Alex Payne

Post-pitch story

Tuckrbox had one of Season 1's sweetest pitches: farm-to-lunchbox meal delivery, with an app that let kids pick their own healthy school lunches. Co-founders Meghan Carreau and Alex Payne had real momentum around the show. They won the $70,000 grand prize at the NYC App Idea Awards in May 2016, joined the third class of Google's 30 Weeks incubator that year, ran a successful Indiegogo campaign, and in summer 2017 tested the service with Equinox gyms. Investors on the show were interested, too. But meal delivery is a punishing business, and feeding kids adds extra cost and complexity. In May 2018 Carreau went on the Tech Bites podcast for an episode titled "The Pivot: When Your Start-Up Stops," speaking openly about deciding when to stop iterating and close down. The Tuckrbox website and service are gone. Carreau, now going by Meg Carreau, works in design and marketing and lists Tuckrbox as a past venture in her portfolio. We couldn't find a public update on Alex Payne. Tuckrbox didn't make it, but its founders were unusually candid about the ending — a useful story for anyone who has wondered what it's like to shut down a company you believed in.