My guest for Ep214 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Pan Koutlakis.

Pan is the Co-Founder and CEO of EatClub, a platform that uses dynamic pricing to help restaurants fill empty tables during off-peak hours, while passing on great deals to diners.

EatClub saw remarkable growth early on, but like many in the industry, the business came to a standstill when COVID hit, with revenue dropping to zero overnight. Pan responded by drastically downsizing overheads, restructuring the company, and rebuilding momentum recently leading the business to secure an impressive $18.2 million Series A round.

In this episode we covered a variety of topics including:

•  How he convinced industry heavyweight Marco Pierre White to come on board
• Navigating the uncertainty of COVID
• The power of setting ambitious targets
• Frameworks for making strategic long-term bets
• And much more!

Timestamps:

• 00:01:10  Pan’s Adelaide upbringing, law-and-economics studies & first jobs in hospitality
• 00:08:41  Joining Rocket Internet’s ‘Suppertime’ and witnessing growth-at-all-costs firsthand
• 00:10:17  Founding EatClub
• 00:13:08  Cold-emailing Marco Pierre White, why the celebrity chef came on board
• 00:16:12  Structuring deals with celebrities
• 00:22:22  Signing the very first restaurant (on the first cold-call) and refining the MVP
• 00:27:58  EVP’s initial pass, eventual investment and the overnight COVID revenue crash
• 00:56:15  Tough cuts, shutdown of U.S. ops, and doubling-down on R&D during lockdown
• 00:39:32  Founder/Investor relationship
• 00:47:58  How he thinks about product roadmap and what features to build
• 00:55:07  Post-pandemic rebound, UK market entry & closing the $18.2 M Series A

Our partners:

A big thank you to Dan Szekely, Jonte Shaw and David Hodges for their help with this interview!

Also a big shout out to our long-term partners for the show:

Scendar 

Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business. Find out more at Scendar.com

Vanta

Vanta helps businesses get — and stay — compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in-demand compliance frameworks. And with over 300 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on.
Join over six thousand fast-growing companies that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.
The Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over to vanta.com/podcast to get access to this exclusive discount.

Links mentioned:

• The Komo Club: The world’s first human accelerator

Pan’s links:

• Pan on LinkedIn
• EatClub

People mentioned:

• Marco Pierre White
• David Berger
• Ben Tyler
• Matt Cantelo
• Daniel Szekely
• Jamie Oliver
• Gordon Ramsay
• Dan Szekely
• Jonte Shaw
• David Hodges

Companies mentioned:

• EatClub
• EVP
• Suppertime
• Foodora
• Delivery Hero
• Rocket Internet
• Menulog
• Groupon
• Uber Eats
• Mastercard

Feedback/connect/say hello:

• Rohit@startupplaybook.co
• @RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
• /rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
• @rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
• My Youtube Channel

Credits:

Music: Paycheck

Other channels:

Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here

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