Why This Cooking Platform Waited 8 Months for Its Second Creator (And What Changed)

Most startup advice tells you to move fast and scale quickly. But what happens when your growth is painfully, excruciatingly slow? When you check your dashboard every morning hoping for a miracle that doesn't come?

For Chefadora, a recipe platform helping creators monetize their content, the wait for their second creator felt eternal. Eight to nine months with just one user—the founder's mom—posting recipes through the backend. No magical viral moment. No sudden influx of sign-ups. Just the quiet anxiety of wondering if anyone else would ever care.

On the Levels Podcast, co-founder and CEO Sanjam Kohli shared the story of those brutal early months and the crucial pivot that eventually transformed their creator acquisition from impossible to sustainable. The lessons learned offer a masterclass in why relationships matter more than sales tactics, especially when building a platform that depends on trust.

The Morning Ritual of Hope and Disappointment

Picture this: You've built a platform you believe in. You've solved a real problem. You've got one creator successfully using it. But nobody else is signing up.

"I remember I would check like first thing in the morning on my phone to see if other people somehow miraculously found us."

That was Sanjam's reality for months. The first 10 creators weren't organic discoveries or the result of clever marketing—they were all people in their personal circles. Mom's friends. Relatives. Friends of friends. People who signed up as a favor, not because they found Chefadora through the normal channels startups dream about.

Then, finally, after eight or nine months, someone from Nigeria found the platform and created an account. The moment felt massive.

"It was incredible. We saw a new recipe from a new creator and we just lost our mind. We were like, my God, this is the beginning."

But the celebration was premature. As Sanjam admits, "we didn't realize that was hard to replicate." That organic sign-up wasn't the beginning of a flood—it was an isolated incident that exposed how much work still needed to be done.

The Sales Pitch That Scared Everyone Away

With organic growth proving elusive, the team did what many startups do: they went hunting. They identified creators with significant followings on social media—people who were already treating recipe creation seriously, trying to build a career from it.

The outreach strategy seemed logical. Find creators. Tell them about the platform. Explain how they can make money. Get them to sign up.

It didn't work. At all.

"At first we would just, you know, naively do the sales pitch and freak them out and scare them away and did not get any conversions."

The problem was fundamental: when you promise someone they can make money, especially someone you've just cold-contacted, you sound like a scam. Every creator had probably received dozens of similar pitches from pyramid schemes, dropshipping "opportunities," and other too-good-to-be-true offers.

Chefadora was legitimate, but their approach made them indistinguishable from scammers. The harder they pitched, the less trust they built. They were optimizing for conversion when they should have been optimizing for connection.

The Relationship Revolution

The breakthrough came when they stopped selling and started connecting. Instead of launching into pitches, they began inviting creators for informal video calls. Not structured sales presentations—genuine conversations about the creator's story, their passion for cooking, their struggles, their goals.

"It's not a structured call or a sales pitch. It's more like getting to know them, their origin story and what got them into cooking, what inspires them, what their struggles are. And then genuinely trying to provide them the resources or solve their problems for them."

This shift from transaction to relationship changed everything. Suddenly, creators weren't being sold to—they were being listened to. The Chefadora team positioned themselves not as a faceless corporation trying to extract value, but as partners who genuinely cared about helping creators succeed.

"When you treat people as your friends or partners, it's just easier and so much more natural for them to stay with you. Even if the platform is not ready for them or there are some features that they're looking for that we don't provide yet, they still stay on because they know you and you have that relationship and bond with them."

This approach had an unexpected benefit: retention. Even when the platform lacked certain features or wasn't quite ready for a creator's specific needs, they'd stick around because of the relationship. They weren't just users of a platform—they were partners in building something together.

The team stayed in touch through emails and social media, celebrating creators' successes and supporting them through challenges. As Sanjam describes their philosophy: "I like to think of them as friends or partners."

Finding the Right Fit

The relationship-first approach also helped Chefadora be more selective about who they brought onto the platform. Instead of optimizing purely for numbers, they could evaluate cultural fit. Did this creator align with Chefadora's mission of bridging cultures through food? Would they contribute positively to the community being built?

"We make sure that they are a good fit for the platform as well, like they're culturally aligned."

This selectivity might seem counterintuitive when you're desperately trying to grow, but it paid off. Quality creators who believed in the mission became advocates. They promoted their own recipes, which brought users to the platform, which attracted more creators. The flywheel started turning—slowly at first, but with increasing momentum. This creator-first approach became central to how they solved the two-sided marketplace problem.

The Long Game Pays Off

Today, Chefadora has hundreds of creators and over 100,000 monthly active users. The platform hosts more than 10,000 recipes from about 100 cuisines, with users from around 180 countries. Those eight months of waiting for the second creator seem like ancient history now.

But that painful period taught lessons that continue to shape how Chefadora grows. They still do cold outreach to bigger creators on social media. They still invite potential creators for introductory calls. But the approach is fundamentally different from those early failed pitches.

They've also experimented with paid acquisition—Google Ads brought in creators, with about 50% actually posting recipes and staying engaged. But they paused those campaigns when they realized the platform needed to be better equipped to retain and support new creators at scale.

The patience to wait, to build relationships properly, to not force growth before the foundation was solid—these decisions distinguish sustainable growth from vanity metrics that collapse under scrutiny.

What Changed (And What Didn't)

The platform evolved significantly from those early days when Sanjam's mom was posting recipes through the backend. Features improved. The user experience got better. SEO strategies were refined. An AI cooking assistant was added to help users while following recipes.

But the core philosophy didn't change: treat creators as partners, not users. Build genuine relationships, not transactions. Focus on cultural alignment and mission fit, not just growth numbers.

For founders facing their own version of waiting eight months for that second user, Chefadora's story offers both comfort and challenge. Comfort in knowing that slow starts don't predict final outcomes. Challenge in accepting that there are no shortcuts—that building trust and relationships takes time, and that's exactly as it should be.

Key Points

• Chefadora waited 8-9 months for their second creator after launching with the founder's mom as the first user
• Early sales pitches promising money scared away potential creators because they sounded like scams
• The breakthrough came from shifting to relationship-building: informal video calls to understand creators' stories and struggles
• Treating creators as friends and partners led to better retention, even when the platform lacked certain features
• This relationship-first approach allowed them to be selective about cultural fit rather than optimizing purely for numbers
• Today the platform has hundreds of creators and 100,000+ monthly users, but the relationship-focused philosophy remains unchanged

Listen to the full conversation with Sanjam Kohli on the Levels Podcast.