Full name: Tai Alegbe
Role: Co-Founder, Baacco
Birthplace: London
Twitter: @Baacco_com
Website: www.baacco.com
Fun Fact: “I come from a family of startup founders, my twin brother runs a property-tech startup, investors, partners and team members have been known to mistake him for me in public.”
So, let’s start at the beginning. I read that you cofounded Baacco back around 2014 in a bar with a friend who was headed to France to buy wine, right? You worked in the City for a few years – could you tell us a little about your backstory and the journey to today? I read you’ve been interested in business since the age of 11?
Yes, Baacco was born from a conversation with a former colleague who made it clear he was planning a trip to France to find a specific wine he and his wife had sampled earlier that year at a London restaurant on their wedding anniversary. It occurred to me that I had faced a similar challenge around finding wine before and that the wine he was looking for must be stocked by one UK merchant at least.
Despite his claims that it was a seemingly impossible wine to find the wine in the UK, I set about to try and find a UK distributor and learned that it certainly was hard but not impossible to find.
There’s 4 of you who work on this thing together? Cosmin, Federico and Raj. Could you give us a little backstory about how you all know each other, and what each of you do at the business?
Our interest in startups really brought us together, I had expected that the concept of Baacco would resonate with others and in particular with individuals with the requisite skills and commitment.
As a result, I looked through my network to find strong connections. Federico and I met through Linkedin via his role at OpenTable, we were introduced to Cosmin through his work at JustEat and technical publications and Cosmin introduced us all to Raj who he has known and worked with for many years most recently at JustEat.
As a young startup, it’s very much all hands in, each of us is involved in every element of the business. Having new perspectives even within our areas of expertise is of great value.
You have what appears to be a pretty massive wine selection onsite. But you aren’t actually a merchant per se… more a marketplace that connects people to producers and merchants? How do you decide on people to work with? You must hold a lot of tastings!
Baacco.com is a search and discovery marketplace (Kayak for Wine), where consumers can search for available wines across hundreds and hundreds of merchants and transact in a matter of clicks.
We work with a number of award-winning sommeliers and wine experts who help us decide which merchant we want to work with, we’ve sought advice from Sommeliers such as Mirko Benzo, head sommelier at The Connaught and Clement Robert former Moet Sommelier of the year.
We also host a large number of tastings, often partnering monthly with Tastour.com.
How are you guys setting yourselves apart from, say, the likes of Amazon, VinSuite etc?
We curate and bring together thousands of available wines from the best independent wine merchants so customers can find the best and most sought after wines from passionate wine merchants via BAACCO.com.
With a number of tools we’ve developed, we provide smarter search options and powerful data about the wine market, giving the customer the information they need to take control of their purchase and the wine merchant the ability to find, engage and sell to new customers.
Where do you see wine consumption going in the next few years? Any trends or things we should be looking out for, you think?
In the UK consumers are becoming more selective about their wine and are transacting more and more online, currently, 18% of UK wine drinkers buy online, and this is projected to hit 26% by 2020, in China the figure is expected hit 50% by 2020 from 27% currently.
How and when did you get into wine anyway? I’d imagine you must enjoy it. Got a particular favourite wine or style?
Well, I had taken a few courses run by the WSET and found that wine was far more diverse than I had presumed this sparked an interest into how technology might play a part in helping others similar to myself engage better with wine. I do have my favourites, generally, though I have a preference for unique and exotic wines.
What’s a ‘day in your life’ like? Could you give us an insight into Baacco?
Well, the day tends to consist mainly of emails and calls to consumers and our merchant partners, we’re very fanatical about customer service. I start the day by assessing user data and then we have a technical meeting where we scope and map out changes to the product and the product road-map, I then go on to partner and prospective partner meetings.
What’s your greatest/most memorable professional moment been, so far?
I was a junior executive at a financial service and tech SME, acquired by a large American financial services firm, I feel I contributed significant value to the business pre-sale and subsequently, I feel a sense of satisfaction at being part of an exit.
Where do you get your ideas?
Most of my ideas come from reading and validated data-driven learning we’re very big on the concept of build, measure and learn.
What’s the biggest challenge you’ve had, how did you overcome it, and what did you learn from it?
Our biggest challenge to date has been turning down very early stage investment several times, we’ve been happy to start with only a little money as It forces discipline and focus. Our belief is that a huge market with customers yearning for a product developed by great engineers requires very little firepower.
We’ve maintained meaningful relationships with every investor who has expressed an interest in working with us, in fact, several receive weekly updates and act as mentors.
This experience reaffirmed our belief that relationships are very important, but perhaps, most importantly, it helped us understand how time and openness make relationships more meaningful, speaking to partners early on allowed them to get to know us, where we are and where we started.
Who’s the person who’s most inspired you in your work – food industry or otherwise? Is there anyone that you draw inspiration or strength from? Do you have any specific culinary influences?
As a marketplace, much of what Bill Gurley has to say has influenced us a great deal especially some of his archived posts on marketplace dynamics (http://abovethecrowd.com/).
What do you enjoy most and least about what you do?
I enjoy the daily problem solving and new opportunities that present themselves.
What advice would you give to aspiring food and drinks entrepreneurs who’d want the kind of results that you’ve had?
It’s all about the team, build a team of people who’re the smartest or most clever in their domain, solve a genuine problem, think differently and target a large market.
If you weren’t doing what you do now, what would you be doing instead?
I really do enjoy the opportunities on offer in the food and drinks tech space in particular in emerging countries, so I would likely be exploring opportunities in this space.
If you could get anyone to try Baacco (fictional or real, living or dead) who would you pick and which of the wines would you like them to try? Assume that they go on to be your brand ambassador…
Sheryl Sandberg, Thurgood Marshall or President Obama would all be great ambassadors for Baacco, they embody many of our values. And I’d give them the Domaine Gerovassiliou Malagousia (2015) to try
What’s your ultimate aim and goal for the business? If you could achieve anything with it, what would you pick? Money and reality are no obstacle, so shoot for the moon…
We see no reason why BAACCO can’t be the defacto Ecommerce wine website for merchants and consumers alike. A place where consumers can explore, discover, find and buy wines globally. The wine market is worth $200-$300 billion worldwide, with this in mind Baacco.com could be a listed company, (just as JustEat and Zoopla are).
Where next for you and Baacco?
We’re seeing some exciting growth in the UK and a great deal of appetite from international markets, as such, we’re very keen to establish our first international site in 2017/18.
And we always ask three customary ridiculous questions…
If you had a time machine that could send you backward in time as far as you wanted (without any logical paradoxes, timeline contamination, etc.) – what period of time would you visit and what are the first 3 things you’d do once you got there?
Personally, I would prefer to be transported forward we’re living in an exciting and equally concerning time or enormous technological change, it would be interesting to see where things go with climate change, distribution of wealth, and automation.
You have acquired a pet dragon and are morally obliged to look after it. It is 25 ft tall at the hips, spits fire, eats half a ton of raw meat a day, and likes long walks. What would you call it and what would you do to keep it entertained and housed?
Sirius “the scorcher”, after the brightest star in the Sky, as a Londoner, the O2 centre/ Millennium Dome might be the best place to provide housing and accommodation.
If Baacco was forced to change from a place to find delicious wine into a martial arts dojo, what style would you guys teach and what music would you play in your gym to get people fired up?
Muay Thai and The Way Of The Dragon soundtrack.