Running the best restaurant in the U.S. & Selling Tock to Squarespace for $400M – Nick Kokonas of Alinea | E1262

Featured

00:00 Nick Kokonas, CEO at Tock & Co-Owner of Alinea Restaurant Group
00:54 How Nick got into restaurants & met his co-founder Grant Achatz
09:30 Nick’s Angel investments
10:50 Ourcrowd – Check out the deal of the week at https://ourcrowd.com/twist
12:14 What OpenTable got wrong
18:05 Tock’s ticketing innovation
23:20 Benefits of having pre-paid reservations
25:00 Pipe – Start trading for free for 12 months at https://pipe.com/twist
26:40 Dynamic pricing in restaurants
28:55 Nick critiques Jason’s techniques to get a reservation
35:32 Why some Maître d’s hate Tock
38:22 Drata – Get 15% off SOC 2 and other audit at https://drata.com/twist
39:41 Digital checkouts at restaurant tables
44:50 Why tipping should be eliminated & what obstacles stand in the way
50:54 Will high-end restaurants keep doing delivery?
56:16 Hospitality labor supply
1:00:27 Inflation
1:02:42 How Alinea is handling vaccinations & employee health
1:07:18 Alinea’s signature desert
1:12:10 Nick’s core lessons as an entrepreneur
1:20:45 Mock meats

Check out Tock: https://www.exploretock.com

FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis
FOLLOW Nick: https://twitter.com/nickkokonas

Nick Kokonas of Tock & Alinea, flipping the low-margin restaurant model | E1262

Talking with Max Chafkin about his book on Peter Thiel

Max is a reporter at Bloomberg. Listen to what he learned about Peter Thiel here: bit.ly/twiste1305

Coinbase chases NFT billions + Peter Thiel “The Contrarian” with author Max Chafkin | E1305

How to deliver a great customer experience | E1297

Make your customers love you. 20 minutes full of tactics guaranteed to make your startup more valuable (even if you just do one thing) bit.ly/twiste1297

How to create great customer experience | Customer Basics with Salesforce’s Tiffani Bova | E1297

A new reinsurance model for forest fires | E1295

Rising temps are increasing the frequency of wildfires in California. 6 out of the 7 largest California wildfires ever tracked by the state were in the last 18 months. Nat Manning from Kettle came on the program to discuss how their team is modeling fire risks to prevent the insurance system from falling apart. https://bit.ly/twiste1295

Lessons from Michael Dell on building a computing giant | E1293

Michael Dell built one of the biggest computing companies, starting in his college dorm room at UT. But it hasn’t just been a straight line. On the podcast, he talked about negotiations with Gates & Jobs, his massive take-private transaction, the biggest tech acquisition ever and so much more. Listen here: https://bit.ly/twiste1293

Google’s game-changing ad policy + Michael Dell on “Play Nice But Win,” stories from building a computing giant | E1293

OZY media scandal … & (separately) Clubhouse’s monetization challenge | E1292

This OZY scandal is crazy, we cover it in today’s show. Also, TWIST is increasing velocity, we brought on Ashley Carman from The Verge to discuss her new article from this morning. Listen: https://bit.ly/twiste1292

OZY Media’s deception, VC retirement, Clubhouse’s monetization problem with The Verge’s Ashley Carman & more | E1292

How Squarespace Grew to 3.79 Million Subscribers with CEO Anthony Casalena

Crazy stories from scaling, marketing tactics that worked, the future of the platform and more with CEO Anthony Casalena https://bit.ly/twiste1291

China’s reinvigorated crypto ban, plus a bunch of audience questions

A nice Friday news show to close out the week, thanks for listening https://bit.ly/twiste1290

News! China bans crypto transactions (again), Zillow & iBuyers impacting Real Estate + Ask Jason | E1290

Turning Satellite Data into Actionable Info – Orbital Insight’s Kevin O’Brien | E1286

Governments, corporations and hedge funds alike all use Orbital Insight’s tech to make sense of what’s happening on the ground (supply chain, predicting sales, travel & more). Chat with CEO Kevin O’Brien here >>> https://bit.ly/twiste1286

Growth Tech Stock Talk | E1281

Beth Kindig & Knox Ridley from the I/O Fund are some of the best growth stock investors these past few years (they even publish their audited returns). Certainly will learn a thing or two in this episode.

Listen to the episode https://bit.ly/twiste1281

Growth stocks, Inflation impacts, SPACs & more with Beth Kindig & Knox Ridley from I/O Fund | E1281

From Entourage to Investor, a conversation with Adrian Grenier | E1277

Chatted with Adrian about investing, his nonprofit lonelywhale.org, and acting. Plus, did a FounderU segment on product-market fit (want more of that sing up at https://founder.university)

Adrian Grenier: launching a new fund + FounderU: balancing product vision & customer feedback | E1277