree. I just think we do such a good job with that grilled chicken with the skin on and it tastes great. It's moist when it arrives. And, you know, it's a good balance meal.”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Society, but also, but simultaneously providing opportunities for hundreds of thousands or eventually, I think it'll be millions of drivers out there to be able to make some extra income and fill their seats. And that shows in the way that Lyft presents itself publicly in the way they run the company. And so when we started Sprigg, we both have focused a lot on building a growth machine and learning how to do that and then simultaneously on making sure that we have a real true core mission at the company and a soul. And I think that we've done that. And I think our customers realize that we care. And that's something that really has helped us be successful.”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Yeah, I mean, I think at Udemy, the biggest lesson was that all consumer businesses are about growth. And I learned every part of growth marketing. And I got the opportunity to run every type of, you know, a ton of different marketing channels on every marketing channel, but a ton of them from business development channels like making small scale email partnerships to doing paid acquisition to doing retention and referral marketing and really got the opportunity to learn how to build a team of marketers who can go and build a really big consumer business. And then at Lyft, what was fascinating was I, you know, I had a very small impact on Lyft. I was a growth marketer there, but really what I got to do was learn from the team there. And the team taught me about brand and about having a soul. And I think one thing that I just really admire, the Lyft Founders and the team, is how mission driven they were from day one on making car ownership not be an expectation for moderns.”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “If we didn't continue to want, if we didn't think you were an interesting partner for us, I very clearly manage the timelines throughout the entire conversation. So every meeting I will talk about where we're at on our timeline and give them updates on the timeline as well as on the business.”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Yes, of course. So what I do is I tell if I'm entering a strict fundraising process and there are times where you just talk to VCs casually, get to know them, whatever, but if you're actually entering a strict fundraising process, usually my philosophy is to have a very clear timeline with them. So I will literally tell them, hey, I expect this process to last three to four weeks and we're starting our first meetings next week. We'd love to have you there and we'd love to meet with you. And then we'll go and do all the first meetings the first week. And sometimes you'll have second meetings, but usually they'll happen the second week. And then as the process is going on, you start to realize whether or not it's going to take you three weeks, four weeks, or six weeks to do the process. And once you figure that out, you start to tell everyone, hey, things are going pretty well. We've got four firms interested or we've got two firms we're talking to. We're talking to, you know, we're going to make a decision by next week and we'd like to make sure that you have the opportunity to be there during that timeline because we really like you and we wouldn't be continuing to talk to you.”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Every VC, the first meeting happens within seven to ten days of each other. And then that way, the second and third meetings happen within seven to ten days of each other as well. And so all the timing works out so that people have to make their decisions at the same time, which creates an opportunity for you to be able to have choice when you're making the final decision. And then the most important thing is you have to sell the vision. You have to really explain why the business is going to be change the world or be really impactful to people's lives because ultimately that's the type of business most good VCs know that it's not about how like beautiful the business model is it's about how beautiful the product is if it's successful and how much it changes the world and so that is one of the key things that we talked about Sprague is you know how the world might be different if people could you know if families in the Midwest could press a button”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Yeah, I would say I've done it more than a lot of other folks. In nine rounds, I was directly involved in about six of them, and then three of them happened sort of while I was involved in the company, but not actively pitching. So anyway, so I've done a number of financing. And I think there's a couple things that are important. One, timing. You have to time the financing at a point where you have achieved a real milestone. So you have to be able to share with VCs like, hey, we accomplished this goal or this task that is a critical company building moment for us. And I think that's really important. I think the second thing that's important is managing the process. So you want to have a good pipeline of VCs that you're talking to. You can't just talk to one or two. You want to talk to, I find five to ten. I think a lot of VCs want you to talk to less than five and just go to the top two or three. I think that's foolish. We usually talk to five to ten VCs, people we like. And then I do them all at the same time. So, you know, you...”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Approach, in my opinion. And then the second part of this is how do you compare spray to other vertically integrated players? And we did that by showing them our execution. I think both Greylock and Social Capital felt like the execution of the team that we built here with all of the people at Sprigg who work hard to build this business, this team is probably the best team out there. And we know this because when these companies fold, a lot of times they call us and they ask us, hey, do you want to have some of our team members? And some of them are great, but for the most part, I'd say that our team is really special and has something unique and we're really proud of that.”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Yeah, I mean, I think our approach, though there were a couple companies with that approach, it's kind of a two-phase process. First, you have to convince, you know, in this case, Greylock and Social Capital at Sprague, we have to convince them that your approach is the right approach. And then you have to convince them you're the best company within that competitive set across that approach. In the first one, I think that our argument is that the value proposition that the Sprig provides is unique and differentiated from any other value proposition you can get in food today. It has the opportunity as it scales to become more convenient, lower priced, and better quality, which are the three measures I view consumers make their decisions based on. We can be more convenient, cheaper, and better quality than what you can get in the modern food landscape. That's a huge reason why the vertically integrated approach is the right.”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Yeah, I mean, at this point, honestly, we don't really think of ourselves as having many competitors, direct competitors, because in San Francisco, most of the direct competitors have either pivoted into a slightly different business or have fallen by the wayside. And so actually, what's interesting is I agree with your statement, which is that our ability to raise money and the fact that VCs believed in us and our company really helped us weather the storm, if you will, as other companies were falling by the wayside. But now that we're in a position of strength, I think it's a different game. And actually, we're trying to figure out, okay, now that there's no other competitor in San Francisco, how much market share can we go and take? So I certainly think capital helped us get to the point we are today.”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Yeah, I mean, you know, you look at a number of factors. I think the overall thing you're looking for is which city is the most likely to succeed, right? So really, you just want to say, hey, if you're going in your second market, you want to pick a market that you know is going to be successful because you don't get that many chances to have a second market. And once you get to the third, fourth, and fifth market, then you start to think about other things. So in our third market, one of the big things we're trying to think about is, okay, there are lots of other food delivery companies. Should we go after a market that is underserved, right, and prove that sprig works anywhere, even in a market that's maybe less well-known than, say, Chicago? Or do we go after the biggest possible market size? And I think those are questions that are very case by case and depend on how much capital you want to put into a market versus how much time you have and how the other companies in the space are doing. It really depends on the situation.”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “And eventually, I think Lyft learned the lesson. And again, I don't know, even though I'm friends with them, I don't have any insider information here. Ultimately, if you look at Lyft, what they eventually decided was, hey, we're going to compete in the United States and focus on the United States and be Uber here. And obviously they have partnerships with people abroad. But Lyft is extremely broad in its scale in the United States. Uber, on the other hand, I think once it figured out the model, it scaled as fast as humanly possible. And they did a fantastic job there. But it's important to understand that they were somewhat patient about figuring out the model first, which is what I think we're doing at Sprague. We believe in being patient, nailing the model, and then growing as fast as possible.”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “So it took Uber over a year and a half to get out of San Francisco. They were in San Francisco and they were working on the product and trying to get it right. And then they launched their second market. And then it took them, I think it was New York, I want to say. And then it took them another six plus months before they launched their third market. And then their acceleration curve is just ridiculously fast. And by the way, those months are, you know, I don't remember the exact months, but that's sort of the rough timeline. Lyft, I was at Lyft when we were doing this. And because of Uber's head start, actually Lyft went from launch San Francisco to LA was like about six months roughly. And then from LA to the next market, it was only three months. And then if you remember, about a year later, they actually launched 60 cities in one day. It was in the double digits of cities in one day. So Lyft actually expanded much faster than Uber did in terms of if you just think about the context of that expansion.”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Yeah, it's interesting, actually. I would say that Uber was a little bit more responsible in their growth than Lyft was, frankly. So it's interesting that you have that perspective.”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Yeah, I mean, so I think that ultimately, if you look at the story of Amazon or Uber, Sprigg has a lot in common with that in terms of what market we're facing, which is a market where you would not necessarily expect that it would be winner-take-all by virtue of the fact that it doesn't have the same kind of network effects. I mean, Uber certainly has some and Amazon has some, but they're not nearly as strong as the network effects of, say, a Facebook. But at the same time, what people forget is”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “By protecting food from oxygen, you actually reduce the chances that that food will degrade over time since oxygenation is one of the biggest reasons why food doesn't look as good. So those are some interesting things that we've learned.”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Yeah, I mean, so obviously one of the biggest challenges we have is that we deliver food and the delivery process means that the food is not going to be the same as what it would like to be plated. And so what's been fascinating is just how many little tricks we can do to sort of enable us to deliver food that still tastes great. A good example is we used to do chicken thighs and we'd shred them or we'd cut them up. And we noticed that actually skin on chicken breast actually or chicken thighs do great because the skin actually creates a protective layer that ensures that the quality that the chicken stays moist and tasty even if it's a half hour delivery or something like that. So that's an example of something we do. Another thing, you know, burritos actually speaking of chipotle do super well because burritos actually the wrap protects the food on the inside from oxygen.”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “As they're doing this, they're running into challenges, which is that at scale, this type of food has a much higher likelihood of incident rates. And what you have to do is you have to build what we're doing at Sprigg is we're building technology that allows us to, at this scale, it's not very relevant. But when we're in 30, 40 markets, we'll have technology that allows us to have root cause analysis to track the food from where it's produced to when it gets consumed so that in the event of an outbreak, we could very easily identify which batch of food we were using, of produce we were using that had an issue and deal with it, which is something Chipotle can't do because their supply chain is not sufficiently instrumented.”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Yeah, no, it's a great question. So Chipotle is obviously a fascinating story and there's really two parts to what we've learned from them, both what they've done well and then what they've had challenges with. So first, I think what they've done well is they've built a system in the store that's really from a business perspective about optimizing revenue per square foot. So it's one of the highest revenue per square foot sort of fast casual retail options out there. And what makes that particularly interesting is because they're able to make these burritos quickly and get people through a line, you know, they're extremely efficient operationally and yet still have a product that people love, which is particularly special. And then the second thing, the challenge they've had is as they've been using more unprocessed ingredients, right? They're using meat that's antibiotic free. They're sourcing produce in a responsible way.”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “This idea of lift for food, this idea of making great food convenient and easy at the touch of a button, I immediately thought it resonated with me and I decided to join him and we started the company.”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Yeah, totally. So I started a company, I started Udemy about seven years ago. And like many sort of young professionals, I was working extremely hard. And after I left the company, I took six months off. And one of the main things I did was a personal reassessment. I realized I'd gained about 20 pounds, was needing too much crappy food. The reason for that is that the food business has created this false dichotomy for consumers where either they get something that's good and it's expensive and it takes a lot of time and effort or you can get something that's cheap and convenient, but it's terrible for you. And that dichotomy has forced people like me who were busy at the time to really have to choose and make an unfair choice. And so when one of my best friends from growing up called me and said, hey, what do you think about?”

    2016-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source