What It Really Takes to Build a Marketplace Startup

Monisha Saldanha (00:01) Welcome to Colorado Tech People, the podcast where we talk with the founders and innovators building companies that shape how we live, work and connect. I am your host, Monisha Saldanha an executive with 15 years of experience in product management. Today's episode explores how technology is transforming the way people experience food and hospitality. I'm joined by Marvin Lim. co-founder and CEO of Colorado-based The Kitchen Table, a platform that connects people with private chefs to create unique in-home dining experiences. Building a marketplace is never easy, but building one that connects people around food, trust, and experience might be one of the hardest. We'll talk about the hard decisions behind building a marketplace, how technology can enable more personal dining experiences, and what it takes to grow a startup in Colorado. Let's dive in. First of all, welcome Marvin. Thank you so much for joining us today. Marvin (01:03) Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me. This is a great honor and a really great opportunity for me as well. Monisha Saldanha (01:10) Great, well to start with, I'd love to hear what inspired you to co-found the kitchen table? What was the problem you were trying to solve? And what were the challenges in building a marketplace business? Marvin (01:23) Yeah, thank you so much for the question. Let me bring you back to 2024 where all of this started to happen. Back in 2024, I was one of those people who have multiple jobs, some remote, some not remote. I'll leave it up to you guys to think how I managed that. But while I was working three full-time jobs, I was pretty much working like more than 100 hours a week and I don't have time to cook. I don't know what to cook. I only have so many limited cooking knowledge in my head. And I went out to Google and searched private chef in Denver. How much does it cost? What can they do? And so on. And that's where I found out like private chef are so expensive, even with three full time job, it's still pretty expensive. So I saw like, okay, if so many people are in my position who are busy, so many people who want a private chef, but can't have private chef, there's a gap in the market that you know, I can fill So that's where I went out. to do market validation. I talk to customers, talk to chef, and then that's how The Kitchen Table formed. Monisha Saldanha (02:31) really interesting. and when you talk to the chefs, but If it was expensive, that means the chefs were charging more money than they charge on the kitchen table. What made them willing to charge less at the kitchen table? Marvin (02:46) Yeah, this is one of our competitive advantage where... across the industry or across history. Chef are the one pretty much setting, you know, setting the rate where it's maybe $150 per person, $200 per person, because private chef has always been seen as a luxury experience where only the rich people, the 0.1 % can afford it. And you know, that kind of stuff. However, what I figure out is I flip the script, I make it more consumer friendly. I think of it from my point of view, I want a chef. I'm only having this amount of money to spend for the week, including groceries and you know, their time. So if I only have this much amount of money that I'm willing to spend, what can I get out of it? So this is where we flip the script to ask you as a consumer, how much are you willing to spend for a private chef? And it's up to the chef to send you a menu that works within the budget, which includes cooking, the ingredients, prepping and cleaning. However, There are some times where a customer come in and said, you know, I just want something for $25 per person. And it's just like a family of four. That is unfortunately not doable because of, you know, we're having two little people. It's really hard to cook for just four people with $25 per person. but majority of the time, a lot of people are here for experience. You guys as a guest, set your own experience with a private chef. Monisha Saldanha (04:18) So fantastic, so do I understand correctly? I would go onto the platform as an individual and I could put my budget onto your platform. Wow, fantastic, and so then the chefs then kind of bid for that opportunity to cook. Wow, and do you find, what do you find is hard about building this marketplace? Marvin (04:27) Exactly. Yep. It's way tougher than it looks. I never thought it would be this tough where there's dry seasons, there's like ups. And then when the down is super down, when the up is super high up. Yeah, it's. Cause I've done many businesses before I've launched, you know, e-commerce business. I've done like data analytics consulting businesses. I've sold just random stuff in school, random stuff online, but building a marketplace, which means you have two different sets of customers, two different ideal customer profile, two different marketing strategy, two different operations, two different pipelines. And it's just doubled the effort for everything. It is tough, but it is fun. Monisha Saldanha (05:28) And Do you find that it's more difficult to get the chefs or more difficult to get the customers who want to employ the chefs? Marvin (05:42) In my experience for the kitchen table, it is a little tougher to get consumers. Just because whenever people hear about private chef experience, immediately they think about, it's going to be super expensive and customers tend to not, you know, go forward with it. They tend to not, you know, they don't want to try it. The reason why it's easier for chef to for us to find chef is because a lot of chefs are also stuck in a box in the kitchen at the back of the kitchen, just cooking. listening to others, following others, and we want to be able to open up the box so that they can create their own craft. They can cook whatever they want for the customers based on the customer experience. They can talk to the customers directly and they're more relaxed when they're working one person in the kitchen. Monisha Saldanha (06:33) Yeah, so it's an interesting and fun opportunity for the chefs. You mentioned there's ups and downs. Are those around holidays, like Valentine's Day and Christmas? Or what are the nature of the ups and downs that you see? Marvin (06:48) Yeah. so the downside, for example, like a restaurant business where after Christmas, especially where everybody has already spent their entire budget on Christmas presents. So usually in January, you'll see a little dip and sometimes in September, October, you see a little dip as well, just because it's after summer, a lot of parents are, you know, they want to stay at home. They want to you know, they spend a lot of money on during summertime and then that's where they try to save a little bit money so that they can spend towards fall and winter. Monisha Saldanha (07:25) Interesting. And early in the journey, what were some of the hardest decisions you had to make when shaping the platform and the business model? Marvin (07:36) Very, very great question. One of the toughest decision that I have personally is because I have like ADHD. I'm doing so many things at once. I like to do so many things at once. And I just focus on so many different things. And when we started off, we pretty much scaled to 11 different state on first week. have chef from 11 different states. We're finding customers from 11 different states. We're talking to so many people and it's just two of us in the company trying to do so many different things. And as we grow and I realized that as well. Like I've watched a lot of podcasts. I read a lot of, you know, startup books, startup experience on Reddit, Y Combinator, what they say and what I resonate well is do things that don't scale. Find a really, really small niche of customers that you can serve and try to win as much market share as you can. And then you can scale. So instead of chasing all the shiny objects like I did when I started off, we're scaling down a lot just to focus on one very specific task, one very specific niche and just go dive in from that direction. Monisha Saldanha (08:45) And can you elaborate on what is the niche that you decided to focus on? Marvin (08:50) Yeah. So the niche that we scaled down to right now, and we're focusing all our energy on is partnering up with Airbnb host or short term rentals, property management company. So we partner up with them. We offer our services to their guests. So these can be, you know, families or friends who are coming in a group of eight or more usually. And when you have eight or more in a group, it's hard to find a restaurant that works well for everyone. It's hard to make a restaurant reservation because you're a large group and if you have different dietary restriction in that same group, it's really hard to go through one restaurant. So this is where we step in to boost Airbnb five-star reviews into a six-star experience for these guests. Monisha Saldanha (09:39) And how do you reach out to the Airbnb hosts that must be very time intensive? Marvin (09:46) Yeah, it was when I first started off where, because in Denver, I don't have any friends or family who own Airbnb. I'm not in that community. I have no clue how to enter the community. So what I did was I, you know, just went on LinkedIn. Social media is the best friend for every business out there. So I went to LinkedIn. I just do a post, like, Hey, I'm looking to an idea on partnering with short term rental. looking for any host out there who's willing to talk to me, explain to me how the business works, how this partnership can work. And I found a really great friend, his name is Reed. And he, you know, we talked for probably two hours trying to see how things work. And for him, he owned probably like four or five Airbnb's and he said, this is one of the best idea he ever heard for an Airbnb. So that's why we started off. And that's why I get to network with many more short term rentals host. partnering with over 200 AirBnBs now in Colorado. Monisha Saldanha (10:51) Are you focusing on Colorado? Marvin (10:54) Currently, yes, we're doing things that don't scale just yet until we can achieve probably 80 % of the market share in Colorado or more. And then we can duplicate this model elsewhere. Monisha Saldanha (11:08) And that brings us to building in Colorado. How have you found it, being an entrepreneur in Colorado? Is there a lot of support? Marvin (11:18) Yeah, honestly, for me, the support that I have from the Colorado community, Colorado startup community, entrepreneurs, mentors, and everything, it's so helpful. It's I've never imagined, you know, everybody who is so willing to help you out, even when you just started, even though you're, you're doing things that doesn't work. Everybody here in Colorado is so friendly and they just give you advice. They're willing to spend 30 minutes with you. They're willing to spend an hour just to dive in on what's working for a business. What's not working for a business. What I've done for my experience that you can implement for a business that everybody's just so helpful. eternally grateful for everybody that I've met. Monisha Saldanha (12:05) And What advantages and challenges come with building a marketplace outside of traditional tech hubs like Silicon Valley? Marvin (12:16) People always say like, you should go Silicon Valley to raise money. should, know, Silicon Valley is where the community is. Everything's growing there. Sure. I personally haven't experienced that, but I do have friends who have done that. went to Silicon Valley for four months. They try to scale up business is, is just the way how he described it to me is you're just in a house with 20 different founders, 20 different companies, and you sit there 24 hours. you sleep there, you just work your ass off for four months nonstop. And after that four months, he told me it was enough. There's really like no balance in his life. So he moved to Colorado and where it's more relaxing and you can get work done. You can also scale your company. can execute better because there's nature, there's the vibe is so different. It's more slower pace, but you execute better. Monisha Saldanha (13:14) okay, more productive in Colorado. Interesting. Building a marketplace with chefs on one side and diners on the other side, it can be tricky. So how did you solve that chicken and the egg problem? Did you start with the chefs or did you start with the diners? Marvin (13:16) Yeah. That's a huge problem that a lot of marketplaces out there trying to figure out. For me, what I would recommend for future marketplace founders is just pick one and go with it. For us, we picked with the chef side because I wanted to understand how the chefs, how chef works, understand the industry a little bit more before diving into the consumer side. So I picked with chef, go with it and then find, find buyers for the chef and that's it. Monisha Saldanha (14:03) And was there a turning point where a product or strategy decision significantly changed the trajectory of the kitchen table? Marvin (14:13) Yes, in fact, there are quite a few but I'll give you one of the best examples. Previously, I said we were doing things that's... You know, We want to scale so quick at the start of the business. Our target customers, everyone, and in the startup world, everyone is your customer, which means you don't have the right customer. So we were targeting everyone. We were just doing things that you will know. We were just trying different, so many different things every single day. And we got nothing in. There's no, maybe one customer out of a thousand that we tried. Right. And we're just doing things that we're just trying to scale way too quickly. And that I realized that quickly, like you really need to know your ICP well enough. find out what's their main pain point and then you are the best solution. If you are, if your solution is not good enough that they can say, Hey, if I don't have the solution, I can live with it. That means the ICP is not strong enough and probably switch to something else where you can target maybe smaller niche, but capture the entire market and then scale from there. Monisha Saldanha (15:25) Is your ICP Airbnb renters? Marvin (15:30) Yeah. So our playbook right now is more like B2B2C. Monisha Saldanha (15:36) Very cool. And do you share the revenue with the Airbnb hosts? Marvin (15:41) Yes, we do. One incentive we give to Airbnb hosts is they get a revenue sharing for the guests. get an extra menu item on us from the company. So that way we create a not just a win-win situation, but a three-way win situation where we get a customer, the Airbnb business, they get some revenue and for the guests, they get a really good experience without selling their kidney for a private chef. Monisha Saldanha (16:11) Wow, fantastic. What features were most important to build early in order to create trust between diners and chefs on the platform? How do you build that trust? Marvin (16:23) That's a very good question. When we first started off, had so many pushback like, cause we were a startup and a lot of customers that came in like, I don't know you. I never heard of you. Your social media and don't even have so many posts. Your first, well, back then we had our first MVP. It was just a website, like a PDF and that's it. You can barely click anything. can barely, you can't even pay. Um, and that's what we had. And the fact that we have customer who pay us through Zelle shows that there's a demand and that's where. That's where we improve our MVP to a second version and to a third version. Now we're on the fourth version of our website. So with all this customer feedback, we started to improve and make changes on the needs of the customer. With the, a lot of AI tools coming out, you don't know if you're talking to an AI or human. make a point to talk to every customer chef, users. go to, since it's Colorado, I drive to every single request to talk to the customer there, be with the chef, take pictures for the families, take pictures for the event and then post it on social media. So I am to show that I'm a real human doing all this stuff and making that human connection, it makes a lot of difference. Monisha Saldanha (17:45) That's also very time intensive, so I can tell you're really putting your heart and your soul into this business. The kitchen table connects customers with chefs for in-home dining experiences. As we've said, how does the platform use technology to simplify the process of finding and booking a chef? Marvin (18:06) Yeah, that's a very good question. AI has really helped us a lot. So I, I wouldn't be able to imagine how businesses or entrepreneurs before the internet started their business and the internet started, it helped a lot of businesses. And now with AI and AI agents, it really helps. you to, for me personally, it, cause I'm always chasing shiny objects. really focused me on what's going to work. What should I execute on within this week, within this month? What manual tasks can an AI agent do for me while I'm sleeping. So a lot of, you know, analyzing our website, testing out bugs, clicking on things just to click on different things on our website, just to see what doesn't work. And there's just so many tools that out there, for example, edit and is a great tool to create a pipeline because I'm a visualized person. I like to see how the chart flows. like to see how things flow and we edit. And I can create a pipeline and visualize it there and just drag and drop to make changes and it's just so easy. Monisha Saldanha (19:21) So you're using AI heavily in your building of the product. What is the team behind the kitchen table? Marvin (19:29) We're a very, very small team. Take a guess, how many people do we have? Monisha Saldanha (19:35) Well I know it's you and your co-founder and then I mean now that you've said it's really small is it the two of you and you've built the site yourself? Marvin (19:45) Yes, so from day one until today, we actually hired our first head of growth, Jesse. So it was just now three people, three, three person team running the entire pipeline, entire company. Monisha Saldanha (20:02) Yeah, and that just wouldn't be possible without AI, right? Like that's... Marvin (20:06) Yeah, without AI it would be so time intensive. We wouldn't be able to do it without AI. Monisha Saldanha (20:14) So what were the tools that you used to build the platform? Marvin (20:20) There are quite a few tools. So for example, my best friend right now is Claude, Claude Cowork. Claude is really my best friend. I talk to Claude almost every day, but almost every hour I talk to Claude. But on top of that, we have our back end stack, like we use Next.js for coding. We know we have... Monisha Saldanha (20:25) Mm-hmm. Marvin (20:44) Next.js is one, we have Postman, we have Database. So all these traditional tools that we have, those are still in place, but AI tools are the one that help us find our gap, find our loop, find our bug faster, and then we can fix the bugs or just pretty much make our company more efficient. Monisha Saldanha (21:06) Wow, fantastic. And it's just really interesting to think about the way that you're able to leverage your skills using AI to run a whole company with just now three people. So congratulations on hiring Jesse. So is Jesse going to take over focusing on the hosts? Marvin (21:21) Yeah. Thank you. Yes, so Jesse's task would be, I guess, working with me to help, you know, take in more hosts, partnering with more Airbnb hosts in Colorado. And then from there, we can start scaling to other cities. Monisha Saldanha (21:48) Yeah, fantastic. Do you have in mind what cities would come next? Marvin (21:53) I do have in mind, but I'll leave that for a future conversation. So if you're interested as a listener, sign up for our newsletter, check us out on social media, and we'll be keeping in touch with you guys. Monisha Saldanha (22:10) Okay, sounds good. Do you have many competitors in the market? Marvin (22:18) Yes and no. Just like a restaurant business, are many restaurant businesses are probably one of the most competitive out there because there's so many restaurants and each restaurant can be a caterer. Each chef can have their own website, right? And there are quite a few private chef platform as well. But what we're doing is something no one else is doing. What our business model plan is something that nobody else is doing. So for example, you book Uber, you pretty much pay the fee, a flat fee of how much they are charging or how much the Uber is going to charge you. But for us as a marketplace, we flip it around and you as a guest, you set your own expectation and your own experience and will fit within that price range. So what we're doing is something no other businesses out there is doing. Monisha Saldanha (23:15) That's really exciting. I love the idea of flipping the script. The kitchen table isn't just about food. It's about creating shared experiences. What kind of feedback have you received from customers about the impact of these private dining moments? Marvin (23:31) Yeah. Let me give you one very cool example from our customer. So this customer of ours, they, have 23 people within this Airbnb that they booked. And there was a family reunion where a family in Denver booked the Airbnb and everyone across the country flew into Denver and they have a family reunion. That was super cool. Like some of them were from Alaska, from Vermont, from Texas, and they all met. in this Airbnb and we had the great opportunity to be able to cook for them, to engage with them, to talk with them. I was there taking pictures, playing with the kids, playing with the kids in the pool, helping out with the barbecue. So I was there kind of like a part of the family reunion, but also being professional, but seeing the guests enjoy the moment, seeing the guests not, you know, they don't have to stress about cooking. They don't have to stress about cleaning the Airbnb. They don't have to stress about the one thing that matters where everybody needs to eat. And this is where we step in to help relieve that stress. And it's really a pleasure for me to be able to do that for a lot of families. Monisha Saldanha (24:45) And looking ahead, what role do you hope the kitchen table plays in redefining how people experience dining and connection at home? Marvin (24:54) Yeah, very good question. The vision that I have since the beginning of this company is to make private chef more accessible and affordable. Want you know, almost everyone to be able to experience a private chef experience at least once in their life. And, you know, you can have many more because right now for about $60 per person, $75 per person, you can have a private chef comparing to, you know, back in the days, it costs $150 per person for a chef. Monisha Saldanha (25:26) Yeah, and if you go to a restaurant, it's like $50 a head anyway. Marvin (25:30) Yep. $50 a head, get, you know, that noisy ambience, not all restaurants are noisy, but most restaurants are noisy. and then there's so many instances where when I go out with friends with a group of, you know, six people, I'm sitting in this corner my other friend is sitting is corner have to talk so loud just to hear one another. But when you're hosted in your home or your Airbnb, you're just in your kitchen table. You're just sitting with your friends and you don't have to shout across the table and can, you know, you can share the moment. and enjoy the moment even better. Monisha Saldanha (26:06) And am I right in assuming that so far you've been bootstrapping the kitchen table? Marvin (26:11) No. So we did have a really small angel investment check from Jason Calacanis. and that really helped us validated our idea, helped the company grow. that's why we could, you know, do a lot more partnership. That's why we could, give, guess, more discounts to people. However, it is a small check. we're still having the mindset of we're bootstrap, right? Everything we do comes down to the very last penny of if this penny is worth it, can it move the mountain for us? Then that's where we spend our money. If we spend a penny and it doesn't move any single needle, then we're not, you know, we, still consider ourselves like bootstrap. We want to stay lean and we're not spending that penny. Monisha Saldanha (26:58) And do you have a fundraising strategy? Are you planning on going for more angel investment or a seed round? Marvin (27:05) Yeah, we're looking to do a pre-seed round hopefully by this year. So that way we can scale this business even faster. We've been growing really well for the past couple of months especially. And I guess right now we have a pipeline that work. We have a process that work and we would love to get the right investors in to help scale this business. Monisha Saldanha (27:31) What's a mistake you made early in building the kitchen table that taught you an important lesson? And how did it change the way you lead or make decisions today? Marvin (27:42) That's a very great question. So one thing I've done like personally is A lot of my business that I start previously before the kitchen table is just me one person, right? That's the same. If you want to go fast, you go alone, but if you want to go far, you go as a team. So a lot of times I work by myself. I executed on myself. And then now when I have a team, I have to understand the way how I like to describe is even though you're the CEO of the company, the chief everything officer, the way how I look at it is the inverse. I am right down here and everybody else in the company is above me. I'm working for them for the company, right? In other words, like I need to have more empathy, even though I own the business, even though, you know, we all own the business and I want to execute faster. want more speed, more execution. At the end of the day, we're human. are allowed to make mistakes and the more mistake we make, the better the company can grow. And it's okay to not have an answer all the time because we don't know the future. Think about what problem you want to solve today. plan for tomorrow, but tomorrow can be a whole different experience compared to what you think about from today. So this is where I learned how to take a step back, calm down a little, don't have to control everything for every single moment, and it's okay to make mistakes. Monisha Saldanha (29:18) Looking back, what do wish you had known before starting the company, and what would you do differently if you were building it again from day one? Marvin (29:28) what I wish I would have known is honestly nothing. I would not advise my old self in 2024 to say, Hey, look out for this, look out for that. Because at the end of the day, just if you want to solve a problem, there's always a solution to every single problem and just go with it. Right. If you don't know that's option A B C and you don't know what to choose. I once heard online, um, one of a really great CEO said, if you don't know what to choose, just pick one and never look back on the other options and just go with it. and that will be your right answer all the time. Monisha Saldanha (30:10) If you had gone back again though, like if you could go back in time, would you immediately focus on the Airbnb hosts? Would that be something that you would do? Would that have saved you some time? Yeah. Marvin (30:23) Probably it would have saved us some time but again we will not be able to learn the market as well because It's not the Airbnb host wasn't the first market that we wanted to hit we probably have seven different markets that we wanted to hit before we found Airbnb host. So without all the seven experience that we failed on, we will not be able to find Airbnb host. So I see our learning and mistakes as a blessing to find a door that opened for us. Monisha Saldanha (30:46) Mm. And what is one book every builder should read and why? Marvin (31:07) One entrepreneur right now that I really looked up to and if I could meet him, that would be super cool. His name is Alex Hormonzi. It's a, the book title is called a hundred million dollar deal. it's pretty much how do you package your product so well? Like the, described it as a Glenn grand slam offer. How do you package your product so well that is hard for a customer to say no. So on social media, I listened to his podcast. I watched a lot of his video. I'm learning a lot from him. He's such a great entrepreneur and the way how he execute things is really, really cool. So he's somebody that I'm listening to a lot and reading his book. Monisha Saldanha (31:49) fantastic. Well, I'll have to check that one out. Thank you. Thank you, Marvin. This has just been a wonderful conversation. I learned a lot about how to build a marketplace. Marvin (31:59) Thank you. Thank you so much for Monisha Saldanha (32:08) And I'd like to thank our listeners for listening to this episode of Colorado Tech People. If you enjoyed our conversation about building new dining experiences through technology, consider sharing this episode with someone who loves food, startups, or entrepreneurship. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss future conversations with founders and leaders shaping Colorado's tech ecosystem. You can find links to the kitchen table and Marvin's work in the show notes. Until next time, keep building. keep connecting and keep creating experiences that bring people together. Thank you very much.