Interview with Sonny Mayugba, Founder of Sacramento Startup Requested

On a Thursday afternoon in late October in a crowded De Vere’s Irish Pub on L Street,  I sat down with Sonny Mayugba, CEO and Cofounder of Requested and keynote speaker for Startup Weekend Sacramento: Elk Grove Edition, to talk about Requested, Startup Weekend, the startup scene in Sacramento, and startups in general.

[Jeff] What’s your 30 second pitch to describe Requested?

[Sonny] Requested is a mobile app where you can book a table and pay with your phone at awesome restaurants, bars, and cafes. What’s really cool about Requested is it’s a curated list of independent, locally-owned restaurants only, in the Sacramento area, soon to be global. We’re Hotel Tonight meets Uber, for restaurants.

You’ve got eleven startups to your name so you obviously don’t have a shortage of ideas. How did the idea for Requested come about?

One of my startups in that eleven was a venture called The Red Rabbit Kitchen and Bar. It was a Tuesday at about 1:30 in the afternoon, I was sitting in a booth and I was looking around and I saw the bartender starting to clean lights. And I looked and I saw we have a hostess, and we have an army of cooks, and we have a server, and GM, and there’s no customers, and I thought, man, this is the time I want to do advertising and promotions, and discounts, and hook good people up. So that dawned on me. And then I started thinking, if I can do that during the slow times, what about those busy Friday and Saturday nights, maybe there’s someone who says, hey, I’ll pay you guys a little bit more and get a table when there’s no reservations available and we can fit them in. So that was the other part of the idea.

And then I started thinking, look at Red Rabbit. It’s a very unique style of restaurant. It’s a craft cocktail bar, Farm to Fork. And next door is my friend Trevor’s restaurant called Bar West which is a sports bar with twenty TVs and fish bowl drinks. Two very different concepts. Both very successful. We have different customers, and I thought, I wish there was a way that we could actually connect to the customers that really like what we do. And that’s where the idea came from.

So the idea came about because you saw an unfulfilled need in the marketplace. How did you validate that your solution was viable?

That’s a really great question. As a young entrepreneur the first thing I would have done is find some people, find a little bit of money, build it in a private room and then launch it on the world and say, “We’re gonna be huge!” I don’t do that anymore.

So, the first thing I did was I started telling everyone I know about this idea. This is 2012 by the way, so, mobile was really starting to skyrocket. The idea of the social layer and mobile commerce was brand new – because I wanted this payment to go through the phone – and so I started telling everybody I know about this idea, and said, “What do you think of this?” And I started getting a lot of good feedback from people. And actually, truth be told, I really had thought about the discount side and I told my friend Mark Otero, who’s had a really successful exit with video game company EA, he said, “You know Sonny, if you can do the discount side during off peak times, why couldn’t you do the premium side on the peak times?” So you get good ideas that way. So I was getting some good validation there. Then I got together with my team, my cofounders.

The team from Red Rabbit or did you start a new team?

Yea, I started asking people saying hey I’m going to build this product. I identified some people I wanted to work with – they’re all three engineers – and I said I want to build this with you, would you be into doing it? So really the next step was finding the team.

The number one people sought after in the world today are software engineers. So, if you want to get an idea validated, ask some software engineers if they want to join you for free and quit their high-paying job. So I asked them and they agreed, “Yeah, we want to quit our high-paying job and follow you on this mission.” So that was validation.

So then I said before we build anything why don’t we paper test it. Let’s get a bunch of foodies in a room and show them the idea. And we did. We got a bunch of foodies, and the real key was I got a bunch of foodies that I didn’t know. I asked one person, my friend Callista, a marketing director at Paragary Group and I said “Grab a bunch of your friends that don’t know me. Let’s put them in a room at Hacker Lab.” And I said, “We’re going to show them some screens and some ideas, just ideas, see what they think.”

Then the next thing was I went and found people from Ella, Mikuni, Zocolo, big restaurants and said, hey can we do the same thing? I put them in a room and said what do you think of this idea? So all these groups shot holes in it, and told us what they liked and didn’t like. And from that we got a lot of validation and told us that we wanted to do it.

So you got positive feedback that you had a viable idea?

Positive and negative both.

What did you do about the negative feedback? Did you roll that in? Did it deter you or slow you down?

Well, the negative was not negative but critical so it enabled us to build it into the product and say oh, look, everybody’s asking for this thing, they all want this one thing, maybe we should think about that.

So they identified a feature?

Yea, yea or just the product offering. So it was really good feedback, but what we experienced was everybody said they would use this product. There was a lot of reticence but everybody said they would try it, they would use the product. So that was enough for us to at least build a prototype.

So what were some key lessons-learned in getting from the idea to launching the app.

The biggest lesson is product iteration. If you read Eric Ries’s Lean Startup, he borrows from Toyota’s manufacturing process which is all about Build, Measure, Learn. That is one of the biggest key learnings in the early stage before launching. It is product first, build the product, put it in front of people. And a product can be screens. Get something in front of people. So you build it. Then measure how they use it and learn from it. Then go back to building. Iterate.

We built a prototype in late 2013 and put it out in front of people and the feedback was tremendous. It lasted 3 weeks. It was an app on a phone. And then we shut down and quit our jobs in 2014, started bootstrapping it and then we built our second prototype.

And you still had no venture capital?

No, we were bootstrapping it all the way. Then we raised an angel round led by Dave Pringle, sorry, a friends and family round really – good-sized friends and family round in August of 2014. That enabled us to actually dig into building this prototype and launching it. We launched that in the Fall of 2014. So, more feedback, bigger group, better product.

And then we hooked up with Jason Calacanis of This Week in Startups, LAUNCH, Uber, Thumbtack – big time investor, prolific angel investor in Silicon Valley. Then we went through an incubator with him, the best incubator in the world, LAUNCH Incubator and then we launched the next version March of 2015. So that’s when we really launched. The first two were prototypes.The real first version in the App Store was in March 2015.

How big was that team that did the initial prototypes?

Four people. Four founders. Myself and my three cofounders. Back to your original question, the biggest lessons-learned, besides Build, Measure, Learn, are definitely Move Fast, Be Lean.

So in moving fast, you don’t want to worry about it being perfect?

One of the best quotes that a lot of startups live by is General Patton’s quote, and I don’t know if I’ll get this exactly right, “An executed plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.”

Actual General Patton Quote:
“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”

I’m not getting that exactly right, but it’s basically saying, Ship! Get it out there! As entrepreneurs, we can sit in the back room and try to perfect and tinker on our product forever and get it perfect. Because we in our minds have a vision of what it should be versus get something in front of people. Listen to your customers. Talk less. Listen more. Move fast. Break things. I’m a huge believer in the Facebook philosophy Ship Love. Move fast. Break things. I love that.

What’s next for Requested?

We’re a team of eight people now. So that’s pretty awesome. We’ve had some hits on the face, we’ve had some pretty awesome successes. Going back to your last question, another huge, huge lesson we’ve learned is optimize and get your product/market fit working with a small group. Get two-hundred people who love you rather than 20,000 people who just check you out. It’s great advice from Paul Graham and a lot of people. So, we’ve retreated from a couple of markets. We were in three markets. We went into one market, our hometown Sacramento, which is a great market. And we’ve been spending that last few months iterating on our product, listening to customers and consumers, figuring out our growth strategy and figuring out our playbook. And we have it now. That’s the cool part. We have it.

We are closing in, our short term progress report is we’re closing our fifth straight month of plus 50% growth, revenue growth and user growth, which is amazing. So we’re experiencing some serious growth. We are, right now in the middle of closing our seed round, so we’re closing our third round of funding, our seed round. We had a friends and family round, an angel round, now we’re closing our seed round. So what’s next after that is we’re on track to be sustainable by August of next year. We are going to expand into our second city in Spring of 2016. That’s really all we’re focused on right now is making that product joyous and growing the community that is behind our mission.

So it’s not just about the money, it’s building a ‘joyous’ app?

Yeah!

And making people happy?

Yeah! Exactly! Yeah! Our mission is to help high quality merchants continue to do the things they love by connecting people to the places they love. That’s really our mission. There’s a lot of love in there. We want to focus on that. We want to grow a really strong community. We want to make sure our, our product is everything, so make sure the tech works really well, make sure the value equation for our merchants and restaurants is really high. Make sure the people that use it really enjoy it.

So switching gears a little bit to the overall startup scene here in Sacramento, the upcoming Startup Weekend. You’re going to be the keynote speaker at Startup Weekend in Elk Grove in November. Can you tell us a little bit why you’re participating, what you’re looking forward to from the event?

Well first off, and I mean this honestly, I’m honored to even be considered and asked. The fact that I was even asked to be the keynote is an honor. I really mean that. I’m doing it because it’s a great way to participate in the startup community in my native city, but beyond that, it’s a great way for me, — the pragmatic thing is — it’s a great way for me to evangelize Requested and spend a little time doing that and that’s awesome for me.

But mostly the reason that I’m doing it, all my extra time, besides with my family should be spent on working on my company. But those type of events are going to be filled with entrepreneurs like me. As experienced as I am I still sit in a crowd at conferences and I learn and listen and hear ideas. I always feel very for grateful for the speakers who tell their story and you get a nugget and you get information and you’re like “God I never thought of that!” That’s awesome to hear and so if I can affect a local entrepreneur who applies it to their world or their company or maybe even just their job, doesn’t have to be a company, right? Maybe it’s someone who’s working a day job who comes and wants to apply the entrepreneurial spirit to their day job. If it affects them in a really positive way and I meet some great people out of it, man, that’s what it’s all about, right? It’s about making those connections in the world and life and sharing the experiences you have and the knowledge you’ve learned and to be quite honest, learning from others. Whenever I do these conferences you learn from other people. You get questions after, you’re like, “Huh, I never thought of that! Glad I came here. Glad I met you.” You know, making new connections. I’m really, really glad to be a part of it.

Lots of people have great ideas but don’t pursue them. What traits or attributes do you think are necessary to go from the idea phase to starting down the road of entrepreneurship?

This is an interesting question. First off, I think that everybody has the former trait that you mentioned. Everybody. Whether you’re Zuck or me. We all have ideas that we don’t act on. It’s just human nature. I think every single person has the trait to follow an idea that they think of. What it takes, is not so much a trait, which I consider innate, I think it takes the discipline and gumption to decide that you’re willing to pursue this idea. And it takes the feeling that this is how you want to spend some of your time here on Earth. And that’s the part that some people forget. Some people think, “Oh, I could never do that. I’m not that type of person.” I don’t buy that. Everybody can be an entrepreneur and everybody can follow an idea, whether it’s making a backyard garden or starting the next Airbnb. Everybody has that in them.

So it’s more about the motivation, rather than a skillset, like being a developer, a coder, or a UX guy?

Absolutely. There’s plenty of great non-technical founders. Travis from Uber is not technical. He’s smart. He’s competitive. He’s amazing, but he’s not like building code for NASA, right. He decided this is what I want to do and I’m gonna get my team and I’m gonna make it happen, I’m gonna pursue this.

But more important than that, he felt, and I think all entrepreneurs feel, you know we all get up and we have a choice of how we want to spend time in life. That’s just reality. If you want to spend your time going to work at a job, that’s ok. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s really about the resolve of saying how do I want to spend my time. And sure there’s risk in everything. There’s risk in having a full-time job. There’s risk in doing your own thing. There’s risk in living on a beach. There’s risk in everything right? So you gotta quit thinking about that and decide how do you want to spend your time here. Do you have the resolve to pursue this idea. Do you care about it enough. Do you have the passion to care about it enough. That’s not a trait, that’s really a decision. We all have the trait. It’s really a decision. It’s not for everyone.

It’s really like designing your life – lifestyle design.

Absolutely. It is. I know a lot of people who are, you could almost call them founders. These guys are like #12 at LinkedIn, #14 at this company, #6 at this company. Zuck’s partner Dustin Moskowitz has a great talk at Y Combinator Startup School about being a founder is not always the best road. Being #3, #4 is also pretty cool too. You’re going to share in the same type of decision-making process, you’re going to wake up and you’re going to be like a founder. You’re going to get just as rich and you’re going to be just as glamorous, and have just as awesome a ride as the founder. So you don’t have to be a founder either. If you have an idea, it doesn’t mean you have to be the founder. We all know Elon Musk isn’t the founder of Tesla, but he is essentially. It was maybe someone’s idea. So I’m diverting from the question a little bit, but really, it’s like I said, everybody has the trait. The question is, do you want to spend your time and do you care enough about your life to pursue this idea. And that’s the question you gotta ask yourself. And if the answer’s yes, you should do it. And if the answer’s no, it’s ok. Don’t do it.

Last question, what’s your take on the startup scene here in Sacramento, the whole Sacramento region?

You know, I’m a little bit different, I don’t see a startup scene in Sacramento. And I also don’t see a startup scene in San Francisco, or Boston, New York, or Sydney. I see a startup scene globally. And I don’t mean that as a buzzword, I really mean that. This is me personally. I could be way off here. Are there startup scenes and ecosystems that are a little more vibrant than others? Sure. When you walk down Townsend or Fifth in SOMA [San Francisco] and you’ve got startup products everywhere that’s pretty cool. It is awesome. I love it. When you go to Hacker Lab or any of the other awesome coworking spaces in Sacramento and you see people working on their ideas, is that awesome too? It is awesome!

Maybe a better way to phrase the question is, do we have what it takes here in Sacramento to support people and their ideas.

Yeah! That’s a really great dimension of that question and I’d say, Yes! I think it exists anywhere.

You just stayed here. You didn’t move everything over to the Bay Area or Silicon Valley. You launched here.

I didn’t. I actually considered it. I actually was leaning toward it because it is so vibrant and awesome down there in the valley. But you know, I realized, to me, as CEO, my job is to keep the company alive and make sure that we’re following a singular vision and don’t run out of money and we hire the right people. So I look at those things, I think, what’s fiscally responsible? And paying $8,000 for my staff to have an office isn’t responsible. You know what I pay here? $300. You know what? We build, we test, we iterate, we get customers, we sell, we do everything we need to do.

Now could we do the same thing in Omaha? I don’t know. But as it turns out, my good buddy Jonathan George has a huge startup scene in Wichita. And I’m not being jokey. It’s really in Wichita. They’ll even give you money to open an office there. And I’m sure there’s the same kinds of grants and things everywhere. So I truly believe we have to get out of this mindset of everything is in Silicon Valley or Boston or New York. There’s amazing companies coming out of L.A. Great companies coming out of Austin, Colorado, Sacramento, Sydney.

Here’s the best way to put it. Go talk to any VC or founder and they’ll ask — and this gets back to your very early question — what are the lessons learned. The number one lesson in validation we were seeking was, a very key phrase – Product/Market Fit. It’s a buzzy thing that people say, but it really means something. Do people want to buy your taco? Do people want to stay at your hotel? Do people want to wear your shirt. Does it have Product/Market Fit? Do they want to use your app. Do they want to buy your mobile device, and on, and on, and on. Does it have product/market fit? And, as it turns out, you don’t have to be in San Francisco to figure out product/market fit. So, are there awesome resources in the Bay? Are there wonderful people to collaborate with? Absolutely. Is there probably a higher volume of them? No question. It’s an amazing place to be.
Sacramento is kind of cool because we’re here we can build, we can do it cheap, but then we can hang over there and just be present and make a lot of friends. You can’t do that from Omaha. But, I look at the guys from Yik Yak and look at their story. They’re not leaving Georgia. They’re like, “We found product/market fit. We’re growing our company from Georgia.

Here’s a great analogy, because I love music. In the 80s, everyone had to move to LA to get their band signed. And then in the 90s all the bands in Seattle said “F**k LA! We like playing music and hanging up in the Northwest by our trees and the rain and having a good time.” And you know what, all the bands that moved to LA, what’d they do? They sounded like all the other bands from LA. And what do you see in Silicon Valley? All the people who move there are making apps just like all the other people in Silicon Valley. So I actually think there’s advantages to not being there, in the same way that Soundgarden, and TAD, and Nirvana, and Pearl Jam and all these bands up there you know what we just get to do our own thing and play cool shows and play what we want to play. Turns out, it had product/market fit. And the resources came and they built a cool scene up there. So I’m sure if you asked Kurt or Eddie in 1990, hey, you think there’s a cool scene in Seattle vs LA? Same questions now is there a cool scene in Sacramento vs San Francisco? They’d probably have a very similar answer to us. Well we like playing our music, we like doing our thing, and turns out there’s a cool record label here, Subpop, that’s going to support us. The support is where you find it.

We were lucky, we went to Silicon Valley and raised some money down there from two amazing firms, Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya and Social Capital partnership. Great people who actually believe you don’t have to be in Silicon Valley to make it. Good ideas can come from anywhere. They believe that. So they embraced us, the same way some of the labels in the early days embraced bands that weren’t in LA.

So, back to your original question, what do I think of the startup scene in Sacramento – anyone here doing a startup whether it’s a solar cooker, an app, a restaurant, clothing, an art installation, a building – everybody here honestly supports each other and is so stoked on meeting each other and wants to work together, wants to find and share resources to help keep doing what you’re doing if it’s cool. So, as a scene, it’s awesome.

That’s a common thread I’ve heard a lot about Sacramento.

It is! It’s so true. Bay Miry is doing development. That’s a startup. And he’s cool with the guy doing an app. We all support each other. Like Gina and Eric at Hacker Lab right? We all support each other. And the same thing exists down in the valley. But you know what’s funny? We go down to the valley from Sac, everybody’s the same way. They’re so happy to meet us. They want to support us. It’s really great. So you quit thinking about your town and think about it globally. You can do the same thing virtually. I’ve emailed people that are big names. They’re like, “Hey Sonny! Happy to help you.” And they’re in Boston or god knows where. The startup scene is global. Be a part of it!

Awesome! Thank you very much for your time. Any last parting thoughts?

Thank you for the interview. Thank you for the post. Come check out Startup Weekend. And keep hacking!

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