David Rabie is the Founder and CEO of Tovala, the creator of a smart oven that cooks perfectly made meals by baking, boiling and steaming them in under 30 minutes. The meals can either be delivered prepackaged from Tovala or be made using a crowdsourced recipe. Last winter, Tovala graduated from Y-Combinator and a few months ago Tovala launched a successful Kickstarter campaign that raised $255,603 with over 1,000 backers. Before starting Tovala, David was an MBA at Chicago Booth, and he worked for the co-founder and CEO of Veggie Grill and ran Groovy Spoon – a bi-coastal chain of frozen yogurt stores. He also spent time working at Google and Foundation Capital. 

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In This Episode You Will Learn:

• Why he decided to pair food delivery with a smart oven
• How they came up with the name Tovala
• How David found his first engineer
• How they decided on the price of the oven and the food
• How they prepared for their successful Kickstarter campaign
• What they got out of Y-Combinator? 
• Why they decided to come back to Chicago after Y-Combinator?
• Why he wishes he had found a co-founder earlier
• How to test for cultural fit and avoid mishires
• The importance of establishing connections with VCs before you need money

Selected Links From The Episode:

• Michael Seibel, Co-founder of Twitch & Partner at Y-Combinator
• Jason Heltzer, VC at Origin Ventures & Professor at Chicago Booth

Favorite Books: 

• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz
• High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove