 I'm Alexis Ohanian. I've started startups, invested in them, and met amazing people using the internet to change the world. Our generation has an opportunity unlike any other. We can create small empires without anyone's permission. Plenty of tech startups use software to reduce human interaction in the name of efficiency. That doesn't always have to be the case. In fact, kitchensurfing.com is doing the exact opposite, and they're doing it from a nondescript townhouse in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Hello, it's Alexis from Small Empires. Hello. I should say that with more confidence I know who I am. It's Alexis from Small Empires. Okay. Oh, thank you. Oh, hey. Hello there. Fancy seeing you here. Yeah, Alexis. Welcome to Kitchen Surfing. Kitchen Surfing is a marketplace for amazing chefs all over the world and people that love food. It's a place on the internet where you can find chefs that come to your home and cook for you and your friends. The notion of a private chef is something that used to be perceived as, and I think from a cost standpoint probably also just limited to, like fairly wealthy individuals, right? You're in a lot of ways democratizing, making this at least more accessible. By making that market more efficient, you make the opportunity of getting, you know, having an amazing dinner party at your home actually something that people can perceive of as doable in a way that, you know, sort of the Uber with private car service. But Uber is different, right? It's more like a utility. It's like you might get from A to B. True, true. This is not an experience. It's not an experience and I think it's about the experience and it's about really creating, like connecting the people with the people that create the food. With kitchen surfing, I mean, I think that one of the things that I had seen is just like that the pay scale for chefs was really, really awful. You know, it's like in New York City, you go and you work as a line cook at a really fancy restaurant like a Per Se or a Boulay or whatever, you know, you're often making $12-15 an hour. Everybody knows that the restaurants are bad businesses because you have this high fixed cost, a high rent, and you've got a low margin and all these things, right? And cooks kind of get the rawest end of that deal, I think, in many ways. When I got the domain kitchensurfing.com, I thought about my mom who was like, you know, was traveling a lot. I was, I stayed, I lived in Melbourne for a while, lived in Berlin, in Konstanz, and every time she was like really missing the food of my mom. It was something about like, there was like something like really homestyle you can't really get anywhere else. And I really, really liked this idea about like, you know, finding more people that like, like really good in cooking. And you know, especially Melbourne, it's like, hey man, there's so many amazing people that are really good in cooking. Never went to culinary school, but I liked my mom just like, hey, I just quickly like the best food at home. I've been thinking a lot about what would it mean for chefs to get paid more often, and I recently had to do like some parties. I had hired people that I knew were like chefs that were looking for work and they like crushed it and it was relatively cheap. And I was like, this is interesting. Tell me, just understand what you were thinking when you got an email introduction from a friend of yours who said, I mean, I'm not gonna get him from wrong, but he was basically like, listen, just sold a domain name to a random guy on the internet. You gotta meet him. So yeah, so I have a crazy friend and he had this domain name that he was sitting on and this German guy is like, hey, I want to buy this from you. And he says, okay, but you have to pay me in Bitcoin. This is probably in like 2011 or something like that. Maybe 2012. Like, nobody knows what Bitcoins are. And Bo is like, huh? Bitcoin? Like, what's this? So the guy who sold the domain to me in Bitcoins, 50 Bitcoins, he introduced me to Chris and was like, hey, this is crazy guy like technology kind of thing, restaurant. And it's like, alright, okay. And my friend was like, okay, well, you should go to New York because New York's awesome. True. And here's a bunch of people you should meet. And if you want to talk about food stuff, you should talk to Chris. So I went to New York just for fun on vacation and met Chris. We were hanging out, getting drunk, ate a lot. Bo comes in to visit and he's just kind of like in hangout mode, right? Like he's not really working on anything. He's just like in hangout mode. He's like, hey, nice to meet you and whatever. And I'm kind of sitting there like, I'm like heads down working on something and I'm like, okay, cool. Like, who are you? What do you want? What can I do for you? And then proceeded to kind of like give him a little bit of a hard time. And why, why are we giving her a hard time? I just trying to like figure out what it was that he was doing with himself. Like, like, like what are you doing with your life? Like what are you doing with your life? Like why are you here? What kind of thing are you trying to work on? What's interesting to you? Like, it's like, like all those things that should unfold over a three hour conversation over like a couple of beers. You just sit down. Yeah. Yeah. So like, let's just sit down and like get this done in 15 minutes. I went back to Berlin and I was like, I worked on a different projects and came back then in January last year and we were just hanging out again and it's like, hey, let's do this together. And I say, all right, okay. I'm staying here for a couple of months and then we just pulled it off. It's hard to take him seriously with those googly eyes, but he still makes a good point. So that happened as a joke. So we call our support team salt, which is support and logistics team. And so Evan decided to riff on that and called the Devon product team pepper. Kind of a stretch though to make that an acronym. Yeah. He pulled it off with such panache when he said it that it just worked. And why Jules? I think they just like guns or Samuel L. Jackson. So we're in your living room? Living room. Yes. So this is actually the last floor that we annexed in the building. We didn't have this floor until about a month ago. And this is the product and dev team at kitchen surfing. We were originally going to like build out almost like a test kitchen kind of environment down here. And you might see some plans for that a little bit later. And then we kind of grew too fast and had too many people and decided that we needed a space for other things. This is where most of the development work gets done. All of it except for a outpost in Poland. Wow. All right. So this is where everyone spends their days just reading Reddit and hacker news. Don't talk about it. I'm sorry. What were you doing before kitchen surfing? I was working in Greenvine. All right. So have you been doing startups pretty much since college? Yeah, entirely. So you're spoiled. There's no way you're going back. Why go to a big place? Why kitchen surfing? You could work, you know, right now obviously everyone's hiring for developer talent. Why did you choose kitchen surfing? So kitchen surfing has this really interesting crossover between you're actually paying chefs to do what they want with their lives. You know, I mean that's not like a lot of opportunity you get to do in a lot of things. It's this new market that you're building out of which really most people just weren't aware existed. Even chefs themselves weren't aware that they could have like this large of a market. And you're actually paying them to do what they want with their lives. It's an amazing thing. Like that's what I find like super interesting about it. That's a problem I'd like to see solved. And like I'd like to see that happen for, you know, painters, artists, musicians, everything else. But like right now it's chefs. Step one, chefs. All right. And how does it feel to get up in the morning and look forward to the work you do? Dude, it's great. I wouldn't have it any other way. Like if that stops happening I'll stop being here. There you go. You make it seem really effortless how you met. But at the time you said you were living in Berlin, right? Yeah. And he was living in New York. Right. And you were in town visiting. You were eating. You were getting drunk together. Having a good time. Right. And you decided to start a company together. Yeah, right. I mean I didn't know anything about him and I just liked him and we only had one beer together or two. And I was really confused. I was like why would we start a company together? I don't even know you. But we both like came like from the direction where we were like in a right mindset of like doing something together. And it's basically like okay come you know January of 2013 we're basically gonna clear our decks from like everything and just like work. It turned out that we ended up with like an amazing working relationship which is weird right? Because it's like oh he's this guy who sort of you met through the internet but ends up being like an amazing colleague and we ended up being really good friends and everything just kind of like felt like it had a little bit of pixie dust on it. I always thought like this would be crazy to build a marketplace where we can find and engage with chefs anywhere as you travel. And I thought it's a great idea but I don't even know how to pull it off. How do you get started? You're in January 2013. What's the first thing you guys do? We build a signup page for chefs. Like we're talking it's just really basic HTML, CSS, you're just it's just a web form. Like it's not even connected to a database to start really. Like it just like it's like it like it like it like dumps into a CSV file type of situation. Okay all right. And we started asking people to sign up. For two months was like really like hey let's set up a homepage, a signup form, do wireframes and all this kind of stuff. And then you figure out how you create more how do you find chefs. And how do you find chefs? Through this website where restaurant chefs were looking for jobs. So like a craigslist? Sort of yeah yeah yeah. It's everybody's on general like for Peter want to like find a place where we can work like in the food world. And we just set up of sign like a like an ad saying hey if you want to cook here sign up basically. And that's where not only people in New York really from anywhere in the world like sign up. And I think this is something that made us realize like what kitchen surfing can become. Marketplaces are only as valuable as the people who contribute to them. Chris Lynch has been cooking since he was a little kid. And he knows this new world presents some challenges but also a lot of opportunities. The thing that always you know comes into my mind immediately is the fact that I think that they've created a need for something that people didn't know they had before. I feel like that's what it's about. It's like you don't know you need this but then I'm gonna present it to you in such a way that now you can't live without it. And I feel like kitchen surfing is doing that not just for private chefs because before I met kitchen surfing outside of word-of-mouth I had a very hard time finding new clients. Somebody who wants to throw a dinner party on a Friday night or something you know what were your choices before catering from the local restaurant catering from a catering place which sort of really doesn't have a lot of appeal. You know maybe your Italian restaurant down the street does but again they're cooking it there they're bringing they're dropping it off and that's it. You know this is you know we're coming into your home and we're cooking it's much more personalized. Though we have set menus on our profile that's more to give I think to give the client sort of an idea frame of reference how we cook where we come from. Okay this guy cooks Italian this guy cooks French so it narrow you know it narrows it down for you but then it becomes a one-on-one and you basically design your own dinner with the chef. All right so we're in a test kitchen which is just the kitchen of the kitchen surfing offices. So right behind us you can't smell it we don't have that technology but it smells amazing and all these people are trying to work. We are not a regular office so we're a home. This is a home and so there's a home kitchen and this is what a chef on kitchen surfing usually walks into. A home kitchen they've never been in so part of the chefs coming into kitchen surfing is them being able to see what it's like to cook in another home. So first of all these three ladies that are chefs today there's Malika, Isabel and Carrie. We have never met these three chefs before and they have never met us so this is an opportunity for them to come in and start cooking and sharing their story and their food with the kitchen surfing team. So they're given a prompt they have 45 minutes to cook prep and plate two dishes they can represent their culinary style and what their food represents about themselves. This is wow this feels vaguely like a competition reality TV show. It's not a competition. Are we allowed to talk to them? Of course I mean if you're in a client's home and you have a toddler who was nagging at your feet or legs. So you're comparing me to a nagging toddler? No I'm just saying that there are a lot of unexpected situations so yeah you should talk to all of our friends. I'm Malika I'm originally from Little Rock Arkansas so I'm a Southern Belle so to speak. I've been in New York a couple years and literally the second week I was here I had friends here. So they were like oh we're doing a party can you come cater it and after that it was like continuous. How did you hear about kitchen surfing? I was it was a random opportunity I saw online I believe. I was just kind of looking at different private chef opportunities and I love like the startup culture and that's another I love like digital stuff and just kind of came across it which is great for the kitchen server because that means that the name is out there and people know about it. So I started reading and I was just like oh this is something that I love. A lot of New Yorkers don't have a ton of space you know every home in New York doesn't have a sous vide in it. So how do chefs adapt to that? So I mean the chefs are punk rock like you give them a heat you give them a heat source and they're good. So you just have a Bunsen burner or like a hot plate. Totally, totally like that's actually like a creative like constraint for a chef. When you pitch somebody on a menu you're assuming they have the basic things to cook on or cook with. You know what I mean anything extra is always exciting to have but you've already sort of shown up with a planned menu so you're not going to start doing you know a sous vide dish when you know the steaks are going on the grill like you you might mess around I don't know it just seems a little. It is nice to have challenges thrown your way because when you have to get dinner on the table at eight if something unexpected happens you still have to figure out a way to feed those people because they really don't care what the problem is. I've done like some events or catering spaces just about a couple months ago I went into a place where I thought I was going to have a kitchen and I didn't. So you just have to wing it. Wait I'm sorry so you were asked to cook somewhere where there was literally no kitchen? There was no kitchen. Was there a hot plate or? There was supposedly a hot plate unfortunately there wasn't but thankfully. So you were making a fire like what? I had some sternos and some pants going and but we got through it it's a challenge it's almost like okay well I met that challenge I can kind of move on to the next thing and see what happens. Just out of curiosity do you believe that anyone can cook? Do you really think because I'm telling you sometimes I look at myself and I see these ogre hands trying to manipulate even the most basic things and it's easy to get um to feel defeated. Is there hope? Can I get beyond just making egg sandwiches? Which I am great at. I think anyone can cook with the right ingredients and just patience. Without patience you probably can't do a lot of cooking and it will be egg sandwiches. Yeah so I know that's a blow torch I know that much and I've never done this before and I'm just I'm a little jealous that like you get to play with blow torches and I'd like to try. Absolutely. All right so what is the proper blow torching technique? All right so this is like the small little kitchen one I do for like probably about this one. So this is a safety we all need that so you pull that down and then if you want a continuous um fire I do push this button to hold it and then flame on. Oh wait wait for it flame on. There we go now get close and go slow. You know I'm considering this as my application video for Top Chef. This is exciting and a little terrifying I can't tell you this is actually really hot. This is no joke. And you're done. You don't want to over brulee. I don't don't that's a classic rookie mistake. All right it's a little darker than yours but um you know I'll eat that one. In theory you know five years from now if kitchen surfing keeps growing there are gonna be chefs who built their brands from kitchen surfing who have a following you know what's to say the next big celebrity chef isn't grown entirely from the internet and entirely from something like. I think it's I think it's totally possible. At the end of the day you have to be a good cook. I think some people know exactly who they are I think some people are still figuring that out. I know that my cooking has changed um you know I thought I did mostly Italian but now I realize you know it's more Italians Mediterranean but it's really New York inspired because I don't if if there's a good ingredient I want to use it and figure out a way to incorporate into my own style but the only way you develop that is by doing it over and over and over again. One of the things that's the most gratifying about kitchen surfing is seeing that it can be so many different things to so many different people. It might be like a woman who like just wants to teach people like maybe she's from you know India and she wants to teach people how to make parathas and that's like all she wants to do and then she loves doing that like once a month and that's awesome. What is the best lesson you would give to someone who is struggling or is thinking about getting into a similar kind of sort of market system? Don't think about the technology. For me it's really all about people and it's always about people. What I actually think that we're doing with kitchen surfing is that we're giving context for people to like enjoy more time with people they care about and that the food needs to be really good because people like great food but that it's almost like a background. I don't know all the fancy restaurants in New York I I just like to go to the same places all the time and I like to book Asian chefs and like always Asian cuisine, Korean chef and there's something that's I don't need a lot more and so it's like Chris it's like really let's find the most human most simple thing we can have and this meal every day. Startups a lot like life can't really be planned for. There's going to be serendipity and it may involve a domain name purchase and bitcoin transaction. You don't know. So the founders of kitchen surfing were looking at a market that most chefs who were in it didn't even realize existed. They still need to work on it they still need to grow it and the most important part is that they just started. you