AllThingsD » Melt

Here's Why Sequoia Thinks Melt Is Worth Millions: The D9 Demo (Video)

Peter Kafka — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 17:11:56 +0000

In the fall of 2008, Sequoia Capital declared “RIP: Good Times” and told entrepreneurs to batten down the hatches because it was now going to be next to impossible to get venture money.

Flash forward to present tense: Sequoia is now putting millions into The Melt, a new grilled cheese shop chain from former Flip CEO Jonathan Kaplan. Kaplan demoed the concept — and talked a bit about the demise of his last company after it was acquired by Cisco — earlier this month at the D9 conference.

[ See post to watch video ]

Digital Grilled Cheese D9 Poll Results Are In: "The Kara" Edges Out "The Walt"

Kara Swisher — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 21:34:28 +0000

Personally, I preferred “The Walt” over “The Kara.”

But the attendees of the ninth D: All Things Digital conference seemed to like the grilled cheese sandwich made of “sharp” cheddar more than “experienced” gruyere.

In sampling by hungry D9 folks, 53 percent selected “The Kara” (sharp cheddar on potato bread with tomato basil soup) and 47 percent chose “The Walt” (experienced gruyere on white wheat with wild mushroom soup).

That’s according to founder Jonathan Kaplan, who demoed his new company called Melt.

With Melt, the focus is on grilled cheese, in an unusual mashup of smartphones, automation and comfort food.

You can order with Melt’s mobile app or from the Web and have your grilled cheese choice ready for you when you want it in a minute in his casual, fast-food restaurants.

The first stores open in San Francisco in August, but there are many more to come via many millions of dollars in funding from Sequoia Capital.

Obviously, grilled cheese is a very orthogonal move for Kaplan, who brought the world the ground-breaking Flip video camera.

Bought by Cisco for $590 million in 2009, the networking giant closed the unit down in April and killed the Flip. Kaplan still does not know why, he said onstage.

While I still mourn the Flip, I can say that the grilled cheese is pretty tasty.

Here’s a video of the Melt in action at D9 in a demo by Kaplan, as well as a video interview he did with Katie Boehret at the Science Fair booth at the conference:

[ See post to watch video ]

Jonathan Kaplan Still Doesn't Know Exactly Why Cisco Killed the Flip (Video)

Arik Hesseldahl — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 17:17:36 +0000

Jonathan Kaplan, founder of Pure Digital, the company behind the Flip Digital video cameras, says he still doesn’t know exactly why Cisco Systems, the networking giant that acquired the company in 2009 for $590 million, unceremoniously killed the product as part of a reorganization earlier this year.

Asked while onstage with Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg at the All Things D conference today, Kaplan said he could only guess why Cisco killed it, without apparently trying to sell it first, but he had a good guess. “I think that it’s only conjecture, big corporations do things aren’t necessarily well understood. One of the things is the technology that we created. And if I had to guess, one of the reasons is that a lot of that technology we created is being used in products that Cisco needs to create….It may have been touching the hearts and minds of millions of people, but to Cisco it was just another product. Sometimes the baby goes out with the bathwater.”

Later on Kaplan said he thinks it would have been difficult for Cisco to “unwind some of the technologies that we created” from Cisco products, and that given Cisco’s huge size, and the relatively small contribution that the Flip line was contributing to Cisco’s overall sales, it would not have been worth the effort to the company’s senior management.

Oddly enough, as a major Cisco shareholder, Kaplan says he agrees with the decision because he wants Cisco to do well. “I think it was the right decision for Cisco, because I want them to be successful….But do I think the world is worse off because Flip is no longer? Yes.”

[ See post to watch video ]

Here's The $10 Million Melted Cheese Store Everyone's Talking About (Nope! Not a Joke!)

Drake Martinet — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 16:54:25 +0000

What do you do when Cisco buys your consumer product company and abruptly closes it down?

If you are Jonathan Kaplan, creator of the popular (discontinued) Flip camera line, you make a lot of grilled cheese.

Kaplan has been building a secretive start-up called The Melt, which, near as we can tell, brings together smartphones, automation and comfort food.

We’ll let him explain further.

9:57 am: Jon Kaplan takes the stage and Kara starts right off—what happened to Flip?

9:57 am: Kaplan says that Flip was not a very big part of Cisco, and sometimes the baby goes out with the bathwater.

10:00 am: Kaplan says that even as they grew Flip in technology, the business of Cisco writ large was being eroded.

10:01 am: Kaplan answers the question–he did have a pretty good idea that Cisco was going to kill the Flip when he left, months prior.

10:02 am: Kaplan: “Flip was only contributing a billion dollars to Cisco’s top-line revenue.”

10:03 am: Kara asks again—why wasn’t Flip sold to anyone? Kara says she got calls, after the news broke of Flip’s cancellation, from people who would have wanted to buy.

10:04 am: Kaplan moves on, and is now talking up his new company–The Melt. It’s about grilled cheese. Really.

10:05 am: Kaplan: “We created a set of applications and mobile technology to allow you to order your Melt anywhere.”

10:06 am: Kaplan explains that you can order your Melt anywhere, any time, and then, when you are ready to eat, you walk into a Melt store, and get your order within a minute.

10:07 am: Kaplan says the whole D9 audience is going to get grilled cheese and be happy.

Now he moves on to the how.

10:08 am: Kaplan says the real innovation is a machine that makes the Melt. The real idea is to make the next generation of fast, casual restaurants.

10:09 am: Kaplan says restaurauteur Michael Mina is on the board of The Melt.

10:09 am: Kaplan picks his sandwich–The Walt, complete with “experienced” gruyere cheese–and scans his iPhone at the onstage laptop. He also orders The Kara.

10:11 am: About 30 seconds later, a waiter walks out on stage with the sandwiches and soup.

10:12 am: Kaplan says Sequoia Capital led investment, and that they raised enough to open 20 stores, at half a million to a million dollars each.

10:13 am: Kaplan on why Sequoia wants into the restaurant biz: Look at the market cap of Chipotle.

10:13 am: Kaplan says Melts will be $5 and combos will be $8.

10:13 am: Kaplan walks off–Walt and Kara invite the audience to grab a grilled cheese during the break.

[ See post to watch video ]