Really relate to this. I shut down my startup in April. On paper, we ran out of money.
Behind the scenes, I finally paid the toll/ burnt out after 1-2 years of constant unexpected, unpredictable shocks. As a solo founder with investors, there was no escape, no one to run things while I took time off, and no way to leave without ending the company. At points, if my phone buzzed with a text message, I would go into a panic attack, expecting another problem.
I’m now reading a book on the impact of trauma on psychology and while my experience was nothing compared to people who went to war, etc - I see a lot of similarities. Eg there are external triggers that shock your body without your control.
One of the frustrating parts was that I knew it was happening as it was happening. I had the language to identify I was burnt out, had a coach, a therapist, tried to leverage a support network, etc. I do wish there were more solutions for this.
At a minimum, it’s good that this issue is getting talked about more and more. An important requirement to take a sabbatical as in the example in the paper is having buy-in from board members, investors, or team mates, so getting more people on board with mental health is key.
Question - curious if anyone has seen any books on burnout recovery. Thus far, 4 months in, it’s quite a long process.
it's very individual and you may not find a "recovery template". Personally, I find that best remedies are 1) attaching yourself to a bigger goal, where even "at least I tried" and "at least I've advanced X area by a few steps" are fulfilling narratives. 2) finding something no matter how small, where you excel. Hobbies are great. Maybe your startup is a mess, but your bird dog yoga pose is pure perfection.
(1) helps deal with the shocks of failures and (2) helps refill your confidence tank to try at the problem one more time.
Short answer - we're starting to experiment with trial options. This is a link to a 2-cup trial that converts to a sub:
https://www.suddencoffee.com/?trial=true
Longer answer - sort of but not that simple in our current state. Even if you absolutely love a product, often times you don't buy again. Many reasons for this - it's a pain to checkout again, you don't have your credit card on you, you forgot about it, you're just too busy with other stuff.
If we had an Uber-like app - one click to order, saves your credit card, sends you push notifications to remind you - it would be a lot more feasible to send you a single cup of coffee and make it really really easy for you to buy again. Unfortunately, it's hard for us to do that right now and we end up losing a lot of people who truly did love the product.
Before LTV or any of that stuff - the big question is if we call up our subscribers, are they happy? We hear again and again "Yes, I love the product, I love that it shows up, it tastes great and saves me time". We would not be building a subscription service if that were not the case.
However, we are absolutely testing different trial options to get at what you're talking about.
This is a product where clearly some kind of free sample is necessary, because when you make claims like you are about your coffee, people want to try it before subscribing to it. If you're giving free samples, you need to collect credit card information to avoid fraud anyway, so you may as well add the customer to a subscription after 30 days unless they opt out. The rebill model is profitable for a reason.
I would go so far as to say you should create an affiliate program. I know the "rebill" affiliate marketing model was quite scummy (acai berry, teeth whitening back in 2008-2011), but it worked very well and doesn't have to be so scummy. The problem then was that the major products were hiding the terms of the rebill and made it impossible to cancel without multiple angry calls to callcenters. But it doesn't have to be this way. Lots of reputable products have rebill models, but they are clear about the terms when you enter your credit card info, and you can opt-out of auto-renew with a button click at any time in the next 30 days. If you can do this you can capture the advantages of the rebill model without high chargeback rates and reputation damage. The rebill model will increase customer LTV and enable you to pay competitive commissions to affiliates who drive signups.
Once you know the percentage of customers who convert from free trial, you can start measuring the average length of subscription to calculate LTV (if churn is negative the average LTV will increase over time). Then you can use that LTV to determine maximum customer acquisition cost (CAC). With that, you can launch an affiliate program (by registering as an advertiser on the few big affiliate networks) and pay a commission as some percentage of customer LTV (hopefully around $20 if you want to compete with other affiliate offers). As LTV increases you can raise commission for your best affiliates.
This is the kind of product that affiliates can sell very efficiently. You should let them do your marketing for you, and use the funding you're raising to bankroll your affiliate program.
I think there are ways you can get repeat purchases without the subscription model. Yes, having the CC details stored (actually, having some kind of token stored, ala Stipe) would make repeat purchases easier.
There are probably other things you could do to speed up the process. Maybe a sticker (or mug) with a QR code that leads to the purchase screen. Something that's always in front of my face that I can scan when I realise I'm down to my last cup.
Subscriptions are fine, and there's no way you should drop that model, but having both options would be way better.
Well hopefully through this thread at least we've convinced you we aren't scammers :-)
Seriously though, definitely something we are not about - would love to grab beers with anyone (in SF) who wants to learn more about our company/values text us/me (650) 823-4287.
Co-founder here - I actually want to challenge that...for science. I've gone pretty deep on this.
There are definitely sets of products for which people want to 'set it and forget it'. At a basic level - electricity. I'd love to never think about my electricity bill ever. I do not want to explicitly pay for my electricity bill. Automated payment on electricity is amazing!
There are also many products in my life that I truly love and would use a lot more, but I am too lazy to buy or order them. I love LaCroix sparkling water. I would have no problem if it showed up at my house for $20 a month. However, because I'm lazy I never actually buy any - instead I get Coke at the corner store - worse for me.
Our goal with Sudden Coffee is to make it really really easy to get something you like. We are definitely not trying to pull wool over anyones eyes - we try to be as transparent as possible with this. We will never give you the run around if you need to cancel - that's just not who we are.
Closer to our hearts - a subscription allows us to actually make it an 'experience' instead of just cups of coffee. We can educate you about coffee, send you new recipes, guide you through coffee tastings - over a longer period of time. When we talk to customers at cafes - those extra moments of delight make the experience memorable - not just a cup of coffee.
That said, Kalle is also right. A subscription ultimately means we can spend less money & time on marketing, more money where it counts - on coffee, and give it to you at a lower price. I mentioned this in an earlier thread - for us to deliver the same coffee without subscriptions, we'd have to charge $4-5 per cup. However, I can also tell you that we have many happy subscribers who love that it's a subscription - it's not something that feels forced, but rather something that makes life easier.
Would really love for you to give us a try! Promise you will not be met with resistance if you need to cancel!
I have a very different perspective. I religiously avoid auto-billing. For basic necessities like electricity and gas, I like to know how much I'm paying, and to be able to dispute the charges before I pay in case there's a mistake (this occasionally happens).
For luxuries, the periodic reminder that I'm paying $x for something prompts me to reassess whether they are worth it to me, with a default answer of "no." That may be bad for your business, but it's good for my cost of living. Since I'm not in a position to hire a servant to look after my day-to-day financial interests, good defaults matter.
Yup, I hear you. I've definitely talked to people on both sides of it - there are preferences either way. I think both can work. FYI, before our subscriptions renew - we notify customers a few days before, so they can increase, decrease, or cancel the order. We do want to proactively alert you before it renews rather than hide it from the user. It should be very clear to you what's happening (thats our goal at least). Our platform for subscriptions doesn't let us force you to hit accept before billing - that would be hard to implement.
I'm just a lowly project manager, but my understanding from the tech wizards around here and those I work with is this:
It is possible, using the advanced technology available today, to make on your website a button which allows a subscribed user to independently cancel a subscription that was made online.
Through this technology, one no longer has to compose a pleading e-mail to customer service. No need to take on faith the co-founder's confusing promise that they want to make it easy for you to cancel while they simultaneously withhold a "cancel" button, with no stated plans to add one.
I mean, look, if you really don't intend to make a serious amount of dough off of people being too forgetful or busy to unsubscribe from a subscription they no longer want... what's the harm?
There definitely is a cancel button too! I just tell people they can email us as well because some people find that easier.
We're just now building an in-house engineering team to make the process easier. If I had my way, you could cancel, pause, adjust timing, etc with a couple clicks. I am stating our plans to do these things :-)
The part re: colloids is a trade secret at this point, but definitely a real challenge.
As far as we could find, there is no common solution for industrial scale espresso. If someone has one, please post it here. This was a personal obsession of mine last spring - "How does this not exist?!?"
Kalle is the coffee expert, but as the 'non-coffee guy', I have no idea why this wouldn't exist - I would have thought someone out there would need it?
industrial scale espresso: what about those automatic espresso machines you can sometimes find in office buildings? they pull single, double, or triple espresso shots from a touch screen interface. Can do lattes etc. too, but assuming you wouldn't need that part.
They're called super automatics. Generally, they're really expensive, and they make coffee very slowly (.5ml/second if you're lucky). They also tend to be built by companies who don't readily provide documentation on how to fix / modify them.
Great response - appreciate the clarification and all makes sense.
Yeah, those are all the real challenges we face. Marketing for us is a big one - as many people have pointed out about our website :-)
I think it's our job as a business to figure out a way to make it mainstream. It's going to take creativity, hard work, and a great tasting product - but that's the challenge we are signing up for to be honest. We are not here to make a niche product. Everything we are working towards is making this something the majority of people can enjoy. If you talked to my parents in the 70's, the idea of a Starbucks style cafe where you pay $5 for an iced latte was ludicrous, but now it's mainstream (I'm not saying its a ripoff either, its just something we didn't know we'd want).
What we see is a huge gap in the market. If you live in a select few big cities, you have this huge exposure to specialty coffee and it tastes great. If you live anywhere else - it is a whole lot harder to experience coffee that tastes this good. We believe that the average person truly does want to experience great tasting coffee - they just don't have access.
*Caveat that I always add - that doesn't mean there isn't room for other coffee either. McDonalds is a mainstream burger restaurant but there is still a place for 10 other fast food companies, a whole spectrum of high end burgers, etc. We aren't trying to replace every way to drink coffee - just provide a new alternative that tastes awesome.
Really enjoyed your comments - thanks for writing!
Working on it. We do individual servings because they preserve freshness - that's the only reason we do it. It's hard for us to do compostable since we are still very small compared to your average consumer good, but we are 100% committed to doing it when we are big enough. We even have 2 sustainability advisors involved with the company.
Cool. I'm not the one who originally posted the question but had the same one upon checking out the starting page. Great idea, something I would be interested in signing up for, but too much plastic at this point.
Yeah, the amount of plastic waste here would eliminate a lot of the kind of thinking buyers you might normally get. Hope you find a solution, and hope you sell in Netherlands!
We aren't going to beat out the best of the best cafes with trained baristas, but we will definitely beat out the average corner cafe (where people often spend $3-4 on a coffee).
So I'd say look at it like a spectrum. In the cafe world there is - average/ not-so-great drip coffee --> Starbucks --> Speciality/ Third Wave Coffee.
I don't know how VIA makes their product, but if you do a side-by-side taste test with Sudden vs VIA, I 100% guarantee you will notice (and prefer) Sudden. We do in fact use a pretty unique bean selection + brewing process to achieve it.
Re: drying techniques - it really varies brand by brand and when you go to a store shelf in the US, most of the brands you see are spray dried, not freeze dried. In the US, you specifically have to look for brands that say 'freeze dried' and it's usually reserved for the more expensive instant coffees. Spray drying is much cheaper, but yields a lower quality product. Freeze dried coffee is a lot more common outside of the US. Even within freeze drying - we use a smaller batch freeze drying process. I've worked in large scale manufacturing before and with a smaller batch process we are able to achieve much higher quality levels.
Re: beans - most coffee beans bought and sold are bought as a commodity product - think rice, beans, etc. They can literally be years old before being brewed. We have seen lots of these beans and they visibly have mold and insect damage. The beans we use are hand-picked when ripe. Much closer to picking grapes from a vineyard.
I'm not trying to be an asshole, but do you really see this company taking off? You're battling the known perception of instant coffee being awful and trying to sell a super premium product within a group that's tailored to buy cheap coffee because they just don't care. That's just a brutal uphill battle from a consumer education standpoint and a price comparison standpoint.
I get that you're not trying to compare your product, which I'm sure has great quality, to the $8 jar of instant coffee but that's what the general consumer is going to do.
I will openly admit, I hated coffee until I tried a fresh cup from a friend who owns his own small business roasting coffee beans and it was incredible.
I truly hope you do succeed as that'll ideally allow you to run larger production runs to drive down costs to more affordable prices for everyone.
When I was starting to work on Sudden I knew that the biggest challenge would be around the perception of instant coffee. It's a lot of work but we have a pretty solid plan and traction right now!
I think your biggest challenge is going to be to convince people to pay such a premium to save the 10 minutes they would need to make a coffee (of more or less equivalent quality) with a French press. I'm a coffee lover but I am not a coffee snob, so I don't dismiss your product based on it being instant coffee, but £60 a month is enough to cover a new French press every month plus the best beans that my local coffee shop sells and still have enough money left to go to the local café every now and then when too lazy to go out. And that's only if you don't like Nespresso-type coffee, in which case after an initial investment of 50-ish pounds for the basic machine, £60 a month is enough to buy me 150+ cups of coffee a month.
And this is just the price for 32 cups of coffee a month, which is at most 1/5 of my normal consumption.
I wouldn't necessarily view it as something that replaces your French press or every coffee in your life. I'll bet that the majority of the time you make coffee at home, but a few times a week you spend $3-4 on coffee at a nice cafe.
Sudden is the same thing. Continue making coffee at home, but 2-3 times a week if you want something that tastes different or that's easier - go for Sudden. At that rate, spending $5-7 a week is much closer to treating yourself at a cafe.
As others have said, if this was at REI or other stories and priced the same or higher I would totally grab some for when I go backpacking.
In any case, I'm truly impressed by your responses in this thread. Most founders don't take criticism in stride and that's, in my opinion, a main difference between those who succeed and don't.
I'll be a subscriber in the near future as I'm going to be traveling quite often the second half of this year and I'd love to avoid drinking Keurig hotel coffee.
Current customer here. I was in a similar position as yourself and subscribed to Sudden in the early days pre-YC. Just wanted to chime in that it's perfect for the frequent travel and hotel use case (as long as you have a source of hot water). I keep a few in my backpack to save myself from K-cups in offices.
Behind the scenes, I finally paid the toll/ burnt out after 1-2 years of constant unexpected, unpredictable shocks. As a solo founder with investors, there was no escape, no one to run things while I took time off, and no way to leave without ending the company. At points, if my phone buzzed with a text message, I would go into a panic attack, expecting another problem.
I’m now reading a book on the impact of trauma on psychology and while my experience was nothing compared to people who went to war, etc - I see a lot of similarities. Eg there are external triggers that shock your body without your control.
One of the frustrating parts was that I knew it was happening as it was happening. I had the language to identify I was burnt out, had a coach, a therapist, tried to leverage a support network, etc. I do wish there were more solutions for this.
At a minimum, it’s good that this issue is getting talked about more and more. An important requirement to take a sabbatical as in the example in the paper is having buy-in from board members, investors, or team mates, so getting more people on board with mental health is key.
Question - curious if anyone has seen any books on burnout recovery. Thus far, 4 months in, it’s quite a long process.