Tapping into the ecosystem: Lessons from my first start-up internship
When the notification pops up, you drop everything at hand and you go conquer whatever that’s need to be done in that particular moment.
This was me for the most part of this summer. The marketing intern position started remotely, but it was not until the CEO asked me to work at the office, I began to realize the self-applauding “start-up experience” on Zoom was just me kidding myself.
A bit about the business:
The company I worked for was called: Truffle Shuffle, naming after an old movie “The Goonies”. It started in 2018 as a company selling fresh truffles for the sole purpose of raising enough money for the founders to open up their own restaurant.
Just as the goal starting to seem reachable, COVID hit, and it hit hard. At the time they had 20 pounds of truffles, equivalent to 80% of the business, and all of a sudden most of the restaurants(their original customers) in the country shut their doors. Keep in mind that fresh truffles only have a shelf life of 3–4 days.
Devastated, thinking it was the end, the founders received a phone call from a high-end social club in San Francisco asking if they could do a virtual cooking class for its members. The founders immediately took the offer and said “we will give them everything they need to cook and maybe even find some truffles.” They didn’t know what they were doing, but were very determined to keep their heads above the water. The founding team ended up packing 40+ ingredient kits and personally delivered each one of them around the Bay Area.
Part of CEO’s sales pitch: “We got the idea on Wednesday, launched the class on Thursday at 9 AM, and by noon we were completely sold out.”
This was the pivoting point for Truffle Shuffle. Since then, the ingredients kit + live cooking class model thrived in the midst of a pandemic. Served over 6,000 households in addition to corporate clients like Google and Facebook, the company quickly became profitable in July.
A bit about the founders:
There are three of them: Jason, Tyler, and Sarah. All three of them worked at the French Laundry for years, Jason as the fish butcher, Tyler as the su chef, and Sarah worked the front of the house. They were like 3 overlapping circles with the love for truffles in the center. CEO Jason was creative, laid-back but had this blueprint of an empire in his mind. COO Tyler was rigorous and charismatic, leading the operations in precision like a chef with his recipe. PR Chief Sarah(also Jason’s wife), sweet and very capable, single-handedly put the business in multiple major media channels(including SF Chronicle, NBC, Forbes, and even O Magazine in the coming editions).
They were so different, but together, these 3 doers worked wonders. Jason and Tyler always came up with crazy ideas that “pissed” Sarah off (they once tried to cover the entire office floor with real grass!). Sarah always rode along with the “boys” and got them back on track whenever needed.
“When are you gonna quit school and join us?”
I spent most of my time with Jason, who took me under his wings since the very first day. Previously as Peter Thiel and Sean Parker’s private chef, he said the reason why I got hired was that we both had read the same books. Zero to One, Hard Things About Hard Things, Nuts, Seth Godin…he had read them all. The default playlist in his car was the podcast Masters of Scale by Reid Hoffman and he knew about every single tech news I just saw. It was quite surprising to know that a seemingly relaxed person like him immersed himself in every learning opportunity possible.
Out of all these things, the one book he mentioned time and time again was The 10X Rules. He once asked me to set a daily goal for social media posting. I said, “1 or 2 in the feed and a few Instagram stories would be good before people start getting annoyed.”
“No. I want you to post as many times as possible, I don’t care what they think but we gotta be present on social media at all times. You see, most people don’t have their shit together, and if we keep posting at a consistent rate, they are going to know that we have our shit figured out and the hate is gonna turn into respect, then became admiration” was his response.
I did not fully understand him until I finished reading Grant Cardone’s book. In the book, he argued, in order to become successful one have to have 10X goals and operate at a 10X level with 10X efforts. The book was truly inspirational and I started to see the logic behind Jason’s reasoning, but it was something unimaginable to walk the walk like Jason.
“I traded my car to start this business”
They put everything on the line. Jason and Sarah each took out $50,000 from their pockets as seed money. Jason traded his car to raise more and winded up driving a SUV with 200,000+ mileage. The car was so old that I had trouble starting the engine.
Either at home or in the office, there was no third option on most days of the week. Jason got a condo 10 minutes away from the office, just crossed the Emeryville/Oakland border, in a neighborhood with shattered windshields and police sirens. That did not seem to bother him. Over the fences in the tiny yard space, they had a garden full of basil, parsley, cilantro, thyme, and baby tomatoes. The founding team even moved in together to cut down costs: the living room had an airbed for the video producer, Jason and Sarah had the master bedroom, and the guest room belonged to Tyler.
“I wake up at 6 AM every day to make sales calls”
They never stopped the grind. Out of everything, the kitchen was where the magic happened. After the pivot, they turned the kitchen into a studio with multiple cameras, lighting equipment, a gigantic speaker, and a bunch wires all over the place. This was where they showcased their talents and the reliable source of warmth for many households in such a difficult time. Jason and Tyler alternated to host private classes(corporate clients or special events) from Wednesday to Saturday. And cooked together on Sunday along with Sarah for the public classes. Back to back to back to back classes on the same afternoon was very common, but they still crammed the schedule with more classes, more meetings, and more sales calls.
Once I was in the kitchen following up with sales leads, Tyler had just ended his second class of the day. I was exhausted from just watching him stand and “perform” for 3 hours straight under the high beam spotlights. But guess what, the first thing he did was calling a supplier to negotiate a better price while cleaning up the counter for the next class. Getting things done was almost like his instinct. Staying in the office for a few more hours gradually became my routine under their influence.
“Well, that was AWESOME!”
Positivity was around 24/7. Things did not always go our way but the energy never dropped. You could almost expect to hear Tyler say “well, that was awesome!” after any phone call. Whether it was a new customer or more tasks on his agenda, he just embraced them.
One day the production team was prepping the truffle carpaccio and someone on the other side of the building pulled the fire alarm thinking the intense truffle smell was gasoline. The entire fire department showed up, evacuated everyone, inspected the entire space and finally confirmed that it was just truffles. “Those firefighters were awesome” was Tyler’s response after spending the whole morning explaining everything to them.
Back when they were just selling truffles, Jason sent a business partner to find the best truffles in Europe and bring them back for their biggest customer at the time. His partner went missing for a few days and completely forgot about the assignment. When he got back, Jason took all the equity back and told him ‘have a nice day’. “It was terrible and it’s gonna happen but we are gonna move forward” was Jason’s point of view.
“What you want to do is to get rid of your fucking ego and be the best at winging things”
They like problems. Customer complaining, Shipping delay, or package damage(the first heatwave this summer melted all the dry ice and many kits were ruined), they had to deal with a lot of craps day in and day out. Jason told me “I feel like I spend the majority of my day looking at problems presented and come up with egoless solutions.” That was a pretty good summary.
A producer from NBC asked how do they deal with the chaos facing so many people(1000 guests on one occasion). Tyler said “when we were at French Laundry, the head chef will know you are bullshitting if you go ‘Ummm’ when he asks you something. So over the years, we become good at responding with confidence even if we don’t know it.”
This went hand in hand with Jason’s mentality of “always say yes, then figure out the rest”, just like the pivot, a lot of the times they had no idea what the next step should be but they were certain that they would find a way out.
“That sounds great! Let’s do it now!”
It was a team full of doers. Whenever someone brought up something random, the reaction would always be “That sounds great! Let’s do it now! You go make sure that happens!” And they were not kidding either. Everyone expected you to put your head down and start making progress right away.
Sangria was on the menu one week and we needed an idea to promote the cocktail mixer within the kits. I light-heartedly mentioned how we could form the shape of a wine bottle with different fruits since it was a fruity drink. “I like it, go get that posted.” Next thing I knew, I was downstairs cutting fruits.
“What if we…”
Ideas were never too crazy for their appetite. To promote our lobster roll class, Sarah came up with the theme of “bringing the Maine experience to you”. Jason then decided to take it to another level. They went to the shore the next day as if they were at the coast of Maine and shot a video of Jason coming out of the sea with live lobsters in his hands. Literally. I thought it was just a joke until I saw the video.
“We did not know that was gonna happen”
They were scrappy. In the early days, the team wanted to advertise the brand at a product fair in a hotel but didn’t get invited. Not wanting to let go of the perfect opportunity, they booked a room in another hotel down the street and started handing out flyers at the fair claiming there would be a truffle after-party in the other hotel. Just as they were setting up the “party room”, they got a notification saying a space just became available at the fair. As a result, the whole team ran around from one hotel to another trying to get the most out of the fair while preparing for the party they promised.
“I watched a bunch of Youtube videos”
They all wore many hats. At Truffle Shuffle your to-do list never really ended. One way or another, you could always get more work and others always needed help. Jason was not just the accountant and the video director. Tyler was not just the recipe creator and the logistic manager. Sarah was not just the packaging designer and the sommelier. And I was the driver, salesman, packer, copywriter, content producer, web designer, marketing manager all at once. Like everyone else, my role depended on the time and place.
“We are cooks man, I have no fucking idea”
They were constantly learning. Like a sponge dropped into water, they learned fast. Jason watched Youtube step by step to set up Shopify, Mailchimp, and Google Ads. Tyler learned to handle Shipstation and logistics on the spot. Sarah tested out tons of materials, shapes, and colors just to deliver the perfect recipe design. As former hospitality workers, they tapped into unknown territories and quickly became the master in their own realms.
They had to come up with the competitor analysis plot for a VC pitch and Tyler asked: “what’s the difference between benchmarks and goals?” I knew, at that point, they seriously had no fucking idea.
“When COVID hit, we had to turn the business around”
They knew the elevator pitch by heart. According to Y Combinator, your pitch would have to slip right out of your mouth because you had told so many people about it. I thought it was just an analogy but this was exactly the case at Truffle Shuffle. I had heard the pitch so many times working in the office that I could repeat it word by word.
“You know who that was? The editor in chief of the O Magazine”
They make connections. Sarah was excellent at her job as the chief communicator. From E40 to the Hamilton cast, identified the friend of a friend of a third cousin of someone, and she would get contact info of the person you want by the end of the week. On top of that, she treated the special guests with tremendous hospitality each time that they happily come back again and again.
“You wanna talk about it?”
They communicated well. There were multiple instances where one pulled another aside to check-in and to realign visions. Work habits, payroll problems, commitment issues, people were comfortable to raise the concerns and talk about them with no hard feelings. In a fast-paced environment, we couldn’t afford to let any issue dwell into much bigger problems. I don’t always communicate well and they set a really good example.
“Aye yo, you forgot to fist-bump everybody”
It was like a family business. Most of the members were hospitality workers that had been laid off due to the pandemic. The connections were tightened as many shared similar backgrounds. To cultivate the culture, Tyler had this rule that you had to fist bump every team member first thing in the morning and last thing when you leave. I forgot about it twice and was caught both times.
“Seeing what World Central Kitchen is doing, I feel like a little bitch.”
They were determined to give back to the community. We donated a meal to a frontline healthcare worker whenever an order was placed. This was not negotiable. Since the rise of the BLM movement, we shifted the focus to supporting marginalized communities. In July, 10% of the profit was donated to NAACP, and all the suppliers of that month were black business owners.
Jason took me to volunteer at the Black Cultural Zone in Oakland. It was a place, organized by World Central Kitchen, where people could come and pick up meals for their family members, no questions asked. We brought in 200 meals and were only shocked to see thousands more provided by WCK.
At the site, we somehow met Mark Zuckerberg’s speechwriter and one of Oakland’s council members among the volunteers. In the conversation with the councilman, Jason said: “as a business owner started in Oakland, we had to look at ourselves in the mirror and recognize that we would not have made it without this community.”
“Hey, come here and fix the tape”
They reached, if not were very close to Founder Market Fit. The crew understood the hospitality industry better than anyone else. They knew the best purveyors around the world, they had the best seasons for each ingredient in mind, the weekly menu was never the same, and most importantly they had the deep desire to nourish others.
I picked up a couple of traits from these French Laundry alums: respecting the ingredients and cutting tapes with scissors. Smell, touch, taste, the chefs used all senses to appreciate the ingredients the moment they arrived. They treated them as treasures. After working there for a while, I started to look at groceries from a different perspective. Oh, this is from La Boulangerie, their brioche buns are the best, this is the Cowgirl Creamery, the wagon wheel cheese from there is pretty good.
The second trait was about how detail-oriented you would have to be in the Laundry. One day I was called back downstairs to fix the labels on the table wine because “you can’t just rip the tape with your hands, you are better than that.” The video producer came by and said: “I did the same thing the other day and they went nuts on me too.” Since then I knew attention to detail was no joke.
Side story:
When Jason was running the pass(in charge of letting the cooks know what they will be cooking as orders come in and doing quality checks as dishes go out) at the French Laundry one night, he saw a customer leaning by the pass. “I was confused as fuck but didn’t say anything. Then Chef Keller(Thomas Keller) walked over and I thought to myself Chef Keller is gonna kill this dude. But no, he walked up to him said hi, and started talking. And I was like who the fuck is this guy?” Turned out, that was Brain Chesky asking advice on running a team and forming the right culture.
“We are trying to get to the next 10 years in 6 months here!”
They had their eyes on the prize. Jason was constantly on the lookout for new initiatives. Learning from Mirror and Gympass, he only saw more opportunities in such turbulent time while others shied away. As crazy as things were, it was peace and quiet in Jason’s head as if he knew every trouble at hand was just temporary. He once said, “part of running a business is managing your emotions, and your employees’ emotions, you will never gonna get anything done without it.”
Being composed did not dull his mind however, he had this vision for the company’s future and he was surely getting there. He called the cooking kits “experiences” meaning each purchase would bring a unique experience to the customers. From the class sneak peek, behind-the-scene stories, culinary philosophies, documentaries, celebrity pop-ups, in-class presentations to jokes with specific sound effects, using each piece of content he wanted to take people on a journey physically and emotionally.
We drove to Napa to shoot the story of a Chef starting his own BBQ business; we went to the La Boulangerie Bakery to grab footage showing people how 10% of the croissants consumed in the U.S. was made. They were parts of Jason’s vision. Altogether, it was not a cooking class, it was a show.
End Note:
The team treated me with tremendous respect and I had a blast being their coworker and mostly an observer. I learned more in the past few months than I could imagine. My cooking skill might’ve simultaneously improved too. It was the best introduction course one can ever ask for and I will forever cherish this incredible experience. In Jason’s words “you know, it should really be called an entrepreneurship internship, because you are learning so much shit from us.”
Some people said this business doesn’t scale. I had doubts myself as well and even told Jason about it. Whether he was bluffing or not, he was not concerned at all. I quickly realized that I should take a step back before I started sounding like the typical MBAs. The startup world plays by a different set of rules after all. Keep in mind that Jason is only 29 years of age, there’s still a long way to go. Who knows, maybe they will pivot again when the pandemic ends or maybe this is something that will stick around for a very long time. I am very excited to see what the future holds because I know they will figure it out in their own ways regardless of what comes next.
