[00:00:00] Jay: Hi everyone. Welcome to The First Customer podcast. My name is Jay Aigner. And today I am lucky enough to be joined by Assaf Assaf. He is the founder and CEO of CHEFEE. they run Shark Tank. one of my favorite episodes, just a very cool product. something I've never seen before. Something I think feels like something from the future a little bit.
So, Assaf, thanks for joining me, buddy. How are you?
Assaf: I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.
Jay: So tell me about it. Where'd you grow up? and what impact did that have, if any, on you being an entrepreneur?
Assaf: I grew up in Israel [00:01:00] and the Silicon Valley and, Israel, I think is where I learned how to eat a lot of food. My mom, Jewish moms, love to cook typically. And,a lot of family dinners and yeah, mom had them nine to five and still somehow cooked for me and my brothers and my dad pretty much every single day.
so love for food was just, It's kind of nurtured from day one. and then Silicon Valley, I, I actually, I think I became an entrepreneur when I was teaching swimming and, you know, teaching a class of four kids and everything's good. And I was making 11 an hour. I was so happy. I was making at least 2 an hour more than anybody else I knew.
And unfortunately for me, this one of the moms of the kids just asked me, for private lessons for her kid. And suddenly. I found myself making 25, 40 an hour and just, holy shit, actually be an entrepreneur and,and go straight to the source essentially. but yeah, around being just around Silicon Valley, I [00:02:00] think ended up affecting me a lot more in terms of meeting other entrepreneurs and founders.
I have a friend who raised 175 million.so I had the fortune of interviewing, interviewing him and learning from him and he, interviewed Eric Schmidt anyway, so a little bit, just little bits and pieces from different people, I think impacted me overall,
Jay: sounds like everybody I talked to validates the, you know, entrepreneur by osmosis by being out in Silicon Valley. Like everybody has somebody that knows somebody that they met some, you know, it's just, it's everywhere out there. So it's interesting to hear. so tell me what was the first business you started after obviously, you know, you were, your, foray into being a swim instructor.
what was the first real business you started? Or maybe that was a real business. I don't want to talk down about the business. Maybe it was a great business. I don't know. But, what was your, what was the next business after that?
Assaf: Oh, that was a summer job for, to raise, to, save money for Costa Rica. No, but, I ended up opening when I was a senior going into my senior year in [00:03:00] college, I opened, basically a catering business called the flying falafel. So food that I knew grew up with loved, I wanted, my dream was to compete with McDonald's.
That was the original vision. open that and, yeah,I started selling on campus. I mean, crazy stuff. Like. Driving up onto campus with my little Nissan jam packed to the brim with equipment and started learning. And I didn't know anything. I didn't know how to cook. I know how to eat, not cook.
Anyway, manage inventory and sell. I mean, there's so many hats you have to wear, but yeah, I ended up doing that for probably too long, but over a decade it grew it into a multi location, restaurant chain, that was doing very well right up until COVID and the lockdowns and. That basically sank us. So, but yeah, I actually was kind of over it at that point after I think 14 years of doing it, you know,
Jay: that's interesting. how did you start? Iit sounds like you're kind of, maybe we're forced to step [00:04:00] away or forced to, you know, kind of business went down, but how do you handle exiting a thing that you've built over 10 years? Maybe not under the best circumstances, like how did you deal with it mentally and emotionally?
And like, maybe you were over it, but like, what was the process? Did you just sell your locations and then, you know, settled some debt and then you're on your way? Like, what's the process to close down a business that you've run for that long?
Assaf: honestly, mentally, I'm pretty good at, kind of looking at things at some, as some costs, right? So we've done, let's say it was traffic. We've done like 30 iterations and each one is the one, okay, this is it. And then you realize, wait a second. No, it's not. And you have to let go. You have to literally just say, okay, that's in the past.
Now you move on. And I'm exceptionally good at that for some reason. I don't know why, I just see it. Okay. It's done. Let's go. Same thing with flying falafel. It did well, we, I saved money. So I'm not like I lost, it's not like I lost everything. I'm very thankful for all the [00:05:00] experiences and the wonderful things.
It would be amazing to exit with a lot more money, but again, it's like the skills are a lot more valuable than the extra cash. That's my thought. So
Jay: That's a great way to look at it. all right. So tell me the CHEFEE story, where did it come from? and you know, I think people that may have seen this on shark tank, you also got a great video, on the website, by the way, I love that kind of walk through the journey of CHEFEE. It's a great, very nice to put together video.
but for those who haven't seen that, what's kind of the elevator version CHEFEE came from and you know, what you guys do, it's
Assaf: mean, long story short, I was sitting, so I went back to Tel Aviv to during COVID because everything just, again, it was locked down and so forth. my hunch was that Israel would be past COVID much sooner than America. and so I went to Tel Aviv. And just kind of messed around with music and for a few months and learned Arabic, just like took a bit, took some time off and then got bored after a few months, [00:06:00] started learning machine learning.
And I remember while I was learning machine learning, it was, I was staring at my kitchen getting hungry and thought, how freaking cool would it be if I can talk to my kitchen, have it cook for me. That's basically it. That is the vision. and yeah, and then I, it started ruminating in my head. I started learning how to do mechanical design using Fusion 360.
And yeah, one thing led to another. I took some of my savings. I spoke with some people that I knew from makerspaces in San Francisco, recruited some people, and suddenly we found ourselves in an office under a makerspace in San Francisco. Me and four guys basically building this thing. It was incredible.
I can't believe how quickly that happened I will say that I was very cocky and I thought I would have I would be done in three months and have ten million dollars Specifically remember that
Jay: good to dream big. So, and how long was that between kind of standing in the kitchen hoping you, before [00:07:00] you guys had like a working prototype?
Assaf: Whoo Working until I would say our first working prototype took nine months of work And I was three months after I had the original vision. So I would say about a year Before we had, but again, we went way too big first iteration. We built an entire Commercial kitchen, which you probably saw in that video with the arm.
Oh, it's a very that's a beginner's mistake
Jay: and so, and to, to that point, I mean, you know, you're 30 plus. Iterations in how are you applying that lesson to the next iteration? Are you guys very focused on delivering kind of a thin slice of what something should be? You know, you're delivering a very targeted, you know, kind of version of what this thing is.
how are you guys? Because I mean, you're still, yeah, you're entering a lot. What's the next iteration going to be
Assaf: Still sticking to the vision of this needs to be versatile. It can't just make you [00:08:00] split pea soup every day No, this thing needs to be able to make thousands of dishes from scratch You On a whim. So that is still the bar that we set. And actually it's expanded since then. just cause we just added an air fryer integration stuff.
I'm going to showcase later this month, but, in terms of what I learned, this all goes back to our Bible. I'm just going to, I'm just going to tell you, cause I really think this should be the Bible, anybody designing a hardware, anything hardware, it's called insanely simple. I don't know if you've heard of it by Ken Siegel.
Jay: now? We'll have to plug that. All
Assaf: I wish I had read it three years ago, but basically it's all about simplify, simplify, right? You can have that vision that's grandiose and ambitious,
Jay: right.
Assaf: but, and we want that straight line, point A to point B, straight line. We just don't know how to do that. So we're doing. This, right, but if you stick tosimple, shrink [00:09:00] down, it's not always shrink down, but typically it is shrink down, less stuff, less designs, less complexity, less moving parts, you can, those 30 iterations would have been probably 7 iterations, you know, so that's a lesson, I mean, that's how I would, I would apply, again, I thought I was so cocky back then just so Of course, how could I fail 50, 000?
How can I fail?
Jay: Right. Yes. I think we've all been too cocky at some point, and I mean, it's kind of part of being an entrepreneur, right? I think you have to have that confidence and there's a very thin line between confidence and being, you know, too cocky,
Assaf: There's confidence Naive, there's
Jay: right?
Assaf: naive
Jay: Yeah.
Assaf: and but you have to learn it sometimes people especially people with Some cocky syndrome or overconfidence or you know Because I did well in my restaurants and I and I came in with super high confidence But you're right. There's a thin line between You Oh, I'm [00:10:00] shifting.
How hard can it be? You know, it's just,
Jay: Well, you get the, you know, the, all the. Naive beaten out of you, I think over those iterations and dealing with the customers and all that sort of stuff. So tell me about Shark Tank, man. how did you get on? Like, was it a long process? I didn't know until somebody else told me that was in the show.
You have to build, bring your own set and set it up and do all this stuff. So tell me about the experience. how was it?
Assaf: okay. Well, the day of the filming was absolutely the hardest day of my life in terms of stress level by far. Cause you know, the, well, okay. So to get onto Shark Tank is a long process, right? So you apply online. That's pretty quick to apply, but then there's a background checks, and they do an interview over the phone, and then after that, they don't call you for three months, and then they'll be like, Well, submit a video.
You made it to the next stage, and this and that, and you submit a video, and then they don't call you for three months again, and you're, you don't know what's going on,and then they'll tell you, you're on, [00:11:00] and you start calling your mom and your dad, and oh man, I made it! Dollar signs start going through your eyes, right?
and then they again call you and they go, Listen, we moved you to the next season's thing. Next season, okay, that's a ninth. And now you're starting to be like, okay, wait a second. Maybe this is not even, you know, let's not get excited anymore. Let's just, and then they go, okay, this is it. We're going to film, this is your film date.
You've got to come down to LA. And. Again, you get excited, but then they keep telling you, you may not air, meaning you may come out of your, you may even get a deal, no guarantee you'll air. So you're constantly in this gray zone. It's really stressful.
Jay: right,
Assaf: But yeah, like you were saying you, so some people come up with like, they come down with an app or a little gadget, whatever, and they show it and everything's good.
We had to build. We [00:12:00] had to build a whole kitchen and we did it ourselves. We didn't pay anybody, because we're still a small team and we're, we just don't spend like most startups do, after hearing about all the horror stories of people burning so much money, but then when we built it, we got there, we had to disassemble it to move it to another set.
This and that and so many moving parts and even the app, you know, if the app loses Bluetooth because I'm a little too far, the whole thing goes to shit.
Jay: right, right.
Assaf: So, but yeah. If you saw the episode somehow, miraculously, sorry, let me turn off my, my, my WhatsApp notification here. miraculously everything worked And it went great.
I mean, as far, you know, obviously they're gonna, they're going to get pushback on anything, especially we're coming in with 12 million valuation and zero sales, so I get it there. I get the, what the, what they were saying. So, but it went great. I almost couldn't have wished for a [00:13:00] better outcome.
Yeah. I
Jay: What was the biggest. Actual applicable lesson, whether it was the business. Or the product or whatever, like what was the biggest thing you actually went back and implemented that you heard from the sharks in the show?
Assaf: mean, honestly, we, so I think we paid a lot more attention, but this is something we already paid attention to, which is big partnerships with. Let's say, you know, Blue Apron or Wolf Sub Zero, large manufacturers.I suppose there was a little bit more emphasis on that though. Not a hundred percent, just because we actually, I would say the most difficult part is developing the product.
It's extremely complex to get there. Once you've got that, and you've got patents, which we now have, we actually have a huge opportunity to enter the market without needing the big boys. To kind of wing us, right?
Jay: Right.
Assaf: And so we don't have to, we're [00:14:00] not at the point where we have to beg anybody, Please take us, give us a contract, you know?
We're not at that point, we're past that. And so, But yeah, I don't know, the other things, let's see, I don't know, oh, Adding the Airfryer integration was pretty cool, I think that might have been because Lori asked us if we can bake a potato.
Jay: I love that. I, so yeah. All right. So baked potatoes from Lori, is a good addition. well, very cool. so how. How are you guys targeting customers today? And who is your customer? Like, who are you trying to go after? Who's going to buy one of these things? Is it like the, is it rich people? Is it, you know, home, you know, what are they called?
McComb construction companies that are building these things. It will, who are you guys going after?
Assaf: yeah, that's a great question. So, so there's a couple of angles. One is direct to consumer, which we've designed Chefy so it can be installed in a couple of hours, literally in a single afternoon, you can install this with no renovation to your kitchen and have this futuristic Jetsons experience where you now can talk to your kitchen.
So the fact we designed it that way means [00:15:00] we don't need a middleman. We can go direct to consumer. That's huge. Who's our customer? There's already a bunch of people,that have paid us to reserve their CHEFEE. Okay, and who are they? They're people. Yes, they're high income. Absolutely. We're starting with a high price point for sure.
the price will eventually go down and our goal is to be in millions of homes, of course. But we are starting, that kind of Tesla model, right? High, low volume, who are these people? High income, very health conscious, usually have kids or love to host their families, their friends, and they're food lovers.
They love, love food. They love trying, new dishes, but they're extremely busy. Often they're career oriented. The end. Or they hate cooking or they just don't like all the hassle of shopping and thinking of the next meal and the recipes. And so they just want really good food, really healthy food.
They're often, oftentimes are also very, they're athletic. So they
Jay: right. One of our investors is, [00:16:00] he's a gym rat. He's very fit. And he hates cooking. He just wants good food, fitting to his meal plan, you know, the right nutrients and so forth. And he doesn't want to think about it. So, so those are our customers.
Assaf: Now the B2B angle, of course, it's kind of like what you mentioned. I would say it's less builders and more, luxury, Airbnb. So premium Airbnbs, again, think about it this way builders, there's a long sales cycle. Right, you have to present and then this and then after this and then it could be multiple years to get in, right?
It's not that we're not going in that direction, but we don't need to Wait three years. We have a product that can be installed in existing kitchens So if we can prove to Airbnb hosts that installing a chef fee now can elevate Your price per night by let's say 10 percent 5 percent 15 percent You That's a very, very interesting [00:17:00] value proposition.
Jay: That's very cool. I didn't even, I would never even have thought of that. Where did you get, where did you get that idea? Where did it come, when did it hit you?
Assaf: ideas come to us. So people come to us and say, Hey, I have an Airbnb. It's very premium. Can I get a CHEFEE installed? And then, right. Light bulb goes off. Wait a second. Maybe that's our customer.
Jay: Right. No, that's brilliant. I like that a lot. and how are you guys marketing this to those? Folks, are you just doing direct outreach? Is there some plan you guys have? Do you have people doing it? Like, what's the plan?
Assaf: Yeah. Yeah. So we actually haven't launched our full scale marketing. It says a marketing,campaign yet we've mainly focused on developing the best possible product. We can then shark tank elevated our marketing, just got us out there to everyone. Now we're at SKS tomorrow. I'm speaking on a panel alongside Suvi, Mowly, GE, Whirlpool, some [00:18:00] big name, Samsung food is going to be there speaking.
So, they got our name out there, but next month, very early next month we'll be showcasing that beta 2 model that I mentioned to you earlier, and we'll have to do some marketing, it's going to be exciting man, I mean, I think of all the possibilities, we have this idea of chefy versus chef, right, a blindfolded tasting experience, or chefy versus mom, right, something like that, it could be really fun.
But look, this is a product that's kind of, it's so interesting and so novel that I think it lends itself to just organic marketing. I mean, who doesn't love food? And, I think it's going to be good. I think it's
Jay: No, I love it. I think it's very cool, man. All right. All right. Well, non business related and maybe even not, maybe non food related. I don't know. you can pick the, you can pick the answer to this question. if you do anything on earth and you knew you couldn't fail, what would it be?
Assaf: I could do anything on earth and I knew it wouldn't fail, it sounds boring. I [00:19:00] knew it couldn't fail. I
Jay: Or you knew you couldn't fail.
Assaf: knew you couldn't fail. The failure is what keeps it interesting. I don't,
Jay: That's fair. That's fair.
Assaf: if I knew it couldn't fail, I would I don't know. I knew I couldn't fail. I would love to get into medicine. That's my background. I was trained as an EMT. I studied a lot of pre med. I would love to get into medicine. I remember thinking of trying, wanting to become a doctor and then realizing that doctors are almost only as good as their tools.
Right. And so if you become a doctor, you can help one person at a time, usually, right. Unless you're, right. But if you, They invent a tool that doctors can use, you can help millions of people. So I suppose that direction.
Jay: I like that. Or maybe you could just make like a medical CHEFEE that just like, you know, pulls all the pieces [00:20:00] together and like, you know, can do surgery. well, very cool, man. I love the story. I absolutely love the product. where can people find more about CHEFEE and more about you if they want to reach out directly?
Assaf: CHEFEE. com.
Jay: Beautiful. And, LinkedIn or anything if people want to send you a message or reach out.
Assaf: Absolutely. CHEFEE
Jay: All right. Well, good luck at your show. good luck with the product. Like I will, this is one that, I find very interesting and I think a lot of people find, like you said, the Jetsons thing is like something to lean into because it certainly seems futuristic and like the next wave of, you know, eating in your house, having a robot do it for you and talking to your kitchen.
So absolutely love it. Love the story, brother. Be good. Thank you for being on and we'll catch up again soon. All right.
Assaf: Alrighty. Thank you.
Jay: Thanks, man.