Jade, what’s next?

After 8 years at Instacart, I shared to friends what’s next for me: “help people cook more”. How exactly… no idea. But I’m trained in growth startups! Talk to customers, explore, confirm a need, ideate solutions, experiment, iterate. Deploy software.

Help people cook more

A few years ago, I stumbled on a cook book shop in Noe Valley where Salt Fat Acid Heat called to me with its inviting colors and playfulness. I bought it on a feeling. And to support local independent shops; this lovely shop of curated and cozy physical space.

That’s what cooking is. It’s a place of warm and cozy physical ness. A place that's always been and now I see this world of domestic creative awesomeness. (I’ve come to find out I love all things domestic but that’s a story for another day).

As cooking change my life so too could this gift reach others. My energy aligned, how can I deploy my skills effectively? How can I do this full-time and make money? How can I do this… at scale?

6 months in, a great insight:

💡 The reason people don’t cook more is because they don’t have to

I don’t think helping people cook more is an education problem. There’s hundreds of years of cookbooks and endless digital content. I don’t think it’s a friction problem either. Learning requires friction. And as friction approaches zero that’s called Doordash.

I’m betting people you know who cook do it because they had to, in some form, at some point in their life. Maybe cultural expectations or financial constraints. Of course there are those that cook from passion and interest. But these people don’t need help, they are their own solution.

Helping people learn anything is the real core problem statement. The rest of this article shares my thoughts in more detail. And ultimately why this problem area is likely a bad business direction.

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What’s the problem, why don’t people cook more?

People tend to say they don’t cook as much as they'd like because they don’t have the time and/or they don’t know how to make a variety of tasty options. If cooking took less time and it was easier to get better at cooking people definitely would cook more.

“Make it easier to cook”

Making it easier to cook doesn't make sense to me because the easiest form of cooking is not cooking. It’s why Doordash is worth $29B and company after company insists on trying to make meal-kits profitable.

Cooking is learning — learning has to have friction

There is no learning if there is no paying attention. Your body biologically only pays attention to uncomfortable and novel stimuli. There has to be some amount of friction to train in and retain behavior.

So what does it mean to embrace this “learning is hard” reality? Is every “learn to cook” solution doing it wrong? Welp, “learn to cook” is actually two distinct categories.

Cooking and learning are two distinct categories

My understanding of the problem has changed because I realize there’s two separate categories at play. And it’s vital to align the problems I think I’m solving with the problems people actually care about. It sounds obvious but it’s why product-market-fit is so challenging.

Cooking/food

1. Cooking is mostly a media and entertainment business​
   - Ex: hyper-visual food porn across TV and social media
2. Media businesses are “hits” businesses​
   - The Gordon Ramsey’s of the world make the money, less so your neighborhood cooking class
   - Your popular food influencer makes less money than you’d think
   - Masterclass is “pop learning” where it feels good to listen to effectively celebrities share their success stories

Learning

1. The “learning” part of cooking is education​
   - Education doesn’t make money
   - Education will tend toward Public Good
2. Education companies that make money are not really education companies​
   - Private elite school tuition buys status and access to exclusive networks
   - Enterprises use training platforms like PluralSight to buy regulatory compliance
   - Employees use Coursera and Udemy to buy credentials that align with promotion tracks

Takeaway: cooking education isn’t a viable business

There’s a mismatch of the stated problem — cooking is hard, help make it easier — and the problems people actually want and will pay to solve — convenient access to tasty food options.

That nobody makes money in cooking education sounds presumptuous. It’s just that any counter examples are likely really in the media and hits business.

There are people that legitimately love to cook. But this group is self-selecting. Can you really say they need help learning to cook? There is no aching problem. Cookbooks are a’plenty.

People learn to cook by necessity. People learn to do anything in spite of the hurdles. That’s what learning is.

Final thoughts: I still want to help people cook more

But I don’t want to conflate the need to make money, optimize impact, and obsess on goals and strategy. It’s unnecessarily hard for someone who connects more with cooking education than cooking media.

And that’s ok.

My brother cooks more. I’d like to think it’s because I continually share pics of ad-hoc dishes over iMessage. And every other week we BBQ for family day. It’s a ton of work because I insist on treating it as a creative outlet preparing everything from scratch as much as reasonable. I even tested pickling onions. Super simple, the major insight being “why not try it?”. My sister loves ‘em.

Surely there’s an app here! Why use iMessage when I can make an app dedicated to…. asdkflajsd;fasasfklajsd;fajsas afa;sdlkfajdasgsffjdlksfj;d — I think my brother cooks more because I’m a more present brother and I give more effort, through cooking.

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