David Rabie is the Founder and CEO of Tovala, the creator of a smart oven that cooks perfectly made meals by baking, boiling and steaming them in under 30 minutes. The meals can either be delivered prepackaged from Tovala or be made using a crowdsourced recipe. Last winter, Tovala graduated from Y-Combinator and a few months ago Tovala launched a successful Kickstarter campaign that raised $255,603 with over 1,000 backers. Before starting Tovala, David was an MBA at Chicago Booth, and he worked for the co-founder and CEO of Veggie Grill and ran Groovy Spoon – a bi-coastal chain of frozen yogurt stores. He also spent time working at Google and Foundation Capital. listen on iTunes listen on google play In This Episode You Will Learn: Why he decided to pair food delivery with a smart oven How they came up with the name Tovala How David found his first engineer How they decided on the price of the oven and the food How they prepared for their successful Kickstarter campaign What they got out of Y-Combinator? Why they decided to come back to Chicago after Y-Combinator? Why he wishes he had found a co-founder earlier How to test for cultural fit and avoid mishires The importance of establishing connections with VCs before you need money Selected Links From The Episode: Michael Seibel, Co-founder of Twitch & Partner at Y-Combinator Jason Heltzer, VC at Origin Ventures & Professor at Chicago Booth Favorite Books: The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove