Jun 28, 2020
In this episode, I interview Mat Weir, a tech entrepreneur and the founder of international table booking service, First Table, the only company in the world focused on helping restaurants get their first customer for the night. Mat got the idea to start the company after seeing a sign in a local French restaurant in Queenstown, New Zealand. First Table charges the customer $10 per booking and the customer gets 50% off their food at the venue. After selling his software development company in 2014, aged 29, he built the website, opened with ten restaurants in Queenstown and is now in 60 cities across 8 countries and 1400 restaurants with a goal to hit 10,000.
The company has grown from one full-time employee, himself, to now 22 based in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, UK, and the Philippines. They’re looking to expand their product into North America, and Europe soon. Funding has been from sweat equity and the growing profits from a very scalable business model. Mat says when building your board of directors or advisors, start with a great chair and build a board around them. He believes the hardest thing in growing a small business is, decision making fatigue (Making a lot of decisions on the fly as you go). The advice he would give himself on day one is, “Mate, you’re in for a shitload of work, but it will be worthwhile”. Stay tuned and enjoy.
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Music from https://filmmusic.io "Cold Funk" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com). License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/