Executing a Business Model Pivot with Appetise cofounder Toby Hilliam

What struck me about Toby, was his open-mindedness. After having a few "bites at the startup cherry," he founded Appetise with Elise Hilliam.

Starting out as a consumer focused menu planning service, they pivoted into a B2B insights platform, sparked by a conversation with a friend who ran a beverage brand who said, "I have no idea whether people are buying 12 of our cans and drinking them on a night out with friends or they're just buying a six pack to drink on a sunny afternoon at the beach."

Turns out, food brands are still stuck in the nineties when it comes to consumer insight, paying tens of thousands for reports with outdated data.

Now, their consumer platform fuels the data for their B2B insights business. Their meal planning and smart shopping service is completely free. Toby recalls with mixed feelings the moment they sent out the email to their users, moving everyone to a free plan:

"There was a huge opportunity here to basically turn off our consumer revenue, which was a little bit daunting. A couple of hundred grand just turned off overnight. But we just went all in on B2B from there."

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