Grubwithus (YC W11) Brings Strangers Together Over Social Meals | Hacker News Reader

Grubwithus (YC W11) Brings Strangers Together Over Social Meals

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189 pointsmhunter76 comments

I'm sure you've thought of this, but fwiw: you should do this for big corporations. I thought of something like this as a tool for bigcos and large companies, where on my experience people tend to have lunch with the same small click, and not having particularly fun. If they could have lunch with a random group of colleagues from different parts of the company say once a week to start with, I think that would really spark new ideas and improve any company.

Thanks!!!

We are currently rolling out companies through our Grubwithus Groups, whereby companies can have meals around topics like "team building," "strategy,""dept A meets dept B," etc. Company members will join the Group and will get notified when there are meals for them to reserve.

We are hoping to roll out lunches in the near future and like you said, it would be awesome to have fun company lunches to meet other colleagues.

What a neat idea! Having food together is the best way to socialize anyway, time flies and you have something to do, no awkward silences :)

Maybe this is something to market to the airbnb userbase?

Serving food to strangers for a fee is bound to raise some eyebrows though, this time not from jealous hotel operators but from the people that lord over food safety and cleanliness in commercial settings, especially if you also serve alcohol.

Yeah, though "underground restaurants" have been steadily growing in popularity nonetheless. A British example: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/feb/10/undergrou...

I also watched a Jamie Oliver documentary series about food in the US and he managed to wangle his way into similar places in a few US cities (mostly oriented around Mexican food).

When you advertise online using a public service it's not very underground any more.

I don't agree with that, a lot of underground bands and artists use online only advertisement like last.fm and deviantart.com and still are underground.

It's just about the way you market it... you can narrowcast your marketing to only the people you wanna hit, so you keep the underground feeling but get more customers.

Depends how you define underground, as long as it is not popular in the mainstream I think you can consider it underground.

This is such a great idea for Young Professionals. Let me know if you'd like some introductions in the Santa Barbara area. Lots of wealthy, lonely types :)

We're hosting a bunch of grubwithus dinners in the Bay Area with YC alumni for women interested in learning more about startups: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2144852

Either these guys are confused or they missed the notice: http://www.grubwith.us/restaurants/la-briciola-san-francisco...

Actually it's an opportunity for women who want to get into startups to talk to YC founders - most of whom happen to be men.

My bad, that makes total sense now. I was the one confused.

I was stupid and bought a seat to give to a female potential-startup-founder friend of mine (mainly because it was the last seat, and she's already asleep), but it signed me up instead. Oh well.

I wonder if there's such a thing as startup groupies. /joke

I was at some YC parties with some girls who really seemed like groupies (from a distance, I didn't actually talk to them).

I just wanted to say thanks for not demanding permission to post to my wall when I linked my facebook account.

haha yea we hate that ourselves

Also for not having the "access my data at any time" permission which every app seems to want to do these days

Great idea! And I'm impressed that you're so responsible with Facebook. All the best!

I tried this a few weeks ago in Chicago and it was great. One of my favorite parts is that we didn't have to worry about splitting up the bill. I'd love to set up grubwith.us's open only to my friends. Paying in advance also eliminates the flake factor.

This will probably change as I say this: but women outnumbered men 2 to 1 in the dinner I attended (8 & 4). What other social startup has an early adopter profile like that?

Women were only outnumbered 2 to 1? Though that's not completely successful, that's pretty good.

Other way around.

Met the Grubwithus guys at the last HN Chicago meetup and they impressed the heck out of me as guys who enjoy and have experience running businesses. Best of luck to them!

Ditto. (I regularly get back from HN meets wondering where all these crazy talented people hide out at when not at HN meet ups.)

That was one of the most madcap fun evenings I've had in a while. It was great seeing people pop out of the woodwork and hearing about what they're working on. Great to see GrubWithUs taking flight!

Offtopic - I envy you guys so much for having HN meetups, I think I am the only Brazilian that reads HN (very unlikely), because nobody answers me about a Brazilian one.

Guys, I'm not Brazilian but you should check out http://hackernewsers.com/users.html?User[city]=&User[cou...

there are some people from Brazil :-)

I'm another brazillian who reads hn and comments regularly enough. Live in são paulo, phd student in machine learning at unicamp.

I gotta echo this, I live in Halifax Canada and wish there were some meet ups here !

Are you from Rio de Janeiro? If so feel free to email me.

Nope :( I live in Campinas... Close to São Paulo

<troll>You should envy us! The last Chicago one had about 30 people show up and was far and away the best one I've ever been to. There's great people here in Chicago.</troll>

Am I the only one here that finds the use of the term "Social" as it refers to "Social Media" to describe a social activity that is possibly the most ancient form of socialising, disconcerting?

No, you aren't. Social is just a buzzword meaning "meeting strangers by means of web technology."

https://www.grubwith.us/signup

The "What city will you be eating in" lists S.F. after "other" -- straight alphabetization? Struck me as rather odd.

Thanks!!!! We will change that out to put "other" last

Out of the box it seems very speedatingesque. While amazingly fun if you have a good group, one bad guest might ruin the night for the rest of the group. If this takes off, then awesome - a new way to meet people. However I think that the grubwithus guys are going to hit quite a few social hurdles along the way.

might need a way to rate other people you dine with to address this, kind of how airbnb works

after the meal you can post comments about your dining experience with the individuals you grubbed with. these comments are listed on their profile page for others to read.

Great idea. Suggestion: for me location matters more than date so maybe add a map view?

Map view is a good suggestion. We are hoping with more volume we can release something of this sort.

Great idea in itself, but also because services that give implicit dating opportunities always win.

We are building a similar site with a bit different approach, ours is a free site which encourages people to create their events at their homes or public places, also bring together communities and create a framework for small businesses, a bit like farmers markets or the like. Check us out at: http://eatwithme.net/

Also, FWIW, the new home page is LIGHT YEARS better than the old one. Great job. Got a designer referral?

THANKS! We did it ourselves -- just great feedback from YC and our user base. We went through a ton of iterations

i'm a huge fan the new redesign also. great stuff, guys.

For those browsing, it's well worth the read. Their positioning as an alternative to the groupon model is very interesting. I wonder if they think they can match the same scale though, even if it's just for restaurants. Overall, great idea! I'm going to give the Chicago version a try.

Commendable. Really well executed.

How about linking up with online communities.

I'm sure a lot of people on reddit would love this for no-fuss IRL meet ups. Likewise forums/ online games etc.

Well done

I'm not even a very social person, but I think this is a great idea. If I'm bored sometime, I might just try it.

Someone needs to build this for dating.

A few people have actually dated after meeting on Grubwithus. Job offers too. These things happen semi-serendipitously, which makes it better, because everyone goes to the meal with the context of meeting new friends, not some awkward dating context.

I agree completely. When there are preconceived expectations it can cheapen the act or make it seem less genuine. When there are no expectations or ulterior motives beyond interesting conversation, the most real and genuine things are forged. It's better when things come up natural in conversation.

How are people grouped together? Are people able to screen the other people that they'll be eating with? Maybe that would take some of the serendipity out of it, but it could also help curb some of the superficial conversation that occurs upon meeting someone for the first time.

users can check out each others profiles and decide if they want to eat with them or not

Love their 404: http://www.grubwith.us/oops

Except that means something went wrong on your end!

love this idea. groupon+eventbrite+opentable of sorts so i hope they clarify on the checkout that tax + tip aren't included. I would have loved to have had something like this in Miami, as we used to organize geek dinners every so often and it was ALWAYS a pain.

Does the site actually check gender? Saw several female only meals with reservations from guys.

Yeah it's a little confusing. Those are actually the YC alumni that will be speaking to female founders

This reminds me of Rirkrit Tiravanijas work, a contemporary artist who uses the experience of a shared meal and its underlying mechanisms to create a space where strangers can connect (usually it takes place in a gallery) and form new communities.

Congratulations. I am looking forward to the dinner.

Awesome job Eddy and Dashin! Love what you guys are doing :)

Thanks Tim! We'll have to grub with you when we are in Chicago.

Congrats, looks great!

Nice. Rock on, guys!

Looking forward to a Denver/Boulder addition. Cool idea.

Goodness, I can't wait until this hits LA and SD!

The more people sign up in those spots, the quicker we will launch. Should do well in both those areas.

Excellent idea guys. Congrats on launching.

Great idea! I'm already signed up :-)

great idea. i will definitely try it out when it comes to boston!

very cool - looking forward to a berkeley dinner!

Great idea.

Every single one that I want to go is Females only. Dont you think that men would also like the opportunity to lern from YC founders?

We actually hosted some meals during the YC interviews for guys to participate in and chat with YC alum. We will look to do something like that again in the near future. Thanks for the feedback!

awesome...im looking fwd to it.

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