ANDhe business incubator of Carabanchel hosted a new appointment with the Coffee Breaks of Madrid Emprende, this time with Darío Méndez, co-founder of Fork.
Eltenedor is a TripAdvisor company since 2014. It has more than 50,000 restaurants in 11 countries (in Spain, more than 8,000), with more than 11 million registered opinions, more than 18 million monthly visits, more than 12 million apps downloaded, and the world's largest travel website. TripAdvisor serves 49 global markets and records 455 million unique users per month, 630 million reviews and comments, and 7.5 million accommodations, restaurants, and attractions.
After these chilling data, as he tells us; and that, in its second round of financing, “no one trusted us”. The job well done and the effort got the president of TripAdvisor to go to his own office and make them a purchase offer.
Many years ago, they entered a traditional sector that is not very open to change, such as the hospitality industry, and they achieved something as difficult as digitizing restaurants and providing them with a management tool that centralized all their online and offline channels.
As an entrepreneur, he knows that any project must be validated and for him, validating it means going out to sell from the very beginning. Going out to talk to customers is the most important thing an entrepreneur can do. If it comes out and they start to buy your product/service, that project is already validated.
He gives us an example of the founder of Google who said that ideas are worthless. He invested if he believed that the people who presented the project to him could carry it out, because there are millions of ideas, but fewer people who make them profitable.
Regarding financing, he recommends that we approach investors that we consider to be related to our company and that we not invest the capital that we have in things that do not produce a direct return.
In the first moments, we talked to many people about our project, many people gave us their opinion or approached us for advice. He advises us to be cautious when choosing who to trust with whom to ask for advice, because bad advice can make everything go wrong. In his experience, listening to bad advice was one of his first mistakes when he was starting a business.
After the event, Darío shared a coffee with those attending the Coffee Break with whom he was able to exchange ideas in a more relaxed way.
If you were unable to attend, you can check the video of the session on our website. Facebook.
To attend the Coffee break or other events that we organize in the Madrid Emprende network of business incubators, do not forget to subscribe to our activity bulletin or consult our schedule.
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