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02/10/11 | Uncategorized

Meet Spoondate, Incubated at Founder Labs and Secured Funding from 500 Startups

By Shaherose Charania (Co-Founder & CEO, Women 2.0)
Hungry? Me too. Let’s go grab a bite! Wait, you want to go to a steak house? But I’m vegetarian. Ack!

I think there is something really special about sharing a meal with someone and something even more special about sharing a meal you both are excited about. I really believe that shared eating preferences can lead to more successful relationships. The founders of Spoondate are on their way to prove this theory right.

Spoondate is a startup born in the Women 2.0 Founder Labs and led by Raissa Nebie and Van Nguyen. Raissa and Van have created a new way for people to date by matching their food preferences. Today, we are happy to share that Spoondate has received funding from 500 Startups!

After enduring five intense weeks with Founder Labs, Raissa and Van are now a part of the 500Startups family, with incubation and funding.
How did this all start?

It was the first day of Founder Labs 002, participants were casually getting to know each other and within minutes the Spoondate team was formed! The team members, diverse, strong and passionate about food.

It feels like the perfect fairy tale for a new startup idea. Founder has idea, founder pursues idea by becoming an expert in the field (in this case a chef), founder finds the right place to validate and incubate the idea (in this case, SF), founder finds co-founder (in this case via Founder Labs, Van Nguyen), founder launches alpha, founder gets funding!

This is rather a simplistic flow and yes, the team faced many challenges to reach this first step in their journey. We will save the lessons learned for another post!

We really believe Spoondate is poised to succeed. There are good reasons we look forward to the success of Spoondate:

Growing Foodie Movement: seriously, is it just me or is everyone claiming to be a foodie? Group cooking classes have taken off, foodie blogs are endless, everyone seems to be cooking for “fun”, more movement in the food sector than ever! Great timing for Spoondate.

Dating online sucks: seriously, usability sucks, the people (ok I won’t comment), the concept of it all, this industry could use a shake up. What a better (more classier) way to meet someone new than over meal that you know you both will enjoy! At least you won’t go hungry. Innovation in online dating is ripe for change.

We love the founders! seriously, Raissa and Van are amazing. This isn’t to say they didn’t have other members; a big shout out to their original team members from Founder Labs who are pursuing other endeavors at the moment, but were a part of the fire under Spoondate. Raissa and Van are a great complement to each other and a great fit to build a new, entirely different place for foodies to meet with like-minded eaters, for fun or for love. I may not know too much about the dating industry, but I believe in Raissa and Van.

Good luck to Raissa and Van – this is a big win for Founder Labs just as we close up our third round Founder Labs 003 Mobile Edition.

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