Quitting vs. Giving Up with Mike Evans, the Founder of GrubHub

Speaker A: Hey, I'm Mike Reese, the founder and CEO of Visible. As you scale your company, having the right guides at your side can make all of a difference. Each episode will talk to fellow founders, investors and experts.

Speaker B: We'll dive into their zone of genius

Speaker A: as well as hear about their past mistakes to give you a better chance of success. This podcast is for founders by founders. This is the Founders Forward. What's up, everyone? I'm really excited to kick off season five of, uh, the Founders Forward. I'm joined by Mike Evans. He is the founder of grubhub, a little app you probably have heard of that completely changed delivery. He started in his spare bedroom in Chicago and grew it into a multi million dollar company before taking it public. Since he's left GrubHub, he's rode his bike across the entire United States. Started a company called Fixer, which is really focused on on demand, handy person service focused on social impact. Currently resides in Chicago with his wife and his dog and his daughter and his bike. And yeah, today we're going to be talking, uh, about his memoir, Hangry. It's coming out November 1st. I feel kind of cool because I got, like, this advanced copy here that says, like, please tell us if you're going to quote this thing. And it really tells his founder journey and how he started grubhub, and then intertwines his adventure across the United States on his recumbent bike, riding it from. From ocean to ocean. Um, Mike, thanks so much for joining us.

Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for having me on.

Speaker A: Did I miss anything there?

Speaker B: Uh, no. I mean, that's. That's pretty much it. Uh, I started this little. I wanted a pizza, started an app, solved that problem, and now, um, I don't really like fixing things on my Saturday afternoons. And so I started a company to solve that problem. So that's, That's. And I wrote a book about the first one. Um, maybe it was a sequel later about the second journey.

Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, awesome. Um, like, one of the. One of the things I love in the. In the book that started out, I want to talk about quitting. Um, it seems like you have a thing for quitting, which might not be a bad thing because you talked about the difference of, um, quitting and giving up. Uh, what is the distinction between the two?

Speaker B: Yeah, so, first of all, I want to say that I'm a big believer in tenacity and working hard at things and blasting through obstacles. When I talk about quitting, what I'm talking about is a lot of us, all of us. It is the human journey to find yourself in situations where the effort that you're putting forward towards work or family or whatever. But uh, it certainly is especially true in startups. The work that you're putting forward isn't necessarily getting you towards the place you want to get in terms of where your goals are. And uh, there are really only two options when you get to that point. Either change your activity or change your goals. And so when I talk about quitting, I'm talking about that second one. I'm talking about, um, you know, I say in the book, entrepreneurs need to be good at quitting things. And what I mean by that is, um, we try things, we experiment, we, we're, we're out there trying to be risk tolerant and, and, and make new things for people. And it's true outside of just business as well. And if, if it turns out that the effort you're putting forward and the experiments you're trying, the things that you're doing aren't working, don't keep doing them. Don't just keep beating your head against the wall. And so that's what I talk about when I talk about quitting. Giving up is something different. Giving up is when your goals haven't changed and actually the things that you should be doing might be getting you towards that goal and you just don't get off the couch. That's giving up. Uh, and I don't think that's good. But I think the stigma associated with uh, quitting can be a problem because you got to sort of let the past be the past and work towards whatever your goals are right now.

Speaker A: Yeah. So you quit your job so you could start grubhub. Uh, and I want to say, if I recall from the book, like, how long were you going at it solo? Was it, was it. You started in 2004. How long were you going at this thing more or less solo before, Before Matt came on, was it like two and a half years?

Speaker B: Yeah. So I started, uh, the first version of the website was in 2002. Uh, uh, and then I quit my job and so that I actually was sort of doing it on the side as like a side hustle for about a year. Uh, uh, and then in uh, it was like late 2002 they started and so it was like early 2004 just over, it was just over a year. It was like 14 months that I quit my job and then I ran it, uh, then I was solo for just over two years before Bat joined. Sorry, that's not quite accurate. Matt was with me for the whole journey. He came on full time in 2006. I should be, I should be accurate about that. And I say that in the book.

Speaker A: Yeah. What, um, you know what, what is it like we talk about tenacity. You're doing this thing by yourself for more or less have some support for Matt and before he comes on full time. But what is your psyche like, um, as you're trying to experiment getting restaurants signed up on. On. On grubhub.

Speaker B: Yeah. You know, the. At first it was just a delivery guide. It was a subscription based delivery guide. There was no ordering phone or online or, or anything. I was just trying, it was just trying to solve the problem discovery because you couldn't find out the restaurants that delivered to your address. Which seems mind boggling now given the like pervasiveness. Pervasiveness of not just Google Maps, but several different map systems like it just the idea that you couldn't even find the information is a little bit mind boggling now. And so that was the original thing I was doing. And so at first it was really about sales. It was really about um, I'm not uh, the, the initial sort of investment that I made at the cash that Matt put in wasn't enough to just like pay myself a reasonable salary. And so I had to sign restaurants up for this subscription basis. And so like it wasn't like a metaphorical hunger. Like I, like I had to sell to eat. And uh, I had stopped paying off my student loans. I just was just stopped paying the bill. Like I needed to make some money and that, that really drove me to get good at sales. It was the need to get good at sales that eventually drove like what, what customers were wanting from me is what drove the actual adoption of online ordering and switching to a transactional platform. But ultimately I was following the customers.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And kind of along that theme of like, I guess the opposite of quitting or giving up is like this idea in the book of, of uh, just starting or just doing something. Uh, and I think it's great just advice or mentality in general, especially for founders and entrepreneurs. I'm going to call out um, kind of four, uh, or three things here that I saw in the book. And then I'll hit you up with a question here. But there's a quote from uh, your professor at mitos, like the founder of Bose, and he said the only great way to make a speaker is just to go ahead and make a bad one, um, knowing that it won't be perfect, uh, iteration and observation are key. Uh, I think you mentioned the best way to start is just to start. And then, um, you end with like, just start, make the thing, sell the customer start. Um, or maybe related to that is you're hiring, uh, your first sales rep as you try to launch the San Francisco market. I believe it was Tyler. Uh, and you have like a 15 minute interview. Uh, and then you're like, all right, let's go, we're gonna go pitch a restaurant. Uh, just like, all right, we're just gonna put the rubber meets the road right now. And like, you're just gonna go show me how you do this thing. Um, so I guess one that really resonated me with two is like, do you find that like some founders, even if they're currently founders or potential ones, like, are we overthinking things and trying to get like, legal docs set up and uh, all of this other, like, process in place before we actually just go and do something?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think ultimately, whether you're talking about quitting because, uh, because you're stuck doing something that's no longer working, or whether you're talking about starting something because you have an idea and you want to get going, I think inertia is the enemy in either case. Like, action is, is. Is the thing that you want in either case. And, um, and yeah, I'm a big fan of just starting it. And. And I started the business before I had a business license. I got fined really bad for that. It is not something that I necessarily recommend everybody does, but I got fined on a business that was generating revenue so I could pay the fine. So it was actually not that big a deal. Um, and then I, and then, you know, as we got larger, we, we were. I was obviously more careful about, about crossing all the T's and dotting the I's before I just like went charging into a new state or new city. But like, generally, yes, like the idea that we, that we. You can spend. I mean, the biggest waste of time is like market research, like going and asking people, hey, would you buy this thing? Nobody's going to say no to you. Everyone's so excited about this idea that like, I asked 10 people and they all said they'd buy you. When you go back to them a month later with an actual product, zero of them give you money. Like the, the, the much more important signal than somebody saying they would buy something is they bought it. They actually bought it. This is actually my beef with the NPS score, right? Like, uh, the NPS score. The reason I think it's a bullshit metric is because you're asking people if they would refer you. And actually a much better metric is ask everyone to refer you and measure what percentage do. Right. Like, that's a way more powerful signal than would you do something. And so, uh, I do think we overthink it. I'm not. I mean, you can see in the book that I do build a business plan. I am very thoughtful about the changes I make in the business. I iterate. I'm not just like flying by the seat of the pants all the time. But, um. But yeah, it's easy to overthink things before trying them. Uh, and that's, that's part of why it's important to quit things is because if you give yourself license to stop doing the things that don't work, you're actually giving yourself license to try things that might not work.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. One of the quotes I had written down here was like, there's a world of difference between a website that makes no dollars and a website that makes a single dollar. Uh, oh, yeah, that was, that was pretty amazing.

Speaker B: That's the difference between a hobby and a, uh. It's a difference between a hobby and a business. And there actually is a world of difference between a business that makes $1 and a business that makes another dollar from the same customer. Because if you build a product that's good enough that someone's going to pay you for it after actually receiving the product for a second time, then you've built a really good product.

Speaker A: Uh, yeah, that's. That, that's amazing. One of the things kind of related to market research. You. You are up to the decision. I'm going to quit my job. Uh, that pays me very well, and I'm going to start grubhub. And you ask your friends and family, is this a good idea? All of the, all of them said no. Um, but you still did it anyways. So, like, were you hoping they would say yes or like, you're just like, screw it, I'm just gonna do this thing anyways?

Speaker B: I mean, making a decision with no data is stupid. Making a decision with lots of data is smart. Making a decision in spite of the data is visionary. This is how I justify some of my more outrageous risks that I've taken in my life. Um, yeah. I don't think most people really get the entrepreneurial journey and that it takes a certain level of leaping away from a safe place. Now I had the privilege and the benefit and the luck to be in a place where I could do that. And I didn't have, I didn't have family members who were relying on me for like costs of health care or to get food or things like that. And so I was in a, I was in a fortunate place as a young. Like I was 23 at the time. I tried this. Right? And so, um, and, and I had a lot of school debt, but no one was going to go hungry or not get medicine because I went and did this. And so I do, I do think there's a caveat to this, which is, um, not everyone can just make that leap. And so, you know, when I was asking my family, I was asking them if I should do it, but none of them were relying on me. I also wasn't asking them for money. Like, I wasn't asking for this like, um, this, this friends and family thing that people get. What is that? Like who gets that money? I don't understand that at all. But like, uh, and so, so yeah, I mean there was a lot that goes into it in my situation. Even though everybody thought it was a bad idea, I still went with my gut.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, so kind of along those lines, you talk about financing and friends and family. Um, I guess when you, when you started this thing, your goal was covering your student debt and that was it. Uh, so did like, did financing ever. I mean it obviously does at some point. But like when you started this thing, you were never like, hey, I'm gonna go raise money to try to kick start this thing. It was uh, kind of a bootstrap operation from day one.

Speaker B: It literally didn't dawn on me that I might take venture capital investment dollars until a couple of years into the business we were making, um, we were probably generating about 300,000 in revenue from bootstrapping the business before we, before we took our invest first investment cash and uh, and we were profitable. And actually this is very strange about grubhub. Most very. I've never heard of any other business doing that before the series. A, B, C, E and ah, ipo. Before each of those events, we were profitable. And so we kept taking money and then growing fast enough to get back to profitability and then taking more money and grow. And that's just, it's just a very atypical journey. Um, um, some people, like, Some people call it a Midwest way to, to approach a business. I mean we created a multibillion dollar business. It's not like we, it's not like it was a small business.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Um, and depending on how sort of frothy the, the venture capital cycle is at the moment. That's either really looked down upon or in the current environment, it's, it's really, uh, really prized. Um, and so these things sort of come in and out of fashion for VCs.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. You're, you're. How much capital do you raise in total? Because like, the economics are mind blowing of like, how much do you raise the companies that have gone public? Like, do you remember the number until before UIPO?

Speaker B: Um, it was 81 million in total. Um, we are bank account. Once we, when we raise the $31 million in our series C and D combined, because Those happen within two weeks of each other. Um, we never dropped below $20 million in the bank account, so we only spent 11. Uh, and then. So that was 31. Well, we really spent. The breakdown, it was 14 million to real that we actually spent to get to the IPO scale. We raised another 50 million specifically for the, for the purchase, uh, of campus food. So that didn't really go into the investment of like growing the business. So it was really like 14 million total that we spent on investing in the business and the business IPO for 2, um,.6 billion.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So it was pretty good, Pretty good return.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, I think. So, uh, when you finally figure out like, hey, we're going to maybe raise some capital for this thing, uh, you get some, some sage advice around this idea, like, hey, the main benefit of raising money, uh, is not the cash itself, but the advice, uh, from the table around you and they can help you see your gaps. Um, so I'd be curious to hear, like, where, where did you get the most value from your outsourced outside board members, uh, and investors that you were working with?

Speaker B: Yeah, I, So that was Chuck Templeton that said that to me. And, and you know, the five things I think about when I think about investors, you know, the last one is, first thing I think about is are they strategically valuable? The next is do they have expertise in some domain marketing or product or sales or something? Right. Can they connect me to other executives that like, do they know people that they can introduce me to as the team grows? Um, and uh, do they have connections to other partnerships? Right. And all of these things are important. And one of them that I don't actually mention in the book or usually even list is, you know, are they a good person? Are they a moral person? Like, are they, are they, ah, a person that will stick by you if there's a bump in the road? And, um, so all of those things are more. Everybody's cash is equally as valuable. And valuations don't actually vary all that much from M firm to firm. It's usually based on the amount of the round and then what percentage ownership they want to get. And then that sort of determines the valuation of the company rather than the other way around. And, uh, and for all those reasons, it's so important to have a board that like, adds all that value and then what they end up doing is they end up pointing out to, you know, this happened to me and Matt several times during our journey. The board said, you're wrong about this. You need to, like, make a change in direction. And, and of the times they said that several times, I agreed and we, we made a change. And then a couple times I was like, no, I'm right. We're staying the course. And so it wasn't like I was, I was, uh, forced to take that advice. Um, but it did. I paused when, when the board, individual, uh, board members or as an aggregate group made such a strong recommendation and it was helpful. It's part of why, the reason why the business was so successful.

Speaker A: Uh, that's, that's amazing. I love the five things you mentioned. Getting a term sheet is incredibly hard. I think the data suggests, like, most founders only get one term sheet. Right. Uh, so it's hard for me to be like, investor, uh, A and investor B. Uh, yeah, B is A, a better person and, and M meets these criteria. Like, the reality is I kind of got one person here and it's, it's. It's either this or nothing. How do you think about that? And like, what advice or, or just like mental models you put around, uh, like that scenario.

Speaker B: I mean, there have been times where I've been like, I am not taking that money because I don't like that partner. And there have been other times where I've been like, I'll take any amount of cash from any investor at any price. And so I'd be lying if I said you always have the luxury to be able to make those choices. And so I think a part of it has to start with all the way back when you're sort of making your spreadsheet or your list of people that you're going to contact or asking for introductions and things like that. You really have to do the filtering at the top of the funnel because very few people have the willpower to say no to cash once there's a term sheet. And so you want to make sure the People, the entities that give you the term sheet start from a curated list. There are a lot of VCs out there and that's possible. And in fact you can't talk to all of them. You just don't have the capacity. And so that's been the approach that I've taken this time. Um, that m. We're raising financing sort of imminently at Fixer. And uh, and it's a tougher environment than it was in the past. And it's by the way I should point out, it's still hard. I've created a multi billion dollar business, it is still hard to get a term sheet, it's still hard to close an investor and, and uh, I have an unfair advantage. Right. What's been interesting this last time, this more recent rounds is just about anybody will take a first, first meeting with me because of the past success. Which actually just means I have to be that much more selective about who I talk to because um, if it's not a good fit, it doesn't really matter what my past pedigree is or whatever, they're still investing in a business.

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, so when Grubhub started in 2004, uh, the market is very different than it is today. Like the iPhone was even out yet. Right. And so now there's mobile, there's a ton of VCs, there's international VC. So there's certainly more capital. We just heard it's, it's, it's still hard even though you took a company public. So like what thinking through that, like what advice, uh, would you give a first time and second time founder? Like is it the same advice or like for a second time founder, would you, would you shift, uh, your advice now, now that you're doing this for, for a second time?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I think that there's something incredibly valuable about um, generating revenue quickly so not doing years of product discovery and things like that. Actually selling to customers right away is really important. Um, that goes a long way to increasing the probability of getting to a close. And um, and again just taking this approach that like it's not just about the money, it's about the advice that you get. Taking the approach that well I just want to get investors that I can, that don't, don't bother me so I can just run my business is terrible approach to take. Taking the approach of. And I did this with Fixer, right. I, after the ipo, I could have actually just funded Fixer, my second business, the one that I'm running now. The uh, on demand handyperson business. I literally could have just wrote, written a check. But, but I don't want it to be the Mike show. I want it to be a company with good advice and good governance and thoughtfulness and that attracts good employees and sort of keeps us honest in terms of um, being. Being honest with ourselves about whether this is working, what ideas are working. And so um, I have put together a very thoughtful board for this company by asking investors to join us even though I didn't need to. Right. And so it just goes back to that same idea of um, the last thing that investors provide is cash. Everything else is actually how you judge them. And man, when you start looking at investors websites and um, they all differentiate in the same way. They all say they're founder friendly. They all say like finding actual differences can be hard. Um, and so when you start to look at this, it matters. One of the things that I have on my spreadsheet for looking at um, which VCs we pick is I literally go to the team page and I count what percentage of white men are on, um, have, have the partner title. Right. It's not enough to have like a marketing manager who's, who's a person of color or, or diverse or not. Not male. Like, there needs to be diversity at the partner level for us, for, for me to start a conversation with a firm. And um, I think that being selective like that in the start is really helpful because um, man, it, it's 2020, it's 2022. Like, there's no excuse for VCs to not have women at the partner level and have people of color at the partner level at this point. And so these are some of the things that I take, take into account when I go and like start looking is like, who are the people at this firm? Not just like what's their brand? Right, right.

Speaker A: How. Um, kind of pulling on the Fixer thread. I'll pull that forward just for a second. Um, so like, what kind of we're talking about diversity is important to you for this, this, your current investor group with Fixer. What about um, are you looking for different kind of expertise as well? Like are you looking for people that have been in the impact space before? Um, I know you guys are certified B Corp. Like are you looking for more of that angle? Like what kind of expertise are you surrounding yourself now compared to the GrubHub days right now?

Speaker B: Um, for this ground, we're looking for firms that have construction experience, uh, or um, education experience. Because you know, at Fixer, the whole thesis of the business, the supply side is too constrained relative to the demand because all the, all the schools are closed. And so we train people from scratch and we have a W2 model instead of a contractor model because we want to retain them after, we want to retain employees after we train them. And so we're looking for people who have been in the education space and done um, innovation for education. You know, how do you, how do you move skills training online and digital, how do you make it more on the job or apprenticeship based instead of classroom based things like that. People have gone through those transitions at scale are really valuable to us. Um, I mean, I think, I wouldn't say we're in the impact space. I think any business and any sector in every industry can have businesses that are impact businesses. And the way I define that is companies that, that are profit focused but that in the process of creating the profit their business also creates community value. And so for example, it might be hard to create an oil company that does that. I don't know, maybe it's possible. I can't figure out how to do it. But fixer, the way we work since we, we need to increase the supply of skilled workers for us to be able to do jobs in consumers homes, um, that's, that's both our profit model and our impact is that we're actually in creating a, a gender inclusive path into the trades. Um, and so that's great for the communities we serve. It's great if, if anybody can enter the trades as a result of becoming a, you know, by joining fixer. But it's also great for the homeowners because we have more supply of skilled workers than, than any of them, any of the marketplaces do. Right. Because they have adverse selection and the best people don't generally join the marketplaces because they're always busy anyway. And so um, that's sort of the way I think about with impact. We have a mix of investors who are traditional and impact investors. But I didn't really pick them on that basis. I picked them on expertise.

Speaker A: Yeah, um, along the mind of kind of financing and money. Uh, you say, uh, like money doesn't necessarily solve the challenge of growth in business. Uh, can you elaborate on that?

Speaker B: Yeah, this is uh, this is a thread that you can see a lot on the um, on the, on the founder collective website as well. Um, money is not smart by itself. You cannot just throw cash. And let me talk specifically about consumer facing businesses. Maybe B2B businesses, maybe SaaS, maybe maybe enterprise Business units. But when you're building a consumer business, it's um, cash plus a good product plus time equals customer acquisition. And when a VC says, well, why don't you just throw more cash at it? Like, yes, you can decrease the amount of time it takes to grow a, uh, customer base by throwing more cash at it, by going from effective spend to expensive spend. But there's diminishing returns very quickly. Uh, and ultimately the trade off has a limit how far you can go. And I don't think most VCs think that way. They're like, well, why couldn't you just buy more customers? And it turns out that not everybody's having their toilet break on the same night. Right. So like actually time really helps us with consumer acquisition for a handyperson service. Right. And not everybody wants a pizza at the same time. So time was a, was an issue for and not, not everybody's searching for it. Right. And so, um, uh, and so that was an issue in the first business as well. And so just throwing cash at things doesn't work. And I'm just shocked at how many VCs don't know that.

Speaker A: Yeah. You call this a simmer strategy, is that right? Different.

Speaker B: Yeah, that is. So the idea is that in any given zip code only a certain number of people are going to go online and search for a delivery. How do I get pizza delivered to me on any given, let's call it month. And so if you want to throw more money at the problem to acquire more consumers, what you need to do is have more zip codes, not spend more dollars per customer. Um, so that you get a wider, you catch a cast, a wider net of, of people to find your service and to adopt your service. And so that's what the similar strategy was, was to go wide from a city expansion perspective instead of go deep in any individual city. Um, there's a balance. Right? There's no, it's not an exact science. Right. You do want some depth in each city. But um, that was the strategy that we used when we raised the um, $11 million from benchmark and we went from, um, you know, I think we went from 14 cities at that point to like 200 in like two years.

Speaker A: Yeah. What, uh, kind of, kind of along that thread of consumer brand and being a consumer company, um, you talk about, I think it was like 13% of deliveries get messed up, uh, for some reason or another.

Speaker B: Um, isn't that horrible? It's such a high number. It's such an error prone process. It's terrible.

Speaker A: Uh, it's bad, but I will never forget. I think I was living in San Francisco at the time, uh, and something got messed up the delivery. And I ordered it on grubhub and like, I called it as like someone at grubhub answered. It's like, hey Mike, uh, yeah, we're fixing this problem, don't worry about it. And by the way, they made it right in some way. Uh, and I was like, shit, that's like a magical experience. Um, and I had this question or this idea of like when something goes wrong, make the resolution more memorable than the problem. Something you guys learned from, I think a restaurateur and in Chicago, how have you taken that and applied that to uh, customer support, uh, and the customer experience and either fixer or Grabbama.

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, I mean this idea of, um, how you make an apology, uh, and how you make a customer service recovery, the idea that the recovery has to be more memorable than the original problem and the idea of a two part apology where you fix the problem right away and then you look at the systems underneath it that caused it so that the problem doesn't happen the second time. Um, rinse and repeat, right? So if you, if you do that again and again and again, if you do both parts, you end up solving problems for customers. More importantly, you remove for, for the next hundred customers who would have had that problem. You're removing it before it was even a problem. And so the product continues to iterate and get better. And uh, and you know, we would. What's crazy is when you're growing it like when you're growing, if you're growing at like some ridiculous growth rate, like we were right, we were growing 3 or 4x per year at one point. Maybe not quite 4x but like 3x per year. And you go and you're like, okay, well this month we solved the problem that was like we had a million orders this month, uh, and we solved the problem that was 1 in 1000. But we don't have to solve the problems that are like one in a million. But like four months from now. The one in a million problems are now happening 10 times as, uh, 10 times the rate. Like you're growing so fast that like the ever more edge case issues are coming up more and more because you're just growing so fast so that it was necessary to just stay on top of the challenges. Right? Like at first it was stuff like, oh, we need to make sure the restaurants confirm the orders that they got. Right. That was, that was in like, year one. But this process of, like, solving the underlying root cause, you know, by year 10, we're looking at like, okay, what do we do when it's three in the morning and the restaurant closed at 2:59 and they went to go deliver it, but the person passed out drunk? Like, what. What do we do in this case? And, uh, the answer is you leave the food on the stoop on the doorstep, and you hope they get it in the morning and they appreciate it because there's, like, not a lot you can do in that situation. Right?

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: Um, that answer turned out to be really important for video gamers because people who are playing like World of Warcraft and going on raids and stuff won't answer their door when the pizza comes. But video gamers were ordering eight times more frequently than any of our other customers. And so you don't like, get mad at them and you don't cancel their account. You, you, you make, make it right for them because you're. They're your most frequent, most loyal customers. Right? Even though they didn't answer the phone because the door. Because they were in the middle of like, killing the big boss or whatever. Right? So, like, um, I mean, this stuff, like, it, it gets it nev. You never get to the end of that. Like, find the problem, find the root cause, solve it for the next set of customers. You never finish. It's. It's an evergreen problem.

Speaker A: Um, what about competition? Um, you know, you guys started out and you certainly had first mover in Chicago. Um, but Seamless has got a stronghold in Manhattan with all the I bankers and lawyers. More recently, doordash. How did you guys think about competition surpassing competition? M. Especially when, like, maybe, uh, online ordering isn't quote, unquote innovative anymore.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think one of the things most people don't realize is that by the time Grubhub was in like year three, I counted like 80 competitors. Like, there was a lot of competition. And so people talk about the space being crowded now, but it was crowded the whole time. And so we just kept beating our competition. Like, there was a huge push by Groupon and Living Social that nobody even remembers to do online ordering. Right. And, um, the answer is, like, surprisingly simple. Have the best product. Like, make sure that the best food gets to the most customers the most frequently and accept nothing less than that. Don't let people pay you more so that they can send bad food to a customer. Right. Like, make sure that the best experience is happening. And then when it goes wrong, solve it. Make sure. It doesn't happen for other customers. And so that is how we got to the IPO looking like there was no competition. It's because we had just out product, every other competitor. We also only did online ordering. So like, when Groupon releases an online ordering app or even Uber, their attention is diverted. Sure, they may even have thousands of people working on it. But organizations do better when they're focused. It's not simply a matter of how many resources you throw at it. It's a matter of the amount of tension that the entire organization puts towards it. So by being laser focused on just doing delivery, we were good at it. Um, and so that's, that's how I think you deal with competition. You stay focused. Um, you know, you look at the, uh, competition, you see what they're doing, because if there's anything you can copy, you should. But beyond that, you don't get too stressed about it because like, the best you can do is the best product you can create for your customer. You can't get overly stressed out about what the competition is doing all the time. It worked great for us. Um, during the time I was there.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, I want to shift to maybe more of the founder psyche, uh, leadership, kind of your own mental, uh, state. Um, I got a sense in the book that you suppressed a lot of, of things in search of, uh, or in, in, in good. Of the greater goal. Like maybe, uh, an employee, uh, came to you in, in a, in, in talking in a way that you want to be spoken to. Um, but you kind of let things go and you like suppressed it because, uh, like, hey, you know what, uh, at the end of the day, we're trying to fulfill this greater mission. Uh, is that something you still do today, or have you found a way to maybe confront some of those things that come up more head on today?

Speaker B: Yeah, there's, um. The main message of the book is that it's important to have a personal definition of success that's unique to you and that's explicit and that you know where you're headed. And so there was a point in the book where my goal was I wanted to create a company that helped independent restaurants. And so when things came up that were individually frustrating, um, and I'm not talking about the micro frustrations that just happen as a result of being at work. Right. Like, it's great if you can have a job where you're happy four out of five days. It's really hard to have a job where you're happy 5 out of 5 days it's not happy fun time, it's work. Right? So like, um, and so, but these bigger issues did happen and there would be, there would be times where

Speaker A: I

Speaker B: um, was due some, like, some benefit of the doubt, some credit, maybe a modicum of respect. Right. And I didn't get it. And I had to make the decision about whether I was going to sort of stand on my ego and stand on what I was entitled to, or I was going to ignore what I was entitled to and just be focused on the goal, um, of, of creating this great business that helped restaurants and also the goal of helping my, my employees grow. And so there were times where I forwent any of like what I was entitled to as the boss. Right. Um, and decided to go for the great, the sort of be goal oriented. That said like those moments, they have like emotional impact and if you, and they accumulate and if you get too many of them, it can be very demotivating. Go to work and you can, if you don't express those things, talk to a therapist, have friends, blow esteem, whatever the case is, they come out sideways in really negative ways with, with coworkers. And so um, I'm not, I'm not saying that everyone should be a martyr and just like take all, all of the emotional shrapnel that comes your way and do nothing about it. That is actually a really bad way to run a business. Um, but, but I, but I try not to react in the moment and I try to be goal oriented. And then I would go back and I, and I address like, hey, let's talk about like effective communication. You know, like when I'm not steaming mad about it. Right. Like, um, and, and it's, it's important for a few reasons. One is, it's just works better. The other thing that I realized is that as the CEO of the business, um, when I talk to an employee, I am, I'm swinging a sledgehammer. I might think I'm being like, hey, can we tweak this little thing like with the little ball peen hammer, like ding, ding, ding. But the person who is receiving a full on sledgehammer blow when I make a correction. And so you have to tread lightly around coworkers who report to you and who are on the, like on the receiving end of a difficult power dynamic.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Um, there's a responsibility that comes with being that power dynamic about being goal oriented and being self controlled and being, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be thoughtful and talk about this and not react out of an emotional place. Um, it's, it is a necessary trait for a leader to be good, to, to continue to get good at that over time. Nobody's perfect. I have snapped at people. I still do it. Um, but yeah, I think being, I think being goal oriented is where I, that's my North Star. That's where I try to go.

Speaker A: Is there anything you've done over the years to sharpen those leadership skills of like not reacting in the moment, waiting uh, to the next day to react to something? Or is it just something you just like practice, you're just doing it more and more and being more um, conscious about it?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean mindfulness helps. I mean it's really like mindfulness and mental health helps. Certainly having a coach or a therapist to talk to is really helpful. That helps when you can remove yourself from the moment. Think about it. Um, but there are times when you actually need somebody to call your bullshit in the moment. So you have to create an environment where people are encouraged to speak up that you're not just getting yes men and yes women, yes people like who are reporting to you. Like you need people who have the authority and the empowerment to tell you when you're messing something up or when you're treating something poorly, someone poorly. You know, we have an example of this. We have um, core values at Fixer, right? Um, one of them is respect. And uh, and there, when someone is disrespectful to, to someone else in our organization, we talk about it, we talk about whether or not um, we're gonna, we're going to have some sort of, uh, there's gonna be some detrimental effect in their career. Um, I've gotten a respect violation at work. The CEO has gotten a respect violation at work. And, and someone called me on it and it went into the grid and we talked about it and uh, and I apologized for the person because I was disrespectful to them in the heat of a moment one time. Um, and so I think that that's, it's critical to, to have people who can challenge you, um, especially in those interpersonal reactions interactions because everyone can mess those up, everyone will mess those up. Um, there's also got to be some grace, right? And, and if you're receiving end of it, you're also going to be giving it, right? Like you're, you're going to be understanding of people when they have little blow ups or minor infractions or whatever. Like not everything's like the end of the world, right? You have a Conversation about it, move on.

Speaker A: Yeah. Talking about relationships, you're pretty open about the ups and downs you had with your wife as, um, you started Grubhub, uh, and scaled it and how that puts some maybe life decisions, uh, for moving or her career aspirations on hold. Um, as You've since left GrubHub and started a new company and had time to reflect, is there anything as you look back on that or with Fixer now that you're. You're doing differently as you think about your. Your home life versus your, Your. Your work life?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think, um, a lot of the decisions about, uh, the first time around, I made two mistakes. I made a hundred mistakes. I made a thousand mistakes. Two. That, Two that come to mind relevant to this conversation. Uh, the, the first is that I didn't know what level of commitment the company was going to demand for me, especially as it. Not as it was starting, but actually as it got really successful. There were a lot more demands on, on, um, on me because I wanted to see it through to the end. And the second thing is I didn't really have a conversation with that about people who had like a stake in my life and who, whose those decisions would affect. And so the thing I did the second time around is I was a lot more clear about what boundaries I set for the business, knowing that sometimes those are going to flex and it can be difficult to really predict. And the other thing is I just got a. My wife and I had a conversation where we came to an agreement about what that would look like and like that we were both on board with it and, and that um, there were boundaries in terms of not limiting her career, uh, for the second business the second time around. So I was a little bit. Just a little bit more thoughtful and upfront about. And it wasn't just one conversation. We continue to have that conversation. So it's. It's going way better. There are some ups and downs in the book, uh, that I share about the grubhub experience. It's going better this time.

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, yeah, throughout the book I also get this. I'll let you use the right word here. I'm not sure if it's like remorse or regret, um, but towards the end of, uh, like uncapping restaurants and some of the things, the gig drivers, um, and then you go on this journey in riding your, um, recumbent bike across the states, um, was some of that the reason why you ended up starting Fixer, or were these like you kind of took what you learned there and Then you had another problem. You're like, right, how do I, how do I meld these two things together? Yeah.

Speaker B: One of the things I learned, um, so the business. So, so GrubHub in 2010, you know, our goal was to help independent restaurants. Like, that's what, that's what I was trying. That's what, that was my personal goal. The, the mission of the business was slightly different, which was making delivery better. Right. So the two weren't quite in line. And, um, this ends up being true with any strong founder at any organization. You end up building kind of a cult of personality around you. People are attracted to those ideas. And so then when that person leaves, the motive for that decreases. Now there may be other people in the organization are still doing that. I don't want to say that like it was all me at grubhub that was doing that. I don't want to give that idea. Um, but what wasn't true is it wasn't codified in the, in the bylaws of the, of the organization. It wasn't codified in the composition of the board. It wasn't codified in the ownership structure, which was a public company. Um, and so the, the difference the second time around, and I have some regret about that because we were on the right path, but it wasn't, it was what we had chosen to do, but it wasn't in our DNA. And I mean, Google tried this, right? They said, don't be evil. They tried to put it in their DNA. And maybe they succeeded, maybe they didn't.

Speaker A: Who knows?

Speaker B: I'll leave that up for the, uh, an exercise for the listener. But like the second time around, it's. We're a public benefit corporation. We literally exist for two reasons. To create shareholders. Well, we exist to create stakeholder return instead of shareholder return. And stakeholders are defined as the, the communities we serve in terms of the diversity and quantity of skilled trades people, the trades people themselves, and then the shareholders. And those things are of equal value to the company. I mean, that's a, it's a pretty radical way to go about, um, structuring the company. I'll say this about businesses. They are a huge lever for social change, regardless of whether you want them to be or not. And so if you're not intentional about it, that can be positive, that can be negative. It could be. Who knows what it's going to be if you're not thinking about it. Right. And so because they change the communities in which we serve, uh, in which we operate so drastically, sometimes it's important to think about those things first. So yes, it was a learning I learned the hard way at grubhub. And I did have some remorse. I don't think it's regret, but remorse is maybe the right word.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and so literally the goal of my book, the reason I wrote it, was if I could change 10 founders ideas about this, uh, uh, or thoughts about this, where they think about the impact that they're having on the communities they operate in and how they want their business to be a lever for social change intentionally instead of implicitly. If 10 people think about that when they start businesses, my book will be a success. Now, sure, I'd like to sell a lot of copies, but like, that's literally why I wrote the book was because I learned it the hard way and I want someone else to learn it by just reading it in a damn book instead.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. The. Does your, um, does your mission now at uh, uh, Fixer and the company's mission, are they in the same or are they different?

Speaker B: They're the same. Uh, the mission statement is we fix things, we build people. And what we're trying to do is we're trying to reboot trade education in the United States in a gender inclusive way. Um, and that is going to be really, really good for the people who are involved in it. It's going to be good for the communities we serve and we're going to make bank. Like it's all three things. Like we expect to make a lot of money doing it, um, but we expect to do it in a way that's really, um, valuable and honorable for the people who are working at the company.

Speaker A: What about setting values and mission? Like is that a day zero activity? You think like, hey, I need to get up, start this thing and go sell, um, or should I actually start thinking about, uh, my values, my mission on day zero, before I do any of that?

Speaker B: I mean, day negative 7 was beers at Hopleaf Bar in Chicago. And uh, that's when we talked about it. Uh, that's the first time we talked about it. We didn't codify anything until we were a year in. And that was on purpose. So we all talked about it. We talked about what we wanted to do. We knew it was going to be an impact business. We, we knew it was going to be a public benefit corporation with the structure I just talked about, but the actual codification of our, our mission statement and our values that happened, uh, a year in and everyone in the company the fix because we didn't have any fixers when it was just an idea. We wanted the handy people to be involved in the creation of the core values. And so that was an exercise that happened a year in.

Speaker A: We.

Speaker B: We shut down the company for a day and had that conversation. And I highly recommend that that's when there's like 15 to 20 people at the company is the right time to do it.

Speaker A: And then.

Speaker B: And then it's not just one person's ideas. It's what you came to as a group, as an entity. Awesome.

Speaker A: Um, we'll leave it at that. Everyone check out Hangry. Hopefully we can get 10 people so we can cross that goal off your. Your list. Mike. Um, but thanks so much for joining us and sharing your story with us. And, um, congrats on all of the success you have and the impact you're making now with with Fixer.

Speaker B: Yeah, thanks a lot. Yeah, you can find Hangry on, um, either Amazon or Barnes and Noble or an independent bookstore. Or you can just go to mikevans.com and there's. There's links there.

Speaker A: There it is. Awesome. Thanks, Mike.

Speaker B: All. Uh, right. Thanks a lot for having me.