Yum-Yum Labs

…for a blog! We’ve been cranking on ideas since late 2009 and always on the list was a blog for the cool stuff. It just never made it to the *top* of the list. Until now.

First, a little history. Raj Singh and I had become friends over the years and we’ve always bounced ideas around. Late in 2009 we discussed test-firing some ideas, which by January had turned into a focus in mobile health. Raj was with Skyfire, so I was busy with fingers to the keyboard to see what we could come up with.

We did an iPhone meal tracking app, which morphed into a expert tool for diet modification. Along the way I also pulled in the SR22 dataset (now in release 23), merged it with a database of 70,000 recipes, and pulled in the complete inventory and pricing from a local supermarket to boot. Being a good webizen I made all this information available via an API.

In the spring I was having breakfast with Rafael Sanches, another entrepreuner/hacker friend of mine, and we were comparing notes. He had been working on a reverse recipe search app, and wanted to know if he could use our unpublished API to power an Android app. By the end of the weekend he had created the first version and was ready to release it. Raj and I were still deciding the direction of Yum-Yum Labs so we sat on the idea for over a month. Rafael was very patient, and it seemed a waste to NOT let his app be free to spread goodness, so we finally gave him the thumbs up to release Recipe Search.

From the very first day there were thousands of downloads. The app was definitely pointed in the right direction. We continued to collaborate on Recipe Search while Raj and I settled on a direction for the company.

By fall of 2010 Rafael and I wanted to make a bigger bet on Recipe Search and formally incorporated Yum-Yum Labs. Raj has stayed on as a founder and advisor and continues to meet with us regularly and gives great recommendations.