I didn't do Y Combinator at the beginning of Gobble; I did it three and a half years into the struggle when I was running out of money and had only $8,000 in the bank.

After my engineer quit, I felt lost and worried about the future of Gobble, but I reached out to trusted investors who helped me find a replacement. I learned to code and eventually hired great engineers, but this delayed our launch and was a significant setback for Gobble.

Growing up, I had a tradition of home-cooked meals, which made me realize how lonely and unhealthy my takeout diet was while working on my startup.

I turned down an acquisition offer from a clothing startup because I saw so much potential in Gobble and wanted to focus on solving a real problem in the meal kit space.

Even after two failed versions of Gobble, I believed in our mission to provide busy people with home-cooked meals, which kept me motivated to find a solution.

The employees who lasted the longest at Gobble were those who were referred, sharing similar values and trust, and I kept them motivated by being transparent about the challenges we faced.

I founded Gobble to help anyone cook dinner in just 10 minutes, and we invented the 10-minute one-pan dinner kit.

In the beginning, we described Gobble as a marketplace for personal chefs and families, which resonated with the peer-to-peer economy trend at the time.

I manually promoted Gobble by distributing coupons in coffee shops and personally following up with new customers to encourage repeat orders.