Sramana Mitra: What about customer acquisition? When you’re selling on eBay, eBay provides the foot traffic.
Mike Rosenbaum: It was the early days of e-commerce. There was a much smaller number of people shopping online. We had built this large database off eBay which we used to sell direct. We would send emails to them. Initially it was one email a week. Then it was two. Eventually it became one a day.
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Entrepreneurs are invited to the 554thd FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, November 18, 2021, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9:30 p.m. India IST.
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Sramana Mitra: Customer acquisition was all Facebook ads?
Shaunak Amin: Initially it was. We built the waitlist using Facebook ads. Then when we launched, the whole idea of group ordering means that there’s some virality in the product itself. We had this concept where one person could share a link. Those other people could become customers. Just to remind you, it was still centered around dinner at that time. There was no lunch. We launched, but the business wasn’t growing the way I’d like. It didn’t make sense for me.
>>>Sramana Mitra: What was your business model? They gave you inventory on consignment and you sold it on eBay. What percentage did you take?
Mike Rosenbaum: I think it was about 15%. We’re talking about high-value goods. Our average item was a couple of thousand dollars.
Sramana Mitra: It was a substantial transaction size. You said you grew that to about $20 million in four years.
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Sramana Mitra: How did you pick amongst those ideas?
Shaunak Amin: It’s not so much about the idea. The idea is going to give me the starting point. I wasn’t married to one idea or the other. We created three or four landing pages with different messaging. One was around healthy food coming to your door every day. The other was ordering from different restaurants and coming to you at the same time. The third one was very quick delivery.
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