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Mellow — The robotic sous-chef for home cooks
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@zemvpferreira can't wait to get my mellow. Quick question for you Ze. Will you be putting out recipes for users to try? I think that's going to be my biggest challenge of using Mellow on a regular basis - having to explore sous-vide recipes. I can see that being a barrier for others as well.
you don't need a budget: we're not charging until we ship, and our referral program nets you a $20 discount for every friend that preorders through your link, up to free!
Preorder, spam, annoy a ton of people for sweet, sweet sous-vide salmon. You know you want to.
Hah, robots! Still paying attention to this thread for any late-bird questions. Hit me up at ze@fnvlabs.com if you'd rather.
This looks very cool! Congrats on launching very interesting product. I'm a cook-noob and I guess can't fully appreciate the product. But it looks like a perfect present for the NY(seeing the shipping dates).
It says all it needs water and a bag. Which bag is it? Where to get those?
Would love to see more videos of Mellow in real-life, like a full-length tutorials of cooking something.
Thank you @nikitakorotaev, we'll have some more videos up soon.
The bag we mention is either your regular ziploc bag, or non-zipped freezer bag, like these: http://www.walmart.com/ip/FoodSa...
You don't need the actual vacuum machine, though.
So cool. That's an appliance I'd be proud to display on my countertop!
@zemvpferreira how many prototypes did you go through before arriving at this? And any funny stories come from testing a previous model that didn't work out?
@kristoferTM too many prototypes to count (we make a load of self-contained ones to test ideas quickly), and three full product iterations before deciding to launch.
Funny is relative :) My mom didn't laugh much the first time I flooded her kitchen. Or the last.
Thank you @ZackShapiro , @jonnym1ller , @ajwaxman!
@willimholte, we didn't want to fragment functionality, and when you're using Mellow, there's nothing truly urgent you need to do that requires access to controls immediately.
There was no use case that made us think adding the extra monetary/cognitive/aesthetic cost would be worth it.
Does that make sense?
This is awesome. There's a great opportunity to sell a premium consumer product that can get a healthy margin yet drastically undercut the professional-grade machines. The mobile control is great too!
I made a DIY sous vide machine once for ~$100 but that required nontrivial assembly and some custom work. I'd much rather have something like this.
@zemvpferreira That absolutely makes sense. It's the answer I would have guessed, but it's nice to hear reasoning rather than assume.
@willimholte, glad you asked, the best part of producthunt is the discussion. I don't talk with that many product people offline.
@ZackShapiro, 2 years of active development, 7 years of sous-vide cooking, 28 years of bad living. Pulled the plug on launching 3-4 times before.
My favorite question: What were the names that you decided not to go with and chose Mellow instead?
@AlokVasudev You ain't seen nothing yet. Hit me up at ze@fnvlabs.com if you want to discuss non-product stuff
@ZackShapiro for some weird reason all our names are unintentionally related to weed. We were TOPPOT before we were Mellow.
Ultimately we didn't test or think through alternatives very much, we just picked something that resonated with both founders. I don't care much for names. IKEA? Aldi? Coca-Cola? General Motors?
Mellow