Hard graft pays off for Queenstown technology entrepreneur

Talk about a global business. Inspired by his experience at a small French restaurant in Queenstown, technology entrepreneur Mat Weir established restaurant booking platform First Table in 2014. It has since seated more than 5 million diners and operates across New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom and Ireland. Earlier this year, the UK overtook New Zealand as First Table’s biggest market and is growing at 160% year-on-year. London is now the top city by revenue, followed by Auckland and then Sydney. In line with the company’s expansion, Mr Weir stepped aside as chief executive in April with the appointment of global startup executive Alex Cappy to the role. Now based in Auckland, she has held senior leadership roles at Uber and Deliveroo in the UK, and previously served as chief executive of global manufacturing platform Hubs. Her appointment allowed Mr Weir to step into a newly created role where he was focused on artificial intelligence and other technology opportunities for First Table. The platform connects diners with restaurants by offering off-peak restaurant reservations with 50% off food, while helping venues fill otherwise empty tables. Mr Weir moved to Queenstown 20 years ago when an opportunity arose to lead a software development company. Originally from Palmerston North, he had started building websites when he was 15. Enrolling for a double major in information systems and entrepreneurship at university, he discovered it was the theory of entrepreneurship being taught — “not how to be one”. He dropped out, feeling he had learnt what he needed to learn and was ready to go. The company he initially worked for in Queenstown was building booking systems for the tourism industry. After a year, he wanted skin in the game and bought quarter of the company, helped by a bank loan. It was also an incubator for the team’s own startup ideas and several businesses built internally were later acquired “for a small amount of money”. He finished there in 2013 and it was the following year that he was pondering what to do next. He only had $50,000 but it was enough to get him started. Enter the French restaurant which was a “bit of a local secret”. It had one table downstairs and the rest were upstairs. If available, diners would be seated at 6pm in the downstairs window seat and receive 50% off their food bill. He went several times and was able to try things he would not normally have been able to — including snails and frogs legs — and, with the money saved, buy a bottle of French wine. Mr Weir thought it was a great concept; the restaurateur knew the value of having someone at that table at the beginning of the night. “A crowd attracts a crowd: bars have been doing this for centuries with Happy Hours.” So he built the First Table platform and, despite not having done sales before, signed up 10 restaurants in Otago on the first day. He then got a relocation campervan and drove from Christchurch to Auckland, visiting and signing up restaurants and loading them on to the website, and sleeping in the van. Returning to Queenstown, he got rid of his apartment and belongings and spent 18 months travelling around New Zealand and Australian cities, living on mates’ couches and in other accommodation. First Table was in Sydney 11 months after starting in New Zealand and, a few years later, expansion began in the UK. That came about quite quickly after Mr Weir heard that a British couple who had been living in Queenstown were moving home to copy his platform. Getting a small team together, they discussed launching in the same city as the couple planned. A week later, Mr Weir landed in London in January wearing shorts and took a bus to Bristol. He met another former Queenstown resident, who had used First Table, for coffee and he later joined the team. They managed to beat the other company’s launch by one day. First Table now had more than 4300 restaurants across New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom and Ireland, he said. It launched in Dublin several months ago and that, along with the rest of the UK, was a focus and also provided a foothold into potentially expanding into Europe. No longer just the first table of the night, it had expanded into breakfast and lunch. In June, the company made its biggest changes since launch: opening bookings to solo diners for the first time, lifting group booking limits from four to six and extending the booking window from seven to 14 days. He had always felt the company needed the right chief executive for the right stage and size, Mr Weir said. Ms Cappy was the “perfect fit” and the team loved having her leading the company through its next phase of growth, and he enjoyed working with her. His focus was on leading the AI transition in the company and that work was “good fun”. “AI is having huge impact on the way we work, not just how we use or leverage AI in our product but how we use it to do our work more efficiently.” First Table now had a team of 80 and its head office remained in Queenstown, proof a company could be built “from anywhere”. It was a beautiful place, had a great community and tended to attract entrepreneurial people, he said.