Launching Foody

Start with the behaviour, not the technology

Foody began in Cyprus in 2015 with five people. The problem looked ordinary: people wanted food, restaurants wanted orders, and the telephone sat between them. That ordinariness was useful. We did not have to teach anyone why delivery mattered. We only had to make the existing transaction less awkward.

Early marketplaces are often described as network-effects problems. That is true, but it can make the work sound more abstract than it is. At the beginning, both sides need a reason to tolerate an incomplete product. Customers need enough useful choice. Restaurants need enough credible demand. The team has to earn both at the same time.

Our first version accepted phone orders and cash. It was narrow, but it completed a real transaction. That mattered more than describing a larger platform we had not built.

Do the unscalable work with your eyes open

The first version of a company contains manual work, exceptions and conversations that will eventually disappear into software. That is not automatically waste. It is where the team learns which details matter and which only looked important from a distance.

The danger is becoming proud of the manual work. Every repeated exception is evidence. Some exceptions should become product; some should become process; some should be refused. The founder's job is to tell the difference before improvisation becomes the operating system.

Small markets sharpen this discipline. There is less room to hide weak retention behind a large pool of new users. Reputation also travels quickly. A local product has to become dependable before it can become impressive.

What I would preserve

I would preserve the closeness to the customer, the willingness to handle edge cases ourselves, and the short distance between seeing a problem and changing the product. I would also write down more of the decisions. Memory turns uncertainty into a neat story. The contemporary record is usually messier and more useful.

Foody did not begin as the company it later became. It began as a useful loop that worked often enough for people to try again. That is still the best definition I know of an early product.