I mean we were probably the fastest Growing Company in the country Last year Building a successful business at scale Is extremely difficult and marriage with A young child takes an enormous amount Of communication and patience combining The two seems impossible but so far joe And vanessa ariel the couple behind Pandemic darling gold belly are making It work vanessa is the chief product Officer and co-founder of the company And joe he just gave her a performance Review can you imagine giving your Spouse a performance review i just Remember being like He's like do you want to go do your Review i'm like why are you so excited About this There are three numbers to look out for In this story 5 000 the amount joe had To bootstrap his first business 200 000 The amount he raised from friends and Family to launch gold belly and 3 Million his first true outside Investment here's how one man's love of Food helped him raise 130 million Dollars for his startup called gold Belly for cnbc make it i'm nate skid This is founder effect Gold belly isn't ariel's first Successful business at just 26 years old With less than five thousand dollars he
Built eats.com which he says basically Took restaurant menus and put them in One place the premise was basically Aggregate all the menus of local Restaurants and let people be able to Place takeout orders instead of having Those menus like jammed under their door Like in new york city at the time was Kind of like uh the typical thing the Site was a smashing success and he Eventually sold it to delivery.com for What he calls a life-changing sum of Money his newfound freedom allowed him To ponder the big questions like what is The future what is the future of food What are the things i love the most the Thought of like the foods that mean the Most to me are foods from my life From my personal journey foods from Tennessee foods from places i've Traveled it struck me that you can't get The things that you love the most i Remember coming home thinking about this Idea for a few months and actually Sharing the idea with vanessa and she Said something then that really like Stuck kind of a big Impetus for from moving forward with With starting gold belly and it was this Would be the first experience That's in food and it's based on what You love Not where you live Joe wasn't selling food he was peddling
Nostalgia and the connection between Emotion and food is something he felt he Could build a business on That was the magic moment or the aha Moment where it's like wow If we could bottle this up and spread This joy and happiness and comfort Through food whatever you dream of Wherever you are That's a magical idea that's worth Spending your life executing on joe Spent the next year and a half going Through the ups and downs of launching a Startup vanessa a ux designer in her own Right had a front row seat into joe's Site i thought it was crazy the first Time he told me the idea okay you want To ship food from texas to new york And he asked me he's like do you think People would like that And i said i think you would like that But i also thought This is something that's eventually Going to exist And why can't we be the people to build It they cobbled together two hundred Thousand dollars from friends and family To get their id off the ground the site Launched in february 2013 but it Desperately needed restaurants to Populate it so joe asked vanessa to Create a mock website complete with Well-known restaurants and logos to take With him to food industry conventions it
Didn't come off quite as planned I thought it was like the coolest thing Ever but years later They all would tell me stories about how They were like horrified that i had them On the side they didn't know who the Hell i was who is this kid pitching this Crazy idea that's never gonna work nine Out of ten Told me to go off joe is also having a Difficult time raising funds from new York's investment community i probably Pitched every vc uh in new york city and Uh was Over 50. Restaurants slowly signed on but Unbeknownst to vanessa and his Co-founders trevor and joel he applied To y combinator and somehow gold belly Got in everybody put your in Storage we're going out to san francisco For the next six months why combinator Force jonas co-founders to focus on what Matters customer growth and providing a Positive customer experience so the gold Belly team moved into a rental house in Sunny hill california and spent 16 hours A day working on the business then came The moment they had been waiting for one Day uh everybody's phone was blowing up At like seven in the morning six seven In the morning and so we go online and It turned out uh that time magazine Named us one of the top 50 websites in
The world four person company in our Pajamas Living together in a house in sunnyvale California And uh That was uh kind of a key moment for us As a company and i think a few months Later we we closed on our seed round With intel actually leading Our seed round and in some ways the rest Is history joe raised three million Dollars from intel and began sourcing Some of the most iconic dishes in the Country from a sandwich at permanente Brothers in pittsburgh to brisket from Snow's bbq in texas he began growing his Team and gold belly's presence on social Media Here's how goal belly works go belly has A curated list of restaurants and Products that it offers on its website It helps the restaurants find new Customers while helping reverse engineer Their food and it also helps with the Logistics of overnight shipping when You're shipping food overnight or today Anywhere in the country that is critical And the food is perishable which means It can perish So it's critically important that it's Packaged right that it gets there in a Quick amount of time for the consumer it Opens up the nation's favorite Restaurants to customers willing to pay
A premium for their food by premium i Mean expensive gold belly isn't cheap a White chocolate coconut bundt cake from Doane's bakery cost 109.95 With free shipping of course our mission As a company Is to deliver the world's most magical Food experiences Our mission as a company is not to Deliver the cheapest commodity food Experiences It's not to deliver your lunch in 15 Minutes We want to tap into something different The pandemic was good for business Revenue increased by 300 percent in the First months of the lockdown gold belly Provided a financial lifeline for Struggling restaurateurs all of a sudden Millions of new customers who were at Home and couldn't travel who may have Heard about what this gold belly thing Was but like oh that's crazy i don't Know Gave us a shot and fell in love On the other side of the marketplace Chefs Many who Historically would not entertain such an Idea david chang who called me like mid Pandemic literally said dude Always knew about gold belly was maybe Interested but not interested enough
Now chefs got to throw out their ego And try new things today gold belly Works with over a thousand restaurants From all 50 states shipping to millions Of foodies all over the country it has a Team of 160 but there's no expectation The company can maintain its current Growth i mean we were probably the Fastest growing Company in the country Last year we recognized that the growth Is not going to stay the same and that's Okay But i think when we look at the overall Landscape of Of the country of the world there's a Lot of people that love food there's a Lot of people that have now grown up Watching food content loving food Stories Traveling for food One of the things i always tell the team Is The way you can tell if somebody is a True gold belly Is Have they ever traveled for food But back to building a business with Your spouse in that performance review Here's how they make it work she came From the design world which is like Beautifully set with chandeliers very Nice don't get me wrong but it's like i Can't even see that food sweating or the
Cheese melting Give me a little that food porn and so We've we found a middle ground i think Where it's like it stayed beautiful but It was a little bit of like Sweaty like i wanna Yeah you know what i mean yeah i think That that is That really sums up our Creative collaboration our creative Collaboration really well It has just elevated my game At you know on so many levels that You know like i feel like I hate you and i love you sometimes The funny thing is i was more stressed Out for the performance review Than she was She was like ducking me and dodging me And i was like i'm really nervous about How this is going to play out For me I just can't wait for one day for for me To give you a performance yeah i want to Give you a performance review she's on The board you can
