824 David Rabie: Founder & CEO of Tovala

0:00Kara Goldin:I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. Today's episode is brought to you by Pebble, the smarter way to build a global team.

0:47Kara Goldin:Here's what no one tells you about hiring internationally. It sounds easy until it isn't. I've been there. One hire quickly turns into navigating foreign labor laws, payroll systems, compliance hurdles, and hidden costs you didn't see coming. Before you know it, you're stitching together multiple tools just to make a single hire work. That's exactly the problem Pebble was built to solve. Pebble is an AI-powered global HR platform built for founders, operators, and HR leaders who are hiring teams around the world. It helps you hire, pay, and manage talent in over 185 countries with onboarding that can happen in minutes.

1:32Kara Goldin:Instead of juggling separate systems for contracts, benefits, payroll, and compliance, Pebble brings everything into one place with built-in guidance and real local expertise supporting you behind the scenes. What stands out to me is how much clarity Pebble brings. Global hiring can look simple at first until the fees and complexities stack up. Pebble gives you upfront, all in costs and structure, so you can scale your team without feeling like you suddenly need to become an HR or compliance expert. Ready to start working with Pebble today? The new standard discounted pricing of$3.99 USD per month per employee helps contain the costs.

2:18Kara Goldin:Go to highpebl.hi to get a free estimate. That's highpebl.ai for free estimate. Today's episode is brought to you by Warby Parker. Buying glasses used to feel way more complicated than it should have been. Prices all over the place outdated styles and somehow you still weren't sure you picked the right pair. It honestly felt like you needed a spreadsheet just to figure it all out. This is why I'm obsessed with Warby Parker. I'm actually wearing mine right now. These are the pair I picked. I wish you could see them and what I love is how lightweight and well-made they feel. The style is modern, the materials feel premium, and I've gotten a lot of compliments on them.

3:07Kara Goldin:One of the coolest features is their virtual try-on. You can literally use your phone, point the camera at your face and see how different frames look on you in real time and it actually works. Plus, these prescription glasses start at just$95 and they design everything in-house so you're getting high quality stylish frames at a really accessible price. They also have everything in one place, glasses, sunglasses, contacts, even eye exams, and over 300 retail stores if you want to go in person. Warby Parker just makes the entire process easier. Right now, buy one prescription pair and get 20 % off any additional prescription pairs at warbyparker.com slash Kara Golden.

3:54Kara Goldin:That's 20 % off additional prescription pairs when you go to warbyparker.com slash Kara Golden. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Golden Show. Today, I'm joined by David Rabi, who is the founder and CEO of Tavala, the smart oven and chef prepared meal service that's redefining what cooking at home can really look like. And David started Tavala while earning his MBA at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, inspired by a simple but universal challenge. How do you eat fresh, high-quality meals at home when you don't have the time to shop, prep, or cook? And his solution, combined food and technology, a countertop smart oven paired with a meal delivery service that cooks with a simple QR scan.

4:51Kara Goldin:I can attest to how easy it is and how delicious it makes those meals as well. So since launching in 2017, Tavala has shipped more than 40 million meals nationwide and built a category-defining business with remarkably strong customer retention. I'm so excited to have David here today so that we can talk a lot about not only launching this business, but also scaling it the way he has and what he's learned along the way. So welcome, David. So nice to meet you. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to chat. Today's episode is brought to you by Warby Parker. Buying glasses used to feel way more complicated than it should have been.

5:39Kara Goldin:Prices all over the place, outdated styles, and somehow you still weren't sure you picked the right pair. It honestly felt like you needed a spreadsheet just to figure it all out. This is why I'm obsessed with Warby Parker. I'm actually wearing mine right now. These are the pair I picked. I wish you could see them. And what I love is how lightweight and well-made they feel. The style is modern, the materials feel premium, and I've gotten a lot of compliments on them. One of the coolest features is their virtual try-on. You can literally use your phone, point the camera at your face, and see how different frames look on you in real time, and it actually works.

6:22Kara Goldin:Plus, these prescription glasses start at just$95, and they design everything in-house so you're getting high quality stylish frames at a really accessible price. They also have everything in one place. Glasses, sunglasses, contacts, even eye exams, and over 300 retail stores if you want to go in person. Warby Parker just makes the entire process easier. Right now, buy one prescription pair and get 20 % off any additional prescription pairs at warbyparker.com slash karagolden. That's 20 % off additional prescription pairs when you go to warbyparker.com slash karagolden. It's kind of wild that in 2026, so many small business owners are still making post office runs or paying way too much for outdated postage meters.

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8:17Kara Goldin:I used to block out time every week just for post office runs. Now I handle everything from my desk in a fraction of the time. Stamps.com has genuinely changed how I run my business, and I'm not exaggerating when I say it saved me hours every single week. Right now, you can try Stamps.com risk-free for 60 days. Go to stamps.com and use code CARA to get 60 days risk-free. 60 days gives you plenty of time to see exactly how much time and money you're saving on every shipment. That's stamps.com, code CARA. That's stamps.com, code CARA. Today's episode is brought to you by Pebble, the smarter way to build a global team.

9:09Kara Goldin:Here's what no one tells you about hiring internationally. It sounds easy until it isn't. I've been there. One hire quickly turns into navigating foreign labor laws, payroll systems, compliance hurdles, and hidden costs you didn't see coming. Before you know it, you're stitching together multiple tools just to make a single hire work. That's exactly the problem Pebble was built to solve. Pebble is an AI-powered global HR platform built for founders, operators, and HR leaders who are hiring teams around the world. It helps you hire, pay, and manage talent in over 185 countries with onboarding that can happen in minutes.

9:53Kara Goldin:Instead of juggling separate systems for contracts, benefits, payroll, and compliance, Pebble brings everything into one place with built-in guidance and real local expertise supporting you behind the scenes. What stands out to me is how much clarity Pebble brings. Global hiring can look simple at first until the fees and complexities stack up. Pebble gives you upfront, all in costs and structure so you can scale your team without feeling like you suddenly need to become an HR or compliance expert. Ready to start working with Pebble today? The new standard discounted pricing of$3.99 USD per month per employee helps contain the costs.

10:39Kara Goldin:Go to highpebble.hi to get a free estimate. That's highpebl.ai for free estimate. I'm so excited about your brand. I love that you've combine two aspects that are really kind of the hurdles that people might have to healthier eating, healthier living. But for listeners who may not know the brand Tavala yet, can you define it for us? Yeah. So, you know, our aspiration has always been to redefine home cooking and take the best elements of the home cooking experience and get rid of all the reasons why people get stressed out or tired or don't want to get dinner on the table in the first place. And so we built the system where we control almost the whole experience.

11:32So we have chefs that develop recipes. We have our own food facilities where we prep all these meals. We pack the meals ourselves, ship them to your doorstep. They arrive completely fresh, stop frozen, goes into your refrigerator. And then we've purpose built this oven that goes on your countertop to cook those meals as though you had a chef in your home. So when you put the meal in the oven, which you spend a minute preparing it. When you scan that code, the oven is then doing lots of different things to cook your meal perfectly. So maybe your meal requires some steam. Maybe it requires some broiling.

12:02Maybe it's a lower temp meal, higher temp meal. Every meal has its own custom instructions. So it comes out perfect. You literally can't mess it up. And then you get a push notification when dinner's ready. So we deliver what we think is a super high quality, tasty food product, but actually get rid of all the reasons why people don't cook in the first place.

12:21Kara Goldin:And the oven is not just for your meals as well. You can use it for the rest of your life as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We use our oven at Three Little Girls. We use our oven to cook probably 15 times a week outside of Tavala Meal. So whether it's making waffles in the oven or roasting broccoli or baking cookies or reheating leftover pizza, like it can do a lot of things. It can air fry. So it kind of justifies the counter space that it takes because it gets so much use in the house. I love it. So where did the name come from? Yeah, we knew we needed a name that sounded kind of elegant and premium was our goal.

13:06But this was so early in our journey that we didn't want to pick a name that would tie us too much to one line of business because we thought maybe the business will evolve and we would move out of the food business and maybe just be in the oven business or move out of the oven business and be in the software business. We just were not sure. Even though we had this vision, the vision actually has not changed much. And so we wanted a name that was a little neutral. And we were going through dictionaries and, you know, stumbled on the Italian word for table, which is tavola. And I liked that name, or that word rather.

13:38And then I had also been looking in Hebrew dictionaries and the word tov in Hebrew means good or okay. And I think those two words were in my brain. And so we flipped the O and the A and voila, we had Tovala. And I had the websites open to quickly check for the domain and trademark and they were available. And at the time, our team was like four people. So we talked about it one night around the fire, slept on it. And the next morning, we made the move and made the company named Tovala.

14:07Kara Goldin:This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Grooms. Spring always feels like a reset button for me. It's when I try to clean up my routines and get back to consistency. But let's be honest, when life gets busy, complicated wellness routines just don't stick. That's why I've been loving Grooms. Grooms makes it incredibly simple. It's a daily snack pack of gummies that covers your vitamins, minerals, greens, and prebiotics all in one. So instead of juggling a bunch of bottles, it's just one easy step I can actually stay consistent with, even if it's just one gummy to get started. And what's wild is how much they pack in.

14:52Kara Goldin:Over 20 vitamins and minerals, 60 ingredients plus 6 grams of prebiotic fiber. That's more fiber than 2 cups of broccoli. It's vegan, gluten-free, no artificial colors or flavors, and it tastes great. It actually feels like a treat, not something I have to force myself to take. I've found it's just an easy way to support energy digestion and overall wellness without overthinking it. If you're looking to simplify your routine, definitely check it out. Save up to 52 % off with code GOLDEN at grooms.co. That's called GOLDEN at G-R-U-N-S dot C-O. Today's episode is brought to you by Warby Parker. Buying glasses used to feel way more complicated than it should have been.

15:45Kara Goldin:Prices all over the place, outdated styles, and somehow you still weren't sure you picked the right pair. It honestly felt like you needed a spreadsheet just to figure it all out. This is why I'm obsessed with Warby Parker. I'm actually wearing mine right now. These are the pair I picked. I wish you could see them. And what I love is how lightweight and well-made they feel. The style is modern, the materials feel premium, and I've gotten a lot of compliments on them. One of the coolest features is their virtual try-on. You can literally use your phone, point the camera at your face, and see how different frames look on you in real time.

16:26Kara Goldin:And it actually works. Plus, these prescription glasses start at just$95. And they design everything in-house. So you're getting high quality stylish frames at a really accessible price. They also have everything in one place. Glasses, sunglasses, contacts, even eye exams. And over 300 retail stores if you want to go in person. Warby Parker just makes the entire process easier. Right now, buy one prescription pair and get 20 % off any additional prescription pairs at warbyparker.com slash Kara Golden. That's 20 % off additional prescription pairs when you go to warbyparker.com slash Karagolden.

17:13Kara Goldin:Today's episode is brought to you by Pebble, the smarter way to build a global team. Here's what no one tells you about hiring internationally. It sounds easy until it isn't. I've been there. One hire quickly turns into navigating foreign labor laws, payroll systems, compliance hurdles, and hidden costs you didn't see coming. Before you know it, you're stitching together multiple tools just to make a single hire work. That's exactly the problem Pebble was built to solve. Pebble is an AI-powered global HR platform built for founders, operators, and HR leaders who are hiring teams around the world.

17:56Kara Goldin:It helps you hire, pay, and manage talent in over 185 countries with onboarding that can happen in minutes. Instead of juggling separate systems for contracts, benefits, payroll, and compliance, Pebble brings everything into one place with built-in guidance and real local expertise supporting you behind the scenes. What stands out to me is how much clarity Pebble brings. Global hiring can look simple at first until the fees and complexities stack up. Pebble gives you upfront, all in costs and structure, so you can scale your team without feeling like you suddenly need to become an HR or compliance expert.

18:38Kara Goldin:Ready to start working with Pebble today? The new standard discounted pricing of$3.99 USD per month per employee helps contain the costs. Go to highpebl.hi to get a free estimate. That's highpebl.ai for free estimate. So going back to the beginning when you were at business school at the University of Chicago, like was there a moment when you just that you can recall that you just said, I wish this business was already in existence. Yeah, I had my first, that was kind of when I came up with the idea, was when I was cooking for myself one day in my apartment using multiple different appliances in the home.

19:32So I was using my oven, my stovetop, I had a countertop steamer. And that was the pain point initially. Like, why do I need three appliances to make one meal? Every food has its own way of cooking. why couldn't this be one appliance that would cook different ingredients the way they're meant to be cooked? So that was kind of the initial pain point. And then from there, as I talked to lots of potential customers, it evolved beyond just a really smart cooking device and to more of the full system that it is today, including the food and the mobile app and everything.

20:02Kara Goldin:So you graduated and then you decided to go and work for another food company or had you worked for another food company prior to going to business school? I had worked for a food company before business school. I'd worked for a super fast growing chain of plant-based restaurants. And I'd worked for one of the founders of that business and learned a lot from him about business and fast scaling and culture and things of that nature. And so when I graduated from business school, I kind of hit the ground running on Tavala. We had won a business plan competition at Booth that came with, I think it was$70 ,000.

20:43And so that helped us get off the ground. We got some press locally in Chicago. And yeah, I was committed to doing it after I graduated.

20:51Kara Goldin:So working, I mean, you almost had a internship, mentorship type of situation where you're able to learn from people. I have to tell you as a founder, I've had a number of people who have worked on my team over the years that eventually went out and launched their own company, whether it was a beverage company or something else. And it personally gave me a lot of pride, but the things that they learned, I always go back to them and ask them like, what did you learn from me? And what do you think he would say? That's a great question. I think what they did uniquely well was build a incredibly strong brand for not just the customers, but their employees.

21:45So every employee from people busing tables to the cooks in the kitchen really believed in the mission of that business. And I saw the power of that. And I think that's what struck me more than anything. They did a lot of things right, but that was probably the biggest insight of what you can get from a team when they really believe in what you're doing.

22:08Kara Goldin:So it's one thing to work for another company, but you're launching a brand. You've got your$70 ,000. You're feeling pretty good. You've got press. You're getting a lot of attention. But how hard was it to actually launch the company and how different it was maybe than what you thought it would be? yeah the the beginning was quite hard uh so we we won this competition and i graduated and now all of a sudden i didn't have the kind of support of everyone within the university like when i was in school i had all these classmates that were helping and excited about what i was doing and i was using the idea in a lot of classes and i was surrounded by alums and staff that were all really helpful.

22:58And that didn't vanish overnight, but a lot of that infrastructure is gone when you're an alum and not a student anymore. And so all of a sudden I was graduated, we'd won this competition, which was great, but also put some pressure on us to kind of live up to those expectations. And I had no team, like it was me, some cash, a prototype that didn't really work and one intern. And this is a pretty capital intensive business, like we needed a lot of money to build the hardware, figure out the food infrastructure, a lot of R &D involved. And so that summer was very challenging because I needed to raise money.

23:34I needed to build a team. And there's a bit of a chicken and the egg with those things, especially when you're earlier on in your journey of, well, to raise money, you need more product traction. To get more product traction, you need a team. It's hard to recruit a team if you don't have money. It's this not a great loop to be caught in. and so that was a really hard summer. I remember we struggled to raise money. I was having a hard time building my team and then, you know, but I kept at it and slowly and then all of a sudden very fast made a lot of progress and meeting my co-founder was the biggest unlock I would say to that of like, I met Brian, he joined, he was a mechanical engineer so we could start actually building things ourselves very quickly and then we hired our first engineer that was finishing his PhD program, Peter And so now all of a sudden we had kind of internal R &D capacity.

24:27We were not burning a lot of cash. We could build prototypes. Then we got into Y Combinator. And then really from then on, like the momentum didn't stop for many, many years.

24:38Kara Goldin:That's incredible. So when just talking about a co-founder, did you know you wanted to find somebody who had this type of experience? Or how did that all come about? How did you make that choice about a co-founder? Yeah, I felt pretty strongly that I needed a technical counterpart because I'm not technical. My brain doesn't work that way as much as I've tried, especially over the last 11 years. I'm not an engineer. And this is a very kind of tech forward business with the hardware and the software and the firmware. And so I felt like I really needed that counterpart. And that was reinforced as we were raising capital.

25:20A lot of investors were just giving us the feedback that if we're going to have this tech-centric business, we can't be outsourcing core elements of our technology like we need a tech person leading this business alongside me. But the challenge is I didn't know anyone that I'd worked with in the past where I could point to them and say, hey, this person is perfect. And so I had to go meet someone. And I think ultimately got really lucky that Brian and I worked so well as partners. It's not the advice I would give to most people to go partner up with someone you met three months before or four months before, but it worked for us.

25:55We ended up being very aligned on the culture we wanted to build and the goals of the company and values, which I think are just as important as the kind of tangible skills, but he had the tangible skills too. So I was very fortunate.

26:10Kara Goldin:So this may be an obvious question to you, But when you were thinking about hardware, software and food, did you ever think maybe we don't do the food part yet? Maybe we just do the hardware and software. But I'd love to hear kind of your thinking behind that. Yeah, that was probably the most common question we got in our first year of existence of, you know, one of these businesses is hard. Two is really hard. Three, no one's done that. Like, this is super complex. You're bringing on a lot of risk to the business and complexity. That was all true. Like, it is a super complex business. It has opened us up to a lot of risk.

26:50But I was really married to this idea because I was so focused on the customer problem. and to me it was how do you get customers food that is not cooked and cook it automatically and to this day i can't really wrap my head around how you do that without controlling the whole experience and i think it has paid off like you know the business works and all of this complexity is actually a huge moat around what we do and because we nail that value prop we have way better retention than anyone in the category so i knew there would be all these benefits from having this model. And it was just about convincing enough people both to join our team and to invest in the business to get off the ground and kind of prove that out.