Building Before Validating: The $100K Mistake That Doomed Dinnr

Dinnr’s founder, Michal Bohanes, candidly admitted, "We built something nice to have, but not necessary enough for people to make it a habit."

In the fast-paced world of startups, achieving product-market fit is everything. Yet many founders, enamoured with their ideas, rush to build before confirming demand. A striking example of this mistake is Dinnr, a London-based startup that aimed to revolutionize home cooking but collapsed due to a lack of genuine market need.

The Dinnr Concept: A Recipe for Convenience

Founded in 2012, Dinnr promised a seamless cooking experience by delivering pre-portioned ingredients and step-by-step recipes directly to customers' doors. The service targeted urban professionals eager to cook gourmet meals at home without the hassle of grocery shopping and measuring ingredients. The vision was compelling: eliminate meal planning, reduce food waste, and provide high-quality ingredients for restaurant-level home cooking.

On paper, it seemed to solve a real problem. However, as Bohanes later reflected, "We never asked ourselves: do enough people care about this problem to make it a sustainable business?"

The Oversight: Skipping Market Validation

Dinnr’s biggest mistake was assuming demand without validating it. Fueled by personal enthusiasm, the team launched the service without rigorously testing whether a substantial customer base was willing to adopt this new approach to meal preparation.

"We skipped the fundamental step of confirming that enough people truly wanted what we were offering," Bohanes later admitted.

Many early-stage founders fall into the same trap: they become so invested in their vision that they neglect to test their assumptions. Instead of conducting extensive customer discovery, Dinnr moved forward with an unvalidated concept. By the time weak demand became evident post-launch, pivoting was no longer feasible.

The Reality Check: Misjudging Consumer Behaviour

Once the service went live, it became clear that demand had been overestimated. Consumers preferred the flexibility of buying ingredients at supermarkets or opted for the convenience of ready-made meals. While Dinnr removed shopping from the equation, customers still had to cook—a barrier that made takeout or meal kits more appealing alternatives.

The market segment Dinnr aimed to capture wasn’t large enough to sustain the business. As Bohanes put it, "We were competing with grocery stores, takeout, and meal kits simultaneously. Our product sat awkwardly in the middle, solving parts of multiple problems but not fully solving any one."

With limited repeat customers and high acquisition costs, profitability was out of reach. These factors ultimately led to Dinnr’s closure.

Lessons for Founders: Prioritise Market Discovery

Dinnr’s experience underscores key lessons for entrepreneurs:

1. Test Assumptions Before Building – Passion is important, but data is essential. Early enthusiasm from friends and early adopters doesn’t prove widespread demand.

2. Conduct Comprehensive Market Research – Use surveys, focus groups, and pilot programs to gauge genuine interest and willingness to pay. Without these insights, startups risk solving a problem customers don’t see as urgent.

3. Ensure the Problem Is Big Enough – A startup must address a significant problem that affects a large enough audience. As Bohanes admitted, "We should have confirmed that our customers' problem was big enough before building out a full solution."

4. Pivot Early When Necessary – Early-stage research should focus on discovering where the real value lies. It's faster and cheaper to iterate through research and low-fidelity prototyping than to pivot after building a full-fledged product.

5. Understand Consumer Behavior – Changing customer habits is difficult. If your solution requires users to alter their routine, the benefits must significantly outweigh the effort required.

   
   

The Key Takeaway: Build on Solid Foundations

Dinnr’s failure serves as a cautionary tale: innovative ideas must be grounded in validated market demand. Market validation isn’t an optional step—it’s the foundation of a scalable, sustainable business.

Founders need to prioritize:

1. Identifying the right market segment with sufficient demand.

2. Understanding the target audience’s unmet needs and willingness to pay.

3. Recognizing the existing behaviours that need to change to adopt the new solution.

   
   

By doing so, startups increase their chances of achieving product-market fit and long-term success.

As Bohanes aptly summarized, "Startups don’t fail because they build a bad product. They fail because they build something that not enough people want."

Market validation isn’t a step in the process—it is the process. A great product without demand is just an expensive experiment.