Interview with Gobble Founder: Proving a Concept Requires an MVP, Whether Through Code or Sales
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Interview with Gobble Founder: Proving a Concept Requires an MVP, Whether Through Code or Sales
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Note: This article is included in the TechFlow special series "YC Startup Class Chinese Notes" (updated daily), dedicated to collecting and organizing Chinese versions of YC courses. The twentieth installment features Oshma Garg, founder of Gobble, and her online course titled "The Creation, Iteration, and Vision of Gobble."
Background of Gobble
Gobble is an online recipe and food delivery service headquartered in San Francisco, USA. The company's mission is to help people better manage their lifestyles by providing fast, easy-to-prepare, healthy meals.
Gobble’s core business provides users with weekly meal plans and corresponding pre-portioned ingredients. These ingredients are already washed, cut, and prepped, allowing nutritious meals to be prepared in just 15 minutes. Users simply select their preferred recipes and wait for the ingredients to be delivered to their doorstep, ready for cooking.
Gobble targets customers who lack the time or energy to shop for and prepare ingredients—typically busy professionals, stay-at-home parents, or individuals seeking to improve their eating habits. Gobble’s pricing is also highly competitive, with each meal kit costing between $10 and $15, cheaper than dining out and saving significant time on grocery shopping and prep work.
In the years following its founding, Gobble achieved tremendous success and attracted millions of dollars in venture capital. It has been recognized as a leader in the online recipe and food delivery space, expanding operations into the United States, Canada, and Australia.
The Entrepreneurial Journey
When I was at Stanford, driven by my vision, I started a company from my dorm room. Although it was only 150 to 200 square feet, we set up an office there with just three desks.
As a junior student, I hired bright freshmen as interns. My dorm became our office—everyone had access via a key from my pink shower caddy and would come in to work.
My idea was to help students find jobs, so I led Stanford’s Women in Business organization. Over three years, we successfully matched students with banks, law firms, and consulting companies. No one funded me initially—they said my idea was too narrow. But back then, LinkedIn didn’t exist yet. Every student was job hunting, so I believed we could become the student version of LinkedIn, a platform centered around interests and peer networks.
The idea eventually worked—we made money. Each year, these companies paid $20,000 to $25,000 to subscribe to my job board, creating a two-sided marketplace.
However, I poured everything into the company, and my health deteriorated severely, leading to physical issues. Ultimately, I learned this lesson: whoever pays you owns you; they dictate how your product evolves. Banks, consulting firms, and other clients paid us, so they recruited based on quotas, GPAs, race, or background—not whether someone was a good cultural fit.
Even though we were profitable, my original mission—to help people find meaningful jobs—no longer felt authentic. I grew deeply frustrated and ultimately decided to sell the company. It could have continued operating and making more profit, but that wasn’t what I set out to do. I’m not the type to sacrifice my beliefs for money.
Loneliness and Rebuilding in Entrepreneurship
During the first thousand days of entrepreneurship, especially at the beginning, many founders feel profoundly lonely. Few believe in your idea besides yourself—most may think you’re crazy and won’t care. The only person who might keep you going could be a co-founder or partner, but even they might grow tired of hearing it, while others simply ignore you.
Loneliness becomes the norm. I became increasingly isolated—avoiding family and friends, working late nights, sleeping in, surviving on takeout and soda. This harmed both my physical and mental health.
Things came to a head when my father insisted on visiting me. I was in California; he was in Texas. A specialist in diabetes, obesity, and nutrition, he always served delicious home-cooked meals at home.
Faced with his arrival, I couldn’t hide. He spent three days preparing food, packed neatly into suitcases and thermal bags, then flew to my messy apartment. Without greeting me, he went straight to the fridge and began filling it. His actions expressed anger, sadness, and deep concern over how poorly I was taking care of myself. He placed a dish of sabzi, bread, and rice before me. I set up my IKEA table in the corner, took the first bite—and suddenly burst into tears because the food tasted so good.
In that moment, I realized I hadn’t just lost nutrition—I’d lost a sense of self. I decided then to value home cooking and shared dinners again, something deeply important to me.
After eating that meal, we began anew. I wanted to recreate my father’s cooking in the Bay Area, so I posted on Craigslist looking for moms or dads to cook for me. We eventually described the concept as “peer-to-peer lasagna” and launched a private chef and home-cooked meal marketplace. At the time, the peer-to-peer economy was booming—Airbnb had just launched, Etsy was emerging, and between 2010 and 2012, numerous sharing and rental startups appeared.
The service offered home-style meals for offices, and personalized dinner experiences tailored to individual tastes. Our current meal kits—what we now call “prepared meals”—can be cooked in just 15 minutes. Recently, I reconnected with one of our first ten users, Hill Taylor, at a wedding in New York. He used our service in 2011 and remembered our early website and all the iterations. He found it special. A Stanford student at the time, he sent us multi-page feedback emails after every meal. He exemplified the ideal early user—someone genuinely committed to helping us improve the product for himself and others.
Attracting Users
In the beginning, attracting users required doing many indivisible tasks.
You can’t start by spending $1 million on Facebook ads in a week. Talking to ten people isn’t enough either—everything involves reaching small groups directly.
One thing I did was go to my favorite stores—coffee shops, restaurants, laundromats—regardless of where I bought equipment. I created business-card-sized promotional flyers saying “gobble.com — love free dinner,” including my name and zodiac sign. One of the first valuable features we introduced was the ability to use promo codes, because tracking growth metrics from day one is crucial—otherwise, you can’t tell what works.
On California Street, there was a coffee shop in what used to be a running shoe store—a strange spot, but worth visiting. It was my favorite. Placing flyers at the register turned out to be far more effective than nail salons, laundromats, or any accelerator company’s advance orders. In fact, the campaign succeeded remarkably well in coffee shops and through repeat orders.
Another thing I did was talk to as many community groups, mom groups, and neighborhood associations as possible. I sought their support, always aiming to get a proposal approved and tested. I learned what resonated so I could ask them to share my proposal on their email lists. That way, I could scale the outreach and inform broader audiences.
Pivoting and Iterating
Between 2011 and 2014, we iterated our product four distinct times.
We didn’t pivot Gobble—we iterated it until we found a successful path. I believe the distinction matters: a pivot means abandoning past learnings, while iteration builds upon them.
Each of these business models and iterations failed for different reasons.
Initially, we featured small-batch home-cooked meals from Italian grandmothers, Mexican moms, Ethiopian chefs—dishes you couldn’t get elsewhere. But when I asked an Italian mom in San Carlos to make 200 portions of lasagna, she could only make 20 a day. She didn’t want to scale, and she wasn’t a professional chef. So the model wasn’t scalable.
By contrast, peer-to-peer models like Airbnb face quality, timing, and capacity challenges, but they share assets and space, enabling scalability.
When we raised our Series A, investors asked: How much revenue comes from households? What’s your sales model? How much comes from corporate clients? At the time, about 75% came from businesses. When that happens, your focus shifts entirely to what brings in the most money—which is dangerous.
My vision was to give everyone access to home-cooked meals, so we focused on personalized dinner services. I believe personalization—like what Amazon brought to e-commerce, or Netflix and Spotify to movies and music—hasn’t yet reached its potential in food. Just as Google disrupted search, the company that breaks through in food personalization could become a long-term winner. Each innovation builds on the last, creating sustainable advantage.
So we focused on personalized dinners. We partnered with chefs, then restaurants and catering services, while investing heavily in technology—hiring engineers and product experts. We focused on matching tech that lets users input any taste preferences.
Eventually, we became the top choice for thousands of picky eaters, vegetarians avoiding nightshades, olives, and lettuce. No matter your taste, we accommodate you. This model scaled our technology and allowed us to succeed by tackling hard problems we learned along the way.
Taking Risks
One of the hardest things is taking risks—scaling down current operations to position for future success. Most people won’t try this because it’s terrifying. Instead, they push forward with the current model, trying to make it work.
Sometimes investors act as sounding boards, asking what you’re doing—but they only care about familiar problems, not new ones. That’s problematic.
Founders need courage and determination to follow their instincts, even if others think they’re wasting time. Founders must use logic and market analysis to justify each direction—this takes immense time and effort.
Certain business books can help founders navigate these challenges. For example, *Blue Ocean Strategy* offers a framework for thinking about your company and presents fascinating case studies like Southwest Airlines and Yellow Tail wine. These show how to break through noise and disrupt existing industries—highly inspiring for entrepreneurs. Most importantly, founders must stay true to their North Star, regardless of outside opinions.
Product-Market Fit and Proof of Concept
I believe product-market fit sits at the center of a Venn diagram—one circle representing growth potential, the other retention capability. Our history shows that under previous models, we couldn’t grow due to reliance on chefs. Personalized dinners limited supply, and demand couldn’t scale quickly. While the food was personalized, it wasn’t better than takeout. To change an industry, you need a fundamentally superior product—like the iPhone. That’s why people weren’t rushing to buy ours, so we lacked growth potential.
But our meal-kit model met customer needs through internal and external expansion, achieving high retention. Proving a concept requires an MVP—whether code or sales. Though I couldn’t code, I taught myself Photoshop and design to create packaging for hiring and sales. Within three months, I validated our idea. I took a semester off to focus on sales until landing our first deal. My parents thought it was too risky, but I secured validation and revenue. When I quit my job, some said I’d be blacklisted—but I believed otherwise. Now I understand why once you become an entrepreneur, you’re always one—quitting is incredibly hard. Overall, this experience taught me that success demands courage to take risks and stay committed to your dream.
How to Stay Focused and Move Forward?
Over three and a half years, we discovered strong product-market fit. Our monthly burn was only $40,000—very low. We had no fancy office, just about four people, each wearing multiple hats like co-founders, since we were still iterating.
Despite that, we pitched for two bridge rounds. Some investors declined; others waited for the next iteration before investing. (*TechFlow note: A bridge round is an additional funding round for startups, typically occurring between seed and Series A rounds to bridge funding gaps.)
In 2013, for a period, no one wanted to invest. We ran out of cash, living off bank paychecks of around $8,000. Everyone lost faith—except me. After three and a half years, I joined YC. Jessica and PG promised to help us raise our Series A and supported us for three more months. Six months later, we landed on the strategic insight: 15-minute dinners.
Keeping Employees Motivated
I believe early team retention is critical—and remains so over time. After raising venture capital, you’ll learn to hire executives, but the employees who support you longest often come through referrals.
Because they share your values and trust. In tough times, bring them into the challenge. Sometimes you might think you’re protecting people by withholding truth, but actually, involving them—especially those driven by challenge—helps them stand with you through hardship.
If you hide it, they can’t truly feel the excitement or the stakes.
Rejecting Acquisition Offers
Once, we received an acquisition offer—or rather, one of our investors wanted to sell us to a fashion company. Consolidation is common across industries, including food, and meal kits are no exception. It’s popular in media narratives.
I’ll say this: many companies like Facebook and Snapchat rejected various offers. Sometimes it’s right, sometimes wrong—it’s for society to judge. In my view, I simply saw too much potential and opportunity.
Long ago, I shut down a fashion startup at the right product-market moment because it aligned with my goals. I lost nothing, and my child wasn’t affected. For me, solving hard problems matters more than anything else.
Now we’re growing double year-over-year. If someone wanted to acquire us and we couldn’t withstand the storm in the meal-kit market, we might lose a billion-dollar opportunity.
Courage and Determination
In terms of competition, billions in venture capital have flowed into rivals, including companies we didn’t anticipate. We see this as inevitable—the birth of invention.
Though we don’t have as much money, we must innovate and deliver strong metrics. Because we’re resource-constrained, I avoid distractions from flashy expenses. Instead, I focus on making every dollar count, doing meaningful work. Maybe it’s an innate trait.
Mission is vital to success. But courage and determination are equally crucial. From a young age, I was… My parents wanted me to attend a girls’ school, but I was severely bullied—my locker even had racist and hateful words.
I applied to a girls’ school but wasn’t admitted. For years, I failed the tests. I remember my parents telling me: “You must take the exam—it’s for your future.” I got angry and eventually felt disappointed.
Finally, in seventh grade, I got in. It changed my life. I leveraged every resource—started new organizations, secured funding from the principal to launch a Model UN club. I viewed the process differently. While there, I seized every opportunity because I knew how special it was, and I worked hard to earn my place.
So early on, it was an experience. But through it, I realized life is about hard work. Success takes time and courage. I’ve always been fascinated by overnight successes, but I believe behind every “overnight” win is ten years of effort. Luck may help, but real success lies in unwavering determination and courage.
I once quit my first startup and left during one of Gobble’s iterations. The only reason I left was that I didn’t feel my work had enough impact, meaning, or purpose. If the environment changes and I can’t adapt, it becomes extremely difficult—I may need to leave.
Therefore, discomfort, repetition, and non-arbitrary persistence are essential. Netflix is a great example. Netflix evolved to survive. Many industrial giants collapsed because they couldn’t evolve. We must maintain courage and determination to adapt to constant change.
Food Innovation and Teamwork
Looking back, are there decisions you’re deeply grateful for because they were crucial to your success? I’d like to share two.
First, hiring Executive Chef Thomas Richey made a huge difference. We didn’t just hire a skilled chef who ensured consistent, delicious, and safe food—we gained food innovation capabilities. Entrepreneurs need to think from diverse perspectives and innovate across domains. Instead of hiring ten similar engineers, seek experts from consumer behavior, food science, and other fields for small insights. Creating space for creativity across business areas is essential.
Second, I’m grateful to Adora. When we had no money, we entered YC training and started personalized dinner services. We hadn’t figured it out before Demo Day, but we raised $200,000. At that point, we’d just hired a new chef, so I started collaborating with him, focusing on our future. I told Adora about the idea of a 15-minute prep kit, and she pushed back sharply: “You need to do it now.” We quickly shut down the personalized internal service. During testing and customer visits, people cooking at home with these kits felt like superheroes—it was magical. Within 30 days, we ripped off the band-aid and closed that chapter. On August 3rd, we launched the new product. The lesson: find the people in your corner. It’s okay not to talk to those not close to you. But find those nearby—they’re your inspiration and critical to your speed.
Gobble’s Future Vision
In the next 50 to 100 years, I hope Gobble becomes the “Disney” of the home. My vision is to create a magical experience accessible and enjoyable for everyone—single parents, hourly workers, or the wealthy alike.
I believe we’ve over-mechanized many industries through technology and fast food. Yet, I missed an important connection.
I think that at the end of the day, when our lives near their end, what we truly care about is time spent with loved ones. So if I can advance even part of that—through education, dinner, or food—I believe it’s a worthy pursuit. Over time, we’re also exploring other areas related to education and learning.
Visa Issues
I know a close friend who used tactical approaches—setting up shell companies. Then an investor was appointed to the board and sponsored the company, though you remain the actual CEO. My view is this: getting an H1B visa is extremely difficult, right? Some of us can’t get visas.
So Gobble has engineering teams in India and South Africa, waiting for visas. Some have waited 14 months but continue working remotely. The situation is wild. Loopholes are rare now, but if you're already here, sometimes you can find ways. I think YC might help solve this. If you’re generating revenue and running a real company, there are many paths forward—talking to a lawyer is also a solid option.
Pricing Strategy
We’ve done extensive work to adapt to the market. Pricing strategy is a key part of product-market fit, requiring careful consideration of demand and price sensitivity. Initially, we tested pricing by offering different products at different price points.
If your company is active, email is a great tool for pricing experiments—since setting different prices for different users on a website is hard. We’d email existing customers about test versions of premium dinners, value meals, or wine programs, assigning three different prices to different segments based on survey results.
Early on, we tested with 20 people; now we do it with thousands. Back then, emails were plain text—sometimes I’d send three plans to each person, asking: “Which plan—A, B, or C—do you want?” This let us assign different packages or prices to different groups.
Ultimately, we determine optimal pricing by multiplying profit per unit by number of purchases. Whoever wins the test captures most of the profit.
Choosing a Co-Founder
When I started pursuing my idea, I looked for a co-founder. At first, I found a chef on Craigslist and began delivering food from my car. Meanwhile, I was meeting with other founders—including one who later joined YC. Over three to four months, no one would quit to join me, nor share my passion for the idea. So I never fixated on “I must have a co-founder” or “I must be a solo founder”—I just tried to execute the idea first. Ultimately, I didn’t find the right co-founder, so I started alone.
Long-term, being a solo founder is extremely hard. Today, our executive team operates like a hive—I share everything with them. After years of growth, we now have a five-person super team and a co-founding group.
But early on, to solo founders I say: “If you’re swimming in the ocean, think of it like a buoy system. You need three to six buoys. Swimming alone feels exhausting. When you need rest, swim to a buoy, hug it, talk to it—it helps you. But without a co-founder, there’s no support.”
So when you need rest again, swim to another buoy, embrace it. You must truly find other solo founders to be your closest friends and de facto co-founders.
That’s how I built a team of two or three founders—we’d meet regularly after work for coffee or drinks, sharing stories and supporting each other.
How Has Life Changed as CEO?
At first, innovation was one of my highest priorities. Maker time—24/7—was precious. But now, my life seems consumed by meetings. Every day is meeting after meeting, followed by dinner. Last night I only got home at 11. This morning I started at 8. My schedule is packed. I must carve out strategic and creative time. While we must keep evolving, I still cherish the early days deeply.
The lowest point was when no one cared—almost no customers, lying on the office floor or sofa. I remember walking around with blank paper in hand. Lying on the floor like a whiteboard: “Okay, what’s next? Think.” That was rock bottom.
Now, the greatest joy is when people recognize you. Every time I meet a customer on the street, my day brightens. When I’m too distant from customers, I feel unhappy. I believe that if you care about customers, revenue will follow in the long run.
How to Get People to Work With You?
In the early stages of entrepreneurship, you face unique challenges. Even with a team and customers, tough problems arise. How do you engage advisors, mentors, or friends who aren’t eager to help—without seeming pushy? I’ve faced this too. Here are my two solutions.
First, find the right advisors, follow up on conversations, and consider how to help them in daily life. After everyone else has spoken, I’d be the last to talk—so they remember me. I’d walk them to their car because their time is valuable. It’s psychology and behavioral art—you must consider the speaker’s needs. They may have talked to 100 people and need to rush off. Offering small help—like carrying their bag—shows respect and goodwill. That’s how I approached Aaron Patzer from mint.com, one of my early advisors.
The second solution: only ask cockpit-level (expert domain) questions. This is something I learned from mentoring. When speaking with mentors or advisors, ensure your questions are relevant and targeted. For example, if you’re asking about enterprise sales but know nothing about it, it frustrates them—and wastes both your time. So I prepare a blank sheet divided into three sections:
- “What have I done since our last meeting?”—describing progress made.
- “What am I working on now?”—detailing current projects.
- “What are my challenges?”—clearly outlining current obstacles.
This method allows structured questioning and visible progress after each interaction.
I usually save all notes for better follow-up.
In short, to succeed early, find the right mentors and advisors and learn to communicate effectively. Clearly articulate your problems and challenges to gain better support. And never forget to record everything for follow-up and improved efficiency.
How to Get Investors?
When you look at your peers, everyone has lucky breaks and tough fundraising rounds. So even if some raise easily now while you struggle, don’t despair—they may face investor hurdles later. Stories unfold unpredictably.
So how do you attract investors? It’s genuinely difficult. For instance, even last year’s Series B was hard to raise. Despite public news and videos, it took all my energy and focus—Amazon acquired Whole Foods, scaring everyone. Amid fears of Amazon entering food, many companies rebranded, causing Gobble’s valuation to drop, severely impacting our fundraising.
So what advice do I have? Be bold—test your idea, find what resonates with investors, and refine your pitch. Practicing in front of friends might feel awkward, but you must do it—get everyone to help polish your delivery. It’s crucial.
Also, one tip may not suit everyone, but for some founders: avoid ending your final slide with “Even then, we’ll repay you.” That doesn’t excite investors. Instead, elevate your language—say: “We have the potential to become the next big company—valued at $10 billion in three years.” Like giving yourself a pep talk, end your pitch loudly, projecting strong conviction and execution power.
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