Catch of the Decade

CHAPTER 11Meanwhile, back at Menulog …

Meanwhile, Hezi and the EatNow team were growing the business aggressively, but at the same time, there was continual pressure to reduce the cash burn. Despite the amazing results, not everyone in management could stomach it.

It wasn't long before Dan Katz from Menulog called again and made us an offer to buy us out. How much? Ten million dollars. Not to be sneezed at, but we had other plans.

Hezi

At this point, EatNow was still going through a hair‐raising $200 000 per month and while it was flying like a rocket and I was very confident, the mounting pressure from head office was starting to get to me. I seriously considered taking the $10 million.

In fairness, the pressure didn't come from a bad place. Burning cash regardless of growth was a very foreign concept in the group's management mentality, and we were also co‐funding a number of other start‐ups being built in‐house, including Yumtable, Game, Didgio and Atlas, all of which weren't cheap to incubate and weren't bringing in any revenues yet. Some had not even been launched yet. At this point, we were spending a total of $600 000 a month on speculative businesses (which may or may not have made it) and the resultant pressure on all of us was intense. If we took this deal, it would enable us to not only stem our cash burn, but we would also recoup our losses and even make a tiny ...