Amit Singh

Breadcrumbs

A behind-the-scenes story of a startup.

Amit Singh · First told on Twitter

As it often happens
It started with an ‘insight’

Two friends talking over coffee at a café

Early 2020
Two friends
In boring jobs
At a café
On their second cappuccino

  1. To-be founder

    Bread is a high-repeat use case, bro
    Everyone eats it. Every single day
    High-repeat lends itself well to app play
    Which turns it into a winner-takes-all
    Think subscription
    Bread-as-a-service

Six months later
The Bread Company was born
TBC, for short
A seed round, a logo and a ping-pong table

Strategy discussion

  1. Founder

    We need to do 10x next quarter

  2. CFO, newly joined

    10x? In a quarter?

  3. Founder

    That’s how we roll

  4. CMO

    We should do a big bang on TV during the IPL

  5. Founder

    That’s not uninteresting
    When is the IPL?

  6. Brand manager

    Cred ads worked well for them
    Tanmay is a friend
    I will take it up

  7. Founder

    Super, let’s crush it

  8. Brand manager

    Apna time aayega…

The IPL campaign update, on Slack

#marketing

CMO

“Picasso Oh Lord!” ads worked
Installs zoomed
Sales sky-rocketed
All this at 90% retention
Yay!

TBC's IPL ad: "Oh Lord! Give us our daily bread. Subscribe now. The Bread Company", beside a Picasso-style painting of two people eating bread

👌👏🚀🍺🤑🔥

A crowded room at night, out of focus, a party in full swing

The office celebrated
Someone ordered a cake
Not bread

Quarterly review, post IPL

  1. VP, Analytics

    We’ve a retention problem

  2. Founder

    90% retention is not a problem

  3. VP, Analytics

    7-day retention

    90 %

    28-day retention

    0.42 %

  4. Founder

    What? Can’t be
    Customers love us

  5. CBO

    Ratings are managed

  6. Founder

    RCA, please
    I’m flying to Tokyo next week
    We’re in the middle of a big raise
    We can’t risk that
    Also our runway… I mean RCA ASAP

  7. MT, Analytics

    Could it be due to the ‘free breakfasts’ offer?

  8. Founder

    What free breakfasts!
    That was our inaugural offer
    We are not running that campaign anymore
    Wait… Are we?

  9. MT, Analytics

    Very much
    My friends keep switching SIMs every week
    To subscribe to the free plan

Newsflash

Newsflash

Inflation in the US spikes. The Fed increases rates.

Capital becomes expensive
Flight to quality
“Profitable growth” and all that jazz

A falling share price chart with Netflix's logo and its founder, Reed Hastings

Markets turned
Questions changed
Metrics changed
Capital flow stalled
Almost overnight

Elsewhere

Crusty loaves on brown paper

Boutique Baker buys bread
From the Small Baker
At x
Adds sesame seeds to make it look exotic
Wraps it in brown paper
Calls it handcrafted and artisan
Sells at 5x
Makes money

TBC today

A loaf's crust up close

Tokyo meeting did not go well
Runway wasn’t long enough
HR is preparing a file on Airtable
Hopefully, a founder somewhere is pushing HR to hire fast

But all that is left of TBC today is…
You guessed it…
Breadcrumbs

Any similarity to actual founders or startups, living or dead, or any actual events, is purely coincidental and entirely unintentional.