Aihui Ong worked on financial enterprise software for 8 years. She built a solid reputation with her unique background in engineering and finance and built a successful consulting business. She lost half of her hard-earned assets after a painful divorce. When her ex-husband asked for half of her consulting firm, she decided to close the business down and took time off to backpack for a year. When she came back she was emotionally depressed, and couldn’t fathom going back to the same line of work. She was helping a friend at a farmer’s market when she stumbled upon the idea of Love With Food, a snack subscription service that connects CPG food brands with consumers. LoveWithFood had $2M of revenue in 2013. Starting this business is how she found her strength again.
The Start
I started the business by myself in June of 2011. At that time the daily deal model (Groupon, etc.) was hot, so Love With Food originally launched as a daily deal model for gourmet food. I slowly realized that the daily deal model didn’t work because people needed to taste a sample before making a purchasing decision — it’s not like shoes, where you buy a pair and can return them if they aren’t right. So I asked a lot of vendors for samples, and in exchange I asked them what they needed. They all said they needed data.
So I tried out sending out these samples, and found that our customers really liked the idea of getting a surprise in the mail. If the sample tasted good, they were interested in reviewing and purchasing the sampled food. So I added the feature of subscription and turned the daily deal model into an ecommerce store, and that’s how the company evolved into what it is today.
How did you fund your business in the beginning? Have you taken on any additional funding since?
In the beginning I put in $50K of my own money and bootstrapped for a few months. 500 Startups was our very first investor — as part of the accelerator program, they invested $50,000. During the interview process, they asked me how I got 60,000 Facebook fans with such a limited budget, I replied that I would tell them how if they let me in. That’s how I got into the 500 Startups program.
When I graduated from the accelerator program I started fundraising, and by June, I raised our very first seed round of $650K. In January of this year (2014), we closed another round of funding of $1.4M.
Running the Business
How did you learn to run your business?
First of all, I’m not born with it — in the beginning I didn’t know anything. Having a curious mind was the first step; I didn’t know Ruby on Rails so I researched and learned it. I didn’t know online marketing, but I read a lot of blogs about it and experimented with it. When we started growing, I needed customer service and I played around with different software, trying to select the best one. I did a lot of A/B testing myself to get a sense of what’s going on. I remember when I first learned to run Facebook ads, I couldn’t get it to work the first time, and I got frustrated. So I started running naughty ads and my Facebook account got banned because my ads were “too risqué.” It was so funny.
Managing the team is something I’m learning as I go. In a previous life I had management experience, but I’ve never been a CEO. I’m always questioning myself, “am I doing it right?” So once a month I have lunch with one of our investors, Justin Kitch, who has gone through starting a company from 1 person that grew to 2,000 people. He knows management is not easy, and our monthly lunch is a chance for me to check my sanity. I really appreciated his mentorship in the past couple of years.
Who was your first customer?
Li’l Puff was one of the first food company customers. They make handmade, artisan marshmallows in a variety of flavors, all made from scratch, all natural. Another company that helped us in the beginning was an Asian jerky company called Red Dot Kitchen. I am very grateful to these companies because I was small and insignificant when I started, but they were willing to take the time to guide me along as I learned the ropes of the food industry.
What’s the biggest mistake you made in the first year?
Hiring friends. When you’re hiring friends, you tend to be more relaxed in the interview process because you trust them to be good. But sometimes it isn’t the right fit. I’ve actually let go of 3 people, I’ve learned totally different things from all of them, and every time it’s not easy.
What’s the smartest thing you did for the first year?
I bought a list for $500 from someone in the PR world who gave me all the addresses of popular lifestyle publications. What I did was I wrote a letter to all of them and I kept on sending them subscription boxes, but I never got a reply. The next thing I knew, we were featured in Real Simple and InStyle, and Andrew Zimmern stopped me at the Food and Wine Festival in NYC (where I wore a company T-shirt) and offered to make a YouTube video about our company and helped curate one of our boxes themed Weird, Wild and Wonderful.
What’s the most rewarding thing about running your own business?
Seeing the company grow and having the ability to create jobs.
What’s the most surprising thing about running your own business?
How shameless I can be. When it comes to running your own business, you have to have the confidence to talk to food companies, pitch to investors, go to food shows, talk to the press, and even recruit at tech meetups. There are so many people I have to be shameless with, but in the end it is rewarding.
What business owner or entrepreneur do you admire most?
Sarah Blakely of Spanx. I really look up to her because (1) she’s a solo founder, (2) she didn’t have an Ivy League education like myself. I think she’s very persistent and very resourceful and very scrappy like me!
What I’ve learned
If you could go back to when you were starting your business, what advice would you give yourself?
One thing I really don’t know how to do is celebrate victories. It was actually one of our investors that mentioned this to me — that I am so immune to rejections that I don’t know how to celebrate triumphs. I told him when we were fundraising: “I’m so stressed with this fundraising,” and he said “do you know how many people cannot raise $900,000?” I told him my goal was to get to $1M, and he said, “well, you’re almost there, be happy!” That’s when he told me that I needed to celebrate the little victories. I’m still learning how to do that.
What do you wish you had known before you had started your business? (knowledge/skills)
I wish I’d known more about the food business, because I jumped in not knowing anything. For example, selling food at a farmers market is very direct. Selling food to the buyer of Whole Foods is a very different process. Perhaps I would have interned at a food company to learn the process before starting my business.
Do you have any advice for people who are starting up?
Do something you’re passionate about because it’s very hard. Every day is very very hard. If you’re going to try starting your own business, make sure its something that you really love.
This article was originally written on September 15, 2014 and updated on August 25, 2016.
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