Review by Booklist Review
In the wake of the pandemic and the corresponding spike in online ordering and delivery, it can be a surprise to recall that not long ago an online-ordering platform like GrubHub was a revelation. This is where the coming-of-age story of both GrubHub and entrepreneur Evans begins. The tale is made up of shifts from software-start-up malcontent to "retired" entrepreneur finding himself on a solo bike ride across the U.S. Both stories contain insights and pitfalls, trials, tribulations, and victories, delivering operational takeaways that are solid and will provide valuable guidance for first-time entrepreneurs. Combining GrubHub reflections with human lessons learned on the 4,000+ mile ride across the county, Evans arrives at the Pacific with a vision of how he would like his next venture (Fixer.com) to evolve, while readers lurk and learn. Hangry will find an eager audience among business professionals and general readers who enjoy a peek behind the scenes of business-world celebrities. Recommended for college and public-library business collections.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
"Discontent is my driving force, my animus," writes GrubHub cofounder Evans in his illuminating debut, an account of how the food delivery service grew from a scrappy start-up to a multibillion-dollar company. Evans describes how one night in 2002, he came home exhausted from his office job and was unable to find in the Yellow Pages information on which restaurants delivered to him and whether they were any good. That night he created a website that listed all the venues that delivered to his Chicago zip code, and as soon as he had one restaurant willing to pay for a premium listing on the site, he quit his day job. Evans vividly recounts his 80-hour workweeks getting the business up and running, his efforts to expand beyond Chicago, and the relief he felt when, in 2006, his cofounder joined the business full time. Together, they brought on investors and venture capitalists, and by 2018, the company was worth $13 billion. Evans is frank about the challenges he faced as the company grew, his fights with his cofounder (Evans favored independent restaurants over chains), and his temptations to quit, and the whole tale is shot through with humor: "Mostly, this is a story about how I'm cranky. And that crankiness turned into a hobby." This punchy memoir delivers. (Nov.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Like many good innovations, the impetus for GrubHub started with hunger. Not hunger for money or success, but for pizza. Evans came home late one night after a boring day at work and was dismayed by how difficult it was to order a pizza. To improve the situation, he coded a quick site that listed menus of restaurants that would deliver to his apartment. Soon he quit his job and set out to change food delivery altogether. Reading his own work, Evans demonstrates fantastic narration skills, as he describes the incredible learning curve, successes, and challenges that came with starting and running GrubHub. Evans starts at the beginning, when he had very little capital investments, and continues through all the stages of GrubHub's development. An IPO in 2014 bestowed millions, but bored by the day-to-day requirements of running a company, Evans again quit his job, this time deciding to ride his bike across the U.S. VERDICT Evans exposes the trials and tribulations of starting a business as an entrepreneur with a heart, impressive writing chops, and a talent for narration. This title will be attractive to patrons who might not think business books are their thing. Recommended for public library collections.--Christa Van Herreweghe
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An irreverent memoir by the founder of GrubHub. A scrappy rural Georgian who came to the big city as a whiz-kid coder, Evans is a technolibertarian without the right-wing baggage. One takes him at his word that a job must reward the soul as well as wallet, and one feels for his youthful captivity working in one soulless enterprise after another. It was in such a cubicle farm that he cooked up the idea of GrubHub, a natural outgrowth of his longtime familiarity with the food-delivery business: "Being raised the youngest, feral child of a single mom, we were on a first name basis with the Domino's driver." Coming up with the name of the company was one hurdle fairly easily solved in brainstorming. Figuring out how to make the thing work was quite another, with all sorts of hidden-trap challenges: How to recruit restaurants for his delivery service? How to charge for it? Evans isn't much for metrics and certainly not for business plans--as he counsels, defying the business-school received wisdom, "Just start. Make the thing. Sell a customer. Start." The author is full of practical advice, including a rueful observation about the drawbacks of his hard-charging nature, as when he tried to acquire a competitor by ridiculing him. It was a definite nonstarter that led him to conclude, "Running a business is dangerous business." There are even some funny moments, such as the author's observations on the pecking order of the Goldman Sachs team that came to pitch him on running an IPO. Getting a multibillion-dollar business off the ground, Evans observes, was satisfying but only a temporary plug for his hunger--his "hanger"--to isolate a problem or need and then fix it with the power of the market, which has launched him on his latest adventure. A page-turning, lesson-rich account of how--and how not--to build a business empire. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
