Brandon Shi ’23, Founder at PlatePost
Hometown: Chino Hills, California
Major: Interactive Media and Business
From the get-go, Brandon Shi ’23 has always liked to take the road less traveled, beginning with enrolling in a university thousands of miles away from home.While at NYU Shanghai, he started creating video content as a hobby and watched his videos rack up hundreds of thousands of views. . It turned into a career, with Shi making videos for brands like Amazon, Lyft, and Adobe. After four years of content creation, he’s now establishing himself in the start-up world. Of all the professional roles he’s tried, Shi says the founder's life is where he’s meant to be.
Why did you choose NYU Shanghai?
I went to high school in Chino Hills, California. I saw a ton of my friends at the time going to college nearby, and I wondered, “What’s the biggest risk I can take to challenge myself?” I heard about NYU Shanghai, applied early decision, and got in.
At that time, no one in my high school went to college outside of the University of California state schools, so going to school in China was extremely out of the ordinary. But that's how my life has been. Even the career that I'm doing now is extremely untraditional.
What were some of the most impactful experiences you had at NYU Shanghai?
A course [in my senior year] specifically launched me toward my career path: Entrepreneurship Experience. Gabrielle Chou was an extremely caring and tough professor– she had very high standards, but I really appreciated that because it pushed me to hold myself to a high standard. She was the launchpad in my path to building my own company. In her class, the students had to build, ideate, launch, and pitch a startup idea from scratch.
I dedicated the entire semester to developing my project, a video-based digital menu, and had the opportunity to pitch it in front of NYU Shanghai and a group of investors. On the day of the presentation, just as I was about to showcase the most crucial part—videos of my videomenu—everything went offline. The videos wouldn’t play, cutting off the heart of my pitch. At that moment, it felt like the biggest setback of my startup career. I remember standing in front of everyone for what felt like hours, cracking awkward jokes as I tried to fix it. However, it was a powerful lesson in resilience and adaptability. It taught me to prepare for the unexpected and find new ways to convey my vision, even when things don’t go as planned.
What was the inspiration behind your startup PlatePost?
I grew up around food, bonding with my family over shared meals. One night, I was eating at Cheesecake Factory with my family. I sat down, was given a menu, and after about 30 seconds, I pulled out my phone to look at Google Maps and Yelp to see pictures or videos. . I looked over my shoulder, and my mom and brother were doing the exact same thing. We wanted to see exactly what the food looked like.
At the core of it, I was just building a solution to my own problem. And then as I did more user research, I found out that other people had the same problem. We eat with our eyes, but why are menus filled with so much text? When I first started this idea, my research began with college students. I would go around interviewing people asking them if I could watch them order food. I told them, “Ignore me. Can you just think out loud while you’re ordering food? ” What I found was that they would look for the photos when making decisions of what they wanted. That's when I started to build this idea, prototyping with pictures, videos, and then I launched. Honestly, I wouldn't probably have gotten the idea if I didn't live in China.
What does a day in the life of a startup founder look like?
An average day is waking up and doing some form of exercise, either swimming, walking, or running. After I shower, I usually take about three to six calls related to the start-up. And then I’m also working on sales as well. As a founder, you're wearing a lot of different hats. Some days I do a little bit of design work, other days I write a newsletter to my investors. It's just a bunch of things that add up to hundreds of small tasks.
Where do you see yourself and your startup going from here?
In the short term, I see our product being launched in about 50 restaurants by the end of 2024. That'll be a tough one, but I think it's very doable. Then in one to two years from now, I think we're definitely going to be in thousands of restaurants. We'll have some key investors and advisors, and the team will probably be a team of five to ten. And I would say five years from now is the bigger goal. I would love to go to any restaurant, walk in, and see a video menu playing. The goal is that I’ll be able to go to a restaurant, and see each of the items, the cost, and the ingredients– whether I'm hungry at home on my couch, or standing in line, in person. That is the five-year goal: anyone from anywhere can order and see the food. I truly believe that we’re changing how millions of people interact with food.
What advice do you have for NYU Shanghai students?
#1 - Be Contrarian
Go against the grain. Do things that no one else is willing to do.
#2 - Be Kind
Being kind, remembering people’s names, shaking their hands, and being enthusiastic, will set you apart from 90% of people.
#3 - Try Everything
Try a little bit of everything, maybe that’s Photoshop, videography, or chess. You want to dabble in as many things as you can so you can figure out what your true calling is. As we're young, we have a lot of opportunities to take a lot of risks. Could you imagine if I wanted to launch a startup at 50 years old and I had a kid, three dogs, and a mortgage to pay? It'd be incredibly difficult. The fact that I am 23 years old and the worst thing that can happen if this start-up fails is getting a job…that’s not bad, you know? On the other hand– what's the best thing that could happen? I can retire myself, my family, and be able to give back to the world. I'm willing to take that risk. So take the risk most people are uncomfortable with. There's always a time and a place to play it safe and to take risks!