My first startup. Foodpanda's unrealized killer.

Gamification: The growth hacking tool

As I occasionally ordered food online via basic apps, I stumbled upon something interesting - I noticed that the food ordering apps that dominated the space back then lacked any form of engagement, gamification, social component, or customization of food. 

I was immediately reminded of a game I used to play 90ies - “Pizza Tycoon”.Players were able  to create their own custom made pizza by adding ingredients on a dough, earning points along the way. 

I thought of the idea to combine Pizza Tycoon with a FoodPanda type of a marketplace - And TastyCarrot.com was born! 

With the help of my wife Ivana Todorovski (a UI/UX designer), and a friend Zoran Ivancevic who later became a CTO, I bootstrapped my first startup.  Our main objectives were: 

• improving customer experience
• bringing more cities and local restaurants into the digital world 
• bringing more diversity to customers

TastyCarrot enabled restaurants to accept orders via Android and Web application in real-time, make their presence online for the first time, and reach completely new customers. Our tech team has created an algorithmic innovation where restaurants were able to create multiple tiers of grids and polygons with different distances and minimum orders, which improved their effectiveness.

After doing market surveys, we have realized that none of our competitors were allowing users to customize food in any way. Ability to modify orders and fully customize a meal back in 2011. made TastyCarrot way ahead of its time.

Doing growth hacking, before even knowing this is a thing

Customer engagement being the top priority, we created an integrated promotional campaign in which restaurants and our app gained coverage through outlets such as radio and various websites.

Knowing that free incentives have power to bring large parties to the restaurant, we came up with the idea of having restaurants give food for free,  while sharing that to outlets who promoted us on theirsocial media with 100k+ followers.

Results were amazing - we created a marketplace - onboarding approximately 100+ restaurants as partners. We managed to raise seed funding and employed growth marketing strategies into our business!

Getting recognized through student business competitions

Without a startup or investment ecosystem, I’ve decided to put my own money to work. At that time, I was actively working as a tutor of math, physics and electronics to students and was using those funds to boostraped the business.

Our team of 3 presented the business model in various conferences, Start up events and student business contests - and emerged victorious several times, earning cash rewards of $5,000+. 

Breaking into product management role

As we were  writing business plans, developing web applications and building an MVP prototype, I became Product Manager of TastyCarrot. 

Some of my tasks included:

• doing hiring of a sales team
• wireframing the prototypes
• setting up the marketing tech stack and analytics platforms 

(lacking info about this experience)

Innovating customer experience

• creating a personalized name for the dish, 
• sharing it with friends over social media platforms, and
• earning credits to be later redeemed as discounts or cash.

TastyCarrot was my first remote experience and it had its own set of limitations. Owing to communicate issues and the team scattered at different locations across the world, the project was no longer proving to be feasible and I decided to give it a momentary halt.