Co-Founder Matt Lim
On The Shelf gives people up-to-date information to make safer and smarter decisions when shopping for essential items.
Co-Founder Matt Lim will pitch On the Shelf in the 10th annual CVC-NY Demo Night on Wednesday, October 14th. On the Shelf will be one of five teams who will participate in our second all-virtual Demo Night event.
This year’s events are a little different than years prior. The New York Demo Night will feature exclusively E-commerce & Retail businesses.
The all-virtual nature allowed more teams to apply from all over and will also allow a larger group of attendees. While we will miss the in-person event, we are excited to host all of you that might not have been able to travel to these cities. Remember to RSVP!
Matt Lim is the Co-Founder and CEO of On The Shelf. Originally from Chicago, IL and currently residing in Brooklyn, NY, he was working in Management Consulting before deciding to pursue an MBA at Columbia University.
He is passionate about the intersection of technology and social good and wants to explore opportunities within the space.
Joseph Klemen is Matt’s Co-Founder and the CTO of On The Shelf. He is a senior software engineer working for a fintech firm based in Chicago, IL that does online lending for consumers and small businesses. He majored in and mastered Computer Science at Purdue University.
Co-Founder Joseph Klemen
What lead you to working with Joseph?
We've been good friends for a while and have discussed starting a business together, but there weren't any problems that we both felt passionate about solving together.
Joe possesses technical expertise and an executor's spirit, whereas I come from a business and design background and often times have my head in the clouds thinking of different "what-ifs.”
Our amicable relationship combined with the fact that we had complementary skillsets led us to believe that we would work well together as co-founders.
Since we started in March, we've kept each other accountable and sane, and have overall enjoyed working with each other.
How did you decide to focus on this particular problem and what do you see as the future of On the shelf?
When COVID-19 first hit the US in March, we both found that we were struggling with the same problem: shopping for groceries.
We couldn't stop thinking about this problem and realized that nobody was doing anything to manage uncertainties in the supply chain; small businesses were especially hurting due to a lack of support from both local and federal governments.
We decided to build On The Shelf as a way to simultaneously offer more confidence to shoppers in times of crises and support for small businesses in the form of additional shoppers.
Our ultimate goal is to make names like "Brooklyn Fare", "Mr. Beet", etc. as widespread and well-known as Trader Joe's or Whole Foods, and ultimately expand into other verticals like retail.
What Challenges has the current climate introduced and how have you answered to those challenges?
Balancing building an iOS app with a full time job was a core challenge for us.
Let alone that we needed to learn a new programming language, once the app was built we needed to do several rounds of beta testing, UI/UX updates, and rigorous app store quality assurance checks.
From the business standpoint, talking to customers and store owners has proven to be difficult due to the pandemic; people are much more hesitant, risk-averse, and resistant to change.
We've pivoted our strategy several times, and are now focusing on developing close relationships with a few stores as opposed to trying to acquire a large number of partnerships.
This strategy has proved successful in convincing store owners that we are the right partners to help them through this crisis.
What has it been like building your business remotely?
We had both been based out of two different cities even before the pandemic began. Remotely partnering to develop this company has borne no significant challenge in comparison to regular remote work.
However, the most beneficial aspect of our situation is the insight that being in two different cities has given us about the problem we are solving.
By spreading our efforts between Chicago and NYC, we've been able to compare feedback from customers and store owners to see if there are benefits to launching locally vs. regionally.
Thank you Matt and Joseph! We look forward to hearing you pitch on October 14th. Don’t forget to RSVP!