The Exchanges

Q What did you change when the numbers were shit in 20 or not great in 2019 and it was hard? What did your mind say to yourself and what did you change?

A I needed to stop getting out of the way. Um, I, I basically outsourced is the good name. Like just because the team is internal doesn't mean founders aren't outsourcing problems or responsibilities. I basically outsourced a lot of the decisions internally to other leaders. And again, it's not like they had bad intent or they weren't qualified. It's that I'm going back to the same story, which is every business is incredibly unique. I don't care if it's the same Industry. Anyone coming joining Slice from Seamless or Grubhub or someone who may join Slice today from DoorDash or Toast, We'll still need to understand the unique aspects of this business relative to their experience elsewhere. And so I got involved again. Um, I think one of the realizations is companies can actually accomplish a lot with much less. So one of the things that I did was just put a lot of constraint on why we're hiring people. You know, I realized we had a lot of people who were hired to do a specific role, but Very few founders ask, is that a full-time role? You know, so someone will hire, you know, position A, and yes, that's needed for, for the company to continue to grow, but how many hours a week does position A require? Is it 10? Is it five? What are they doing with the other 35 hours? And so what they're doing is creating more jobs, and then that creates more of a downstream I want to say impact on…

AI assessment note: “putting constraints was probably the best thing I did after 2019.”

Q My question to you is like, is it right for you to step back in or should you just implement new guardrails and new structures to allow yourself to remain out of it? You know, I often am told that the best CEOs are ones which go on holiday for a week and they come back and their businesses Better than it was when they left.

A I disagree with that. Uh, I mean, I hope that that's, don't get me wrong. I think once you have known motions and you're a growth company, certainly the company's better every single day than the day prior. And much of that is the result of not the founder or the CEO. It's the result of the processes and systems you've put in place in order to drive growth. I completely agree with that. I think for me though, in You know, 1820, 19, we were not yet a growth stage company. This is a series B company that's still figuring out what exactly is the go to, what are the go to market motions? What is the product? Uh, we are hiring people like crazy. Like, I don't think you can get out of the way at that point. Certainly today I can probably zoom out, but it's, um, Yeah, I think it's a moment in time.

AI assessment note: “I don't think you can get out of the way at that point.”

Q think about a lot having come from nothing is like financial security. How much were you chasing financial security in the early days, do you think? And was that important to you? Cause you say you're just running towards, and I get that, but then also you are making sure that you capture the opportunity and you came from nothing. How do you think about that importance of financial security?

A Yeah, I think, look, financial security is important. Um, and I will tell you the Bentley story in a moment. However, growing up, when we moved to New York, uh, we moved in with my uncle. And so my uncle and his family, my dad and our family, we all lived together. My grandparents, we all lived together in a single apartment in Staten Island, two bedrooms, All of the kids slept on these, uh, sort of mattresses on the floor at night, and then we had to pick them up and shove them under the couch during the day. That was, uh, I'm, I can imagine it was a struggle for my parents, my uncle, um, and his wife. But for me, it was some of the best times of my life. I remember those days vividly. We didn't have a lot, but life was awesome. And so for that reason, I'm actually not afraid To land or to end up in a situation where I don't have enough or a lot or, um, you know, I, I guess it's a simple way to say financial outcomes is not what motivates me. Like I enjoy the process of hard work. I think I'm enjoying the process of going through a lot of pain. And, uh, sometimes business feels a bit like a game. It gives you purpose. It's, it's all of that. Now, one of the things I do love are car. I love cars. Um, and when I was bootstrapping the company in 2015, I want to say February of 2015. I look at my spreadsheet. One day I was tracking my company on an Excel sheet, not even on QuickBo…

AI assessment note: “financial outcomes is not what motivates me. Like I enjoy the process of hard work.”

Q Can I ask you, are there any benefits of being horizontal? If we look at something like owner.com, which obviously is not focused on a specific segment of cuisine or SMB, it's much more just restaurant specific, um, which is very broad. Are there benefits of being horizontal and not vertical?

A Uh, of course there's benefits. It all depends on what the vision and the mission of the company is. You can certainly go very horizontal. I think the question is then at what point do you think the, uh, solution will perhaps end up, um, running out of steam by that? I mean, a restaurant that sells a different product and maybe has table service is a very different business than a pizza shop, which is a very different business than a coffee shop. Now, They may all have the similar need of commerce, which is what a company like owner.com provides. But beyond that, um, it becomes very difficult because what happens is each one of these different business models will then have a different need, a different solution that they'll require. And so by default, it becomes very challenging to vertically integrate beyond a certain point because the needs deviate significantly after some point.

AI assessment note: “Uh, of course there's benefits. It all depends on what the vision and the mission”

Q Really easy one, given the fact that you just said you don't like averages when you, but I'm going to go for it anyway. When you think about percent of revenue that's driven through slice versus alternative channels, where are you today with the majority of pizzerias? Is it 10%? Is it 50%? Is it 75%? Just help me understand the revenue makeup there for the pizzeria.

A So there are pizzerias where on average we're probably now about 10%. Of, of their revenue. But there are pizzerias where we represent more than half of their revenue. Let me give you a quick framework. The average independent pizza shop in the US has total sales of about 550,000 per year. And most of that is phone based. Most of that is either phone or walk in. It's offline. The average Domino's location does about 1.2 million in revenue and sales per year in the US. The Delta of 700,000 is primarily online digital volume. Their phone volume is actually identical. It's when Domino's invested in mobile and ordering online and they stopped advertising telephone numbers. That's when the performance of Domino's locations went through the roof. And in fact, their stock, if you look at their performance in the last, uh, you know, 12 months, it's been 12 years, it's been Just incredible. I mentioned this in a, in a couple of other conversations. I wish I invested in Domino's at the same time that I launched, uh, that I launched Slice. Uh, so when you look at that gap, it's all digital. And so what Slice tries to do is increase the revenue per merchant. So it's not just about the wallet share of Slice relative to the total volume of the merchant, but it's the first question we have that we want to answer is, are we increasing same store sales? Are we increasing the total sales of the …

AI assessment note: “So there are pizzerias where on average we're probably now about 10%.”

Q Fuck it. Why not just go there? I love a natural conversation. Talk to me about that reach out to Wiley. Literally, he told me that you reached out to him on Twitter and that was the catalyst to them, you know, getting to know you and ultimately leading your round. Can you tell me the story?

A Yeah, so that same month, February of, uh, I realized that there was an opportunity for me to really restart what was then called my pizza, uh, ultimately became Slice. Two reasons. One, we were Performing really well as a business too. I had just gotten my first acquisition offer. You know, the offer to sell the company for eighteen million dollars would have been awesome. Sole owner. No debt. Eighteen million dollars would have been great. And I turned it down. I turned it down because I thought, what would I do if I sold the company? Well, I would probably go and try and open up or launch a very similar business, work really hard again for another five years and maybe have some, you know, similar outcome. We'll see. But that wasn't really that exciting for me. What I wanted to know is what happens if I approach this business As that new company that I may launch post sale, what would that look like? What would that journey look like? I would learn a lot more at scale to a point that I hadn't scaled before. But hopefully I can surround myself with people who can really help me get there. And so I went on Twitter, which by the way, like I said, can be a magical platform. Twitter is sort of a mirror of what you're seeking, right? You can follow some really great people and they'll bring back some really great content and lessons, or you can follow, you know, the news and that'l…

AI assessment note: “within minutes, Wiley, who was, who I thought at the time was still leading”

Q What's the average revenue per, per area for you today?

A I don't like measuring averages, Harry. Averages hide the truth. I want to know how many, how many merchants are beyond a certain threshold of revenue. You know, all in all, Slices products cost about seven or eight percent of the revenue that we create for the merchant. And so, if we create more revenue, we'll earn more revenue. What I love is, for example, there's a shop in New Jersey that is managing over a million and a half dollars a year through the Slice platform. For that merchant, our revenue is about a 100,000 dollars a year, net to Slice. And then there are merchants that are maybe just joining or joined a month ago that are still on their sort of ramp up time where we're maybe earning a thousand dollars a year. Um, so that's the goal though, is to continue to move, uh, merchants from one bucket to the next, to the next and continue to graduate them, uh, in that, in that, um, Wave life basically, yeah.

AI assessment note: “I don't like measuring averages, Harry. Averages hide the truth.”

Q Can I ask you, are there any benefits of being horizontal? If we look at something like owner.com, which obviously is not focused on a specific segment of cuisine or SMB, it's much more just restaurant specific, um, which is very broad. Are there benefits of being horizontal and not vertical?

A Uh, of course there's benefits. It all depends on what the vision and the mission of the company is. You can certainly go very horizontal. I think the question is then at what point do you think the, uh, solution will perhaps end up, um, running out of steam by that? I mean, a restaurant that sells a different product and maybe has table service is a very different business than a pizza shop, which is a very different business than a coffee shop. Now, They may all have the similar need of commerce, which is what a company like owner.com provides. But beyond that, um, it becomes very difficult because what happens is each one of these different business models will then have a different need, a different solution that they'll require. And so by default, it becomes very challenging to vertically integrate beyond a certain point because the needs deviate significantly after some point.

AI assessment note: “Uh, of course there's benefits. It all depends on what the vision”

Q Do you have sales teams who are upselling them or do you let them come to you with customer demand leading their upsell?

A Uh, it's a combination. So I'm really, really proud of the level of service that slice provides to our merchants. And by the way, you can go and Naturally, anyone who's listening, go to any pizza shop in the US, ask them about Slice and the level of service they receive, and I'm incredibly proud to say in advance that they will probably have a lot of positive things to say. The reason why is twofold. One, we have this amazing restaurant support team that is the inbound team. So if anyone calls us, we answer on the spot. By the way, these folks are all in Macedonia. So we answer on the spot. And then we have this partner success team, we call it. Each partner success person has a portfolio of shops who are existing customers of slice. They know these owners by name. They know their birthdays. They know the name of their manager. They know everything that these owners are dealing with. Um, I mean, they're part of the team. We're an extension of their staff. And so we know when an owner is ready for one of our products. We also know when they're not ready and, you know, we won't mention it. And so these relationship managers, um, are probably the one, it's one of the most challenging jobs at slice, but two, it's one of the most rewarding, uh, jobs at slice. And so, yes, we upsell at the right time. Based on, again, where the, where the merchant is in their life cycle.

AI assessment note: “it's a combination.”

Q It's a lonely process. And then you decide to be a sole founder. Can you talk to me? It is so lonely. Why did you decide to be a sole founder when you could have had a co-founder? And do you find it lonely today? I know I do.

A Being a founder, a CEO is, uh, can certainly be a lonely job. I think it's very different than what small independent businesses face. Uh, I'm fortunate enough to have the resources, uh, to be able to surround myself with an amazing team. Imagine a pizza shop owner or a bakery owner and the lack of resources or time or know-how that they may be facing with in order to have the same luxury that I do. So it's a very different experience. But for me, I think being a sole founder, I'll be honest, I didn't, I didn't really come, come through sort of the VC or Silicon Valley sort of part of the business world. I was just raised to build businesses by creating something that the world needs. Um, you know, if that cost me a dollar, charge two dollars for it and do that as many times as possible. Like I, you know, I'm much more of a small business owner at heart than I am, uh, this person who sought out to build, you know, a multi-billion dollar company.

AI assessment note: “I didn't really come through sort of the VC or Silicon Valley sort of part”

Q my hand because there's so many things I'm interested in. I can imagine Pazira is like, you know what? Super interesting, but like, can we ease ourselves into this? No one wants to jump wholeheartedly into something very new. What does that ramp time look like? How long does it take for them to go from first order to actually a meaningful amount of orders and GMB going through Slice?

A Um, it depends. It depends because our number one job is to change the behavior of the existing customers. There are merchants who join who naturally have a lot a greater customer base than other merchants, but it's typically a very quick ramp up time. I mean, we do everything we can to make sure that we put in an experience in place that introduces to the consumer for that merchant the opportunity to be able to order through a mobile app. The opportunity to be able to pay with Apple Pay and all these best in class features. And so we believe that we have an experience for the consumers that is a more rewarding. By the way, it should cost less to order online than calling, which is kind of fascinating. The consumer has been trained in the US to think that ordering online is more expensive. That's kind of wild to me. Isn't software supposed to make things more efficient? I'm proud of the fact that our product has made ordering more efficient online than calling. It is a better experience for the consumer because they don't have to like wait on hold and order from memory. And obviously, it's less expensive for the merchant because they don't have to answer the phone.

AI assessment note: “it's typically a very quick ramp up time”