550: Disrupting and Democratizing Private Chefs with Iyabo Bello

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What if booking a private chef was as easy as ordering an Uber? Iyabo Bello is a serial founder and entrepreneur, best known for iKooK, an app connecting private chefs to their target audience. Join us as she shares the unlikely story of how she came up with the idea to start iKooK after working in fashion design and food science. We get into the weeds with the premise of the app, how it differs from other home chef experiences, and how the cooks are vetted before being allowed to register on the app. Iyabo shares her experience of navigating a double-sided marketplace and discusses the process of building an app and driving traffic toward it instead of her website. We discuss bootstrapping and outsourcing to create a user-friendly, effective app, and handling health and safety as a food service. Join us as we discuss the challenges and benefits of building iKooK, and what you can learn from her journey. Thanks for tuning in.

Key Points From This Episode:

Welcoming Iyabo Bello, founder of iKooK, and the story of the inception of her business.
Her background in fashion design and food science.
The premise of iKooK and how it differs from other home chef experiences.
How the process behind vetting chefs has evolved.
Navigating a double-sided marketplace.
The challenge of finding the right chef with an eye for detail.
Taking down the website to encourage users to book on the app.
Bootstrapping and outsourcing to build the app.
Handling health and safety and building it into the program.
The inclusive and flexible nature of Iyabo’s product.
Challenges she has faced while building the app.
How Jared and Sami would go about assessing the app and user experience.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Iyabo Bello on LinkedIn
[iKooK Email]([e-mail])
iKooK
Sami Birnbaum on LinkedIn
Jared Turner on X
Jared Turner on LinkedIn
thoughtbot
thoughtbot on LinkedIn
thoughtbot on X
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