The Exchanges

Q you know, some have towards slice, you just see the kind of the huge potential you have moving forwards. The question I have for you is so many investors will have said to you, uh, as you mentioned, the TAM of pizzas and really like, is that, is that, is that exciting for us? What would you advise founders who are consistently told by investors this TAM is not exciting?

A Well, first take the question seriously because they may be right, and then take your own independent approach to the TAM and try to answer the question as intellectually honestly as possible. The question that I was asked, I was asked that question, I've been asked that question many times. I'm sure I'll be asked That same question in a month. And the reality is you want to take a step back and look at what exactly are you solving for and what is your real TAM? Not like what you make up. Like I can say pizza is like A billion, sorry, a trillion-dollar TAM if you include frozen pizza and global and this and that. The reality for me is I spent significant time studying the industry because the last thing I want to be wrong about is our TAM. Because that is probably one of the deciding factors whether you can build a multi-billion-dollar company or not. And there's two parts to TAM. One is, what is the current TAM? And then two, will that TAM expand due to the Products and solution that you bring to the market. And so at the time that I launched the pizza industry in the US was a thirty five billion dollar industry. That was the revenue that was passing through at the time about 60,000 pizza shops. And two thirds of that was independent. The Domino's and the Pizza Hut's and Papa John's of the world started to expand the TAM because they introduced digital. They introduced mobile …

AI assessment note: “first take the question seriously because they may be right, and then take your own”

Q I have so many questions to ask here. I think the first thing that I do just have to ask is there's quite striking that 3000 locations and he was saying come back with a hundred or 200. I probably would have said the same if I was him. Why did you not go to investors before?

A Like I didn't go to Wiley as an investor. I went to Wiley as a leader in the food tech ecosystem, hoping that he can connect me to some people who can join my company to help me scale. I didn't Need money at the time. We were very profitable. The last thing I needed was money or what I needed was people and leadership and just brought in my network. Like I said, I went to the first round office and one of the people he connected me with was Josh Kopelman. And Josh and I spoke for about 90 minutes. We had a great conversation and I leave that meeting and why they calls me. He's like, Josh loved you. And I was like, why does that matter? I didn't know. I really didn't know. Josh's background and probably why I was maybe so loose and the conversation went so well. Yeah, I think for, for Wiley and some other folks he introduced me to, one of the reasons why I ended up raising money was because that was the way to get them involved in the business. And so that's really how my bootstrap company became venture backed. It was almost like not for that purpose as a primary reason. It was to get the right people on board. And then money was the like, Capital was the way to get them on.

AI assessment note: “I didn't Need money at the time. We were very profitable.”

Q It's funny. We'll get into the kind of not coming from Silicon Valley central casting later, but I do just want to stay on this one element of kind of lessons from upbringing. I always think that we're kind of shaped by our past. How do you think about what you're running from?

A That's a really good question. I don't really run from things. I, I'm more optimistic, uh, by design. I wouldn't say I'm running from any, from anything. I think I'm running more towards something. I, I'm really passionate about, um, building products that are really impactful to people. I'm really passionate about building teams. You know, I just want to create something really special. I will tell you my upbringing. I was born in this town of, uh, called Diber in what was then former Yugoslavia. It's like on the border today of Macedonia and Albania. Uh, I'm Albanian by background. This is a town of like, 5000 people. And there are no traffic lights. There's like, it's a tiny little business. I mean, a little town. And growing up, like, the understanding the common knowledge or what we were taught was to simply do your best to get a really good job. Hopefully save enough money, and maybe buy a house, have a car, you know, Do all that. That was the North Star. That's like the most ambitious, um, plan that anyone from that town could have. And when I was 10 years old, my family moved back to New York. Um, it was my first time immigrating to the US, but my family used to live in New York in the seventies before I was born. Anyway, uh, we're flying back to JFK airport. And as a 10 year old, you're looking out the window and, uh, you see all these lights. It's like, Imagine the st…

AI assessment note: “I wouldn't say I'm running from any, from anything. I think I'm running more towards something.”

Q I love that. Uh, what's the single best pizza you've ever eaten? I'm asking the grandmaster here.

A Ok, follow me, follow me for a moment here, Harry. There's a pizza shop called L&B Spumoni Gardens in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. And you can go there, and they make this what's what's called an upside-down pizza, which is predominantly sauce. There's cheese underneath the sauce, and it's like a little bit thick. This thing is so good, but what makes it really good is if you go there in the summer, And you order this slice, and you get a can of Coca-Cola or Pepsi, and you sit outside on these metal benches in Brooklyn, sun is setting, and you're just biting into this slice, and you've got this cold can of soda of pop. It's probably the best pizza moment anyone can have. At least for me, that's what it was.

AI assessment note: “There's a pizza shop called L&B Spumoni Gardens in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.”

Q Okay. So you can have dinner with one person dead or alive. Who would it be? And why them?

A Uh, it would probably be my grandfather, Adam. Uh, my grandfather went, um, back to Macedonia in, um, uh, about 10 years ago and, uh, ended up facing a health challenge and then passed away. I didn't get to be there for that. I didn't get to be there for his funeral. But my grandfather instilled just these incredible, I want to say values, not only with me, but my brothers, my cousins, and I'd love to just have one more dinner with him because I don't think I've ever really sat down with him and just say thank you. I'll tell you one story about him. When he was at his, you know, older age, He loved to work, and there was suddenly one day he just couldn't work anymore, and he would ask myself, my brothers, to go and do something, perform some job. And I remember him pausing one day and saying, do you know how lucky you are? And I would say, why am I lucky? He said, because you are capable of working, because you get to work. And I want to work, but I can't work anymore. And I thought that that was, um, probably a reflection of, it was a really good reflection of who he was.

AI assessment note: “it would probably be my grandfather, Adam.”

Q Where did you not spend money because you didn't have it, but with the benefit of hindsight, You wish you had have done?

A It was really mostly probably in the go-to-market side of things. One, I was limited by the number of salespeople I can get based on the profits or the amount of money that we were, you know, making at the time, and it took a long time to ramp up. Like it took five years to get to a point where we had real scale. You know, one salesperson led to two, two led to four, four led to six, but it was like a very slow ramp. I couldn't hire like sales classes to go and introduce this product to as many locations as possible. That created a very slower ramp time. The other part was product. I mean, I had one engineer, uh, his name is Sam Kennedy. He's incredible. He's the only engineer and product person and tech person. He's the only tech person we had in the company for five years.

AI assessment note: “It was really mostly probably in the go-to-market side of things.”

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: “there are pizzerias where on average we're probably now about 10%”

Q Penultimate one. What's your biggest advice to founders on creating a board? I've heard you've done it incredibly well.

A I think one, sometimes boards become, are an accident for a lot of founders, meaning as you fundraise, uh, the need for capital creates the need for, you know, um, you kind of end up choosing people because you need capital and sometimes you don't have your choice. You only, you know, the choice is made for you because that's the only option. And so what happens is a board is created, um, accidentally, right? You end up inheriting all these investors as board members because you were solving for capital, not for board members. And I think that's a very dangerous game to play. So when raising capital, you've got to be really thoughtful about the fact that not only are you taking capital, but now you're constructing the board. And then pretty early on, you've got to also go and balance the board of investors with operators, because sometimes the conversation can become really very financial. It becomes very investor centric as a board conversation versus company centric. And a board is really, these are the stewards of a business. And so the earlier you can bring on people who are operators and aren't necessarily investors, and they can really contribute to the conversation, the better it is. For me, that person was Deirdre Bigley. She was the chief marketing officer at Bloomberg on the board of Wix, Shutterstock, amongst others. Most recently, Cat Cole. Who's the president at At…

AI assessment note: “balance the board of investors with operators, because sometimes the conversation can become really very financial”

Q Can I ask, what did you do due to not having money that would have been different had you had money?

A Oh my God. Um, not having money forces you, forces entrepreneurs to become incredibly creative, uh, to, you know, in order to solve problems, I would say capital constraints create some Incredible solutions that are very hard to replicate by other companies who may not have the same constraints. One of the examples is I started investing in building a team in Macedonia, which is again where I'm from. So in that small town of 5000 people, I started hiring people there for two reasons. One unemployment rate in that country is like 50%. So no one's really working. Uh, average wage for those who do work is about, or at the time, was about 200 dollars per month. Average wage. Yeah. I mean, we're talking about, um, very, very limited opportunities. However, In terms of culturally, education is instilled in every human. Like, hard work is instilled in every person, and I felt like there was an opportunity for me to onboard some really great team members early days and pay them really well, double the national average, but that would cost me a lot less than having to hire people in, in the New York or anywhere in the US, really. So we very quickly started building out that team. Uh, today we have about 650 people in Macedonia. We're one of the largest employers in the country. That would not have happened if capital wasn't, wasn't a constraint. I mean, we, we went as far as like creati…

AI assessment note: “That would not have happened if capital wasn't, wasn't a constraint.”

Q you know, some have towards slice, you just see the kind of the huge potential you have moving forwards. The question I have for you is so many investors will have said to you, uh, as you mentioned, the TAM of pizzas and really like, is that, is that, is that exciting for us? What would you advise founders who are consistently told by investors this TAM is not exciting?

A Well, first take the question seriously because they may be right, and then take your own independent approach to the TAM and try to answer the question as intellectually honestly as possible. The question that I was asked, I was asked that question, I've been asked that question many times. I'm sure I'll be asked That same question in a month. And the reality is you want to take a step back and look at what exactly are you solving for and what is your real TAM? Not like what you make up. Like I can say pizza is like A billion, sorry, a trillion-dollar TAM if you include frozen pizza and global and this and that. The reality for me is I spent significant time studying the industry because the last thing I want to be wrong about is our TAM. Because that is probably one of the deciding factors whether you can build a multi-billion-dollar company or not. And there's two parts to TAM. One is, what is the current TAM? And then two, will that TAM expand due to the Products and solution that you bring to the market. And so at the time that I launched the pizza industry in the US was a thirty five billion dollar industry. That was the revenue that was passing through at the time about 60,000 pizza shops. And two thirds of that was independent. The Domino's and the Pizza Hut's and Papa John's of the world started to expand the TAM because they introduced digital. They introduced mobile …

AI assessment note: “first take the question seriously because they may be right, and then take your own”

Q Okay. So you can have dinner with one person dead or alive. Who would it be? And why them?

A Uh, it would probably be my grandfather, Adam. Uh, my grandfather went, um, back to Macedonia in, um, uh, about 10 years ago and, uh, ended up facing a health challenge and then passed away. I didn't get to be there for that. I didn't get to be there for his funeral. But my grandfather instilled just these incredible, I want to say values, not only with me, but my brothers, my cousins, and I'd love to just have one more dinner with him because I don't think I've ever really sat down with him and just say thank you. I'll tell you one story about him. When he was at his, you know, older age, He loved to work, and there was suddenly one day he just couldn't work anymore, and he would ask myself, my brothers, to go and do something, perform some job. And I remember him pausing one day and saying, do you know how lucky you are? And I would say, why am I lucky? He said, because you are capable of working, because you get to work. And I want to work, but I can't work anymore. And I thought that that was, um, probably a reflection of, it was a really good reflection of who he was.

AI assessment note: “it would probably be my grandfather, Adam.”

Q Where do you think you struggle as a leader? I heard so many great things about you from your passion, your hard work. We'll talk about both. Where do you think you struggle?

A Oh, I struggle in, in many areas, I would say, uh, my number one struggle, my ability to really, um, empathize with a team at scale when it comes to my own communication. So for example, I'll communicate broadly Um, with the assumption that everyone knows exactly who I am and with the assumption that everyone understands my intentions with the assumption that like, there are no, you know, like knowledge gaps. And so I communicate very, I want to say authentically and directly, uh, especially when it comes to like company-wide forums. And that typically has been a struggle because sometimes I'll say things that are To be fair to our team, incredibly easy to misinterpret. And then, you know, that can create a lot of friction or it can create this idea that people need to go into a different direction when my intention was probably something different. So I want to say just my ability to communicate more broadly to team at scale, uh, in a way that's clear, simple, and. Leaves as little room as possible to, you know, misinterpretation.

AI assessment note: “my number one struggle, my ability to really, um, empathize with a team at scale”

Q Final one for you. What are the next five years hold for you? Where do you want slice to be? It's 20, 28. What does it look like then?

A I would hope that we continue to accelerate the success for small businesses. I'd love to, to finally have sort of our vision for what the platform needs to be for one independent. Um, I'd like for that vision to be as complete as possible and then step and repeat the process because I think that our model has the right to win in many categories, but we are deliberately continuing to constrain our focus so that we can be the best in class partner for these independents. When we earn the right to go to more categories and as we continue to scale, I would hope that we're operating as a public company because that gives me the opportunity to restart again. It's kind of like 20 15 all over again, right? Begin new beginnings. It gives the people who helped us get here an opportunity to realize, uh, some financial success due to their hard work. Uh, and I think it'll be a, a really powerful moment for slice as a brand to, to really be more mainstream.

AI assessment note: “I would hope that we're operating as a public company”

Q I mean, I love that. I also am terrified that he's going to get sick because then you're fucked. Speaking of like, you know, that one person dependency, often it's said that you should hire great people and then the best CEOs get out of the way. You've disagreed with that before when we've chatted. Why do you think that's bullshit?

A It's, it's complete bullshit. I mean, I used to feel like, okay, hire great people, get out of the way, and I've done that. I've done that many times, and every time I've done that, things have failed. I have failed the person, and the person typically fails at Slice, and the reason why I think that is, is because every situation is incredibly unique. Even if it's the similar role in a similar company in a similar industry, there are details In every business that really, really matter that I think are very important for, um, for leaders to align on. It's my job to make sure that leaders are successful at the company. It's my job to make sure that we talk about the details and really understand the decisions that are made on a weekly or monthly basis. You know, a company's growth trajectory Is a collection of mini pivots. I call them like you don't have to make this huge company pivot, but every decision tree is a little pivot, right? You're kind of going down a path and those decisions are so important and alignment around those decisions is incredibly important. How can you align on those things? If you're just kind of zooming out and saying, Hey, I've got this leader running go to market and like, you know, I'm sure what they're doing is great, the numbers are great, but You know, three months or six months later, you get into the details and you realize that things have dev…

AI assessment note: “every time I've done that, things have failed.”

Q Can I ask you a weird one? What infrastructure do you work on across all of those different teams and geographies? Is it Slack with Airtable and Asana? How do you, from a technology infrastructure standpoint, make them come together in some cohesive way?

A Uh, to be quite honest, it's mostly slack and, uh, just Google, uh, Google sort of a suite, uh, docs, sheets, uh, presentations, things like that. And then, um, you know, phone calls and, you know, Google meet, uh, things like that. But I want to say like our stack is actually incredibly simple. Uh, I'm, I'm a big fan of like eliminating, uh, Uh, tools versus introducing more and more tools. Cause then what happens is things become fragmented that no one knows what should I slack versus what should I email, but what should I present via video? And so I'm going through this process of elimination where like, how do we streamline and, and focus our communication as much as possible? That's probably more important than always going and sort of turning on more and more tools.

AI assessment note: “it's mostly slack and, uh, just Google, uh, Google sort of a suite”

Q I thought that was a wonderfully concise way to put it. Um, I think that that's like decision-making in many ways. The other thing that's fascinating is you mentioned the mini pivots. With mini pivots, you need good communication to discuss why you're moving, where you're moving to, and the thought process around it. What have been your biggest lessons in effective communication in management, given the many, many pivots?

A I think the number one thing is really just the frequency of communication. So the same thing really needs to be communicated incredibly frequently, especially as the company scales. There's no communication debt in the early days. It's a small team. Everyone kind of is in the same place. Everyone's talking about the same stuff. Nothing's lost in translation. As the company scales, the first thing you want to do is obviously Communicate these things multiple times. A mentor of mine once said, if you're not feeling nauseous, Because you're communicating the same thing over and over that you just feel like, you know, why am I saying this again? Do it one more time. That's how you know that you've communicated enough. I think the other part is, I think it's very rare that people clearly communicate the why, because the why is very, very important. Not just the decision we're making, but why are we making that decision? And how can we articulate that? Not just a step ahead, but like five steps ahead. How can we connect the current why with some future decisions? I think it's a really important part of clear communication because then you want people, the team members to be able to make their own little mini decisions. And if they don't understand the why, then how can they make the right decisions? I mean, you can't be, you can't be present for every single one of them. So communic…

AI assessment note: “communication frequency and then being incredibly clear with the why”

Q what I mean? So like payroll would not be the first thing necessarily because it's post a lot of other things happening or lending may not be because it's generally in a phase where you've got a lot of things in place. How do you advise founders who do take that very vertical focused approach on picking the right insertion point that puts them at the start of the chain?

A Well, uh, one, you have to immerse yourself in that category, in that industry, in that problem. You know, you just have to make sure that you really, really understand what the customer in that segment is really going through, not just in a moment in time, but like every day, every week, every year, What's happening not only with the individual location. So getting to the very detailed parts, but also what's happening overall with the industry. I think too many people perhaps start with leading questions with customers. So they'll go to a customer and they'll say, Hey, if, uh, are you having trouble with payroll? And they'll say, yeah, sure. I'm having trouble with payroll. I'd love for someone to fix that. What they don't ask is in what order of priority is payroll? Your trouble. And so what they end up doing is they'll build a product for payroll, and then they realize no one's really using it because for an owner, while payroll may be a problem, it's their eighth problem. Really what you want to ask the customer is what is your big, like, what is the problem that keeps you up at night? What is the thing that you are trying to solve for? And then you want to sort of, uh, triangulate that to a solution that isn't them telling you, here's what I need. But it's you then figuring out, uh, through your own research and capabilities and product on how to solve that problem in a wa…

AI assessment note: “What they don't ask is in what order of priority is payroll?”

Q What do you think gets more difficult? Cause I argue it gets easier. Like I, you know, I have teams now, I have EA's, I have videographers, editors, associates, so much nicer.

A Um, it's, it's nicer, uh, but it's more difficult. It's more challenging. It, it gets more challenging because I think the stakes are just much higher. Like there's so many customers we can disappoint suddenly through one release. There's so many people who even a person who has invested one dollar in my company, that's the last person I would want to let down with their trust in me. And so it's a combination of these like collection of customers, investors, Team members who have joined slice because they believe in our mission as that denominator scales, the pressure to make sure that you're working more and making sure that you're limiting mistakes becomes greater and greater. At least that's my approach.

AI assessment note: “It's more challenging because I think the stakes are just much higher.”

Q It's funny. We'll get into the kind of not coming from Silicon Valley central casting later, but I do just want to stay on this one element of kind of lessons from upbringing. I always think that we're kind of shaped by our past. How do you think about what you're running from?

A That's a really good question. I don't really run from things. I, I'm more optimistic, uh, by design. I wouldn't say I'm running from any, from anything. I think I'm running more towards something. I, I'm really passionate about, um, building products that are really impactful to people. I'm really passionate about building teams. You know, I just want to create something really special. I will tell you my upbringing. I was born in this town of, uh, called Diber in what was then former Yugoslavia. It's like on the border today of Macedonia and Albania. Uh, I'm Albanian by background. This is a town of like, 5000 people. And there are no traffic lights. There's like, it's a tiny little business. I mean, a little town. And growing up, like, the understanding the common knowledge or what we were taught was to simply do your best to get a really good job. Hopefully save enough money, and maybe buy a house, have a car, you know, Do all that. That was the North Star. That's like the most ambitious, um, plan that anyone from that town could have. And when I was 10 years old, my family moved back to New York. Um, it was my first time immigrating to the US, but my family used to live in New York in the seventies before I was born. Anyway, uh, we're flying back to JFK airport. And as a 10 year old, you're looking out the window and, uh, you see all these lights. It's like, Imagine the st…

AI assessment note: “I don't really run from things. I think I'm running more towards something.”

Q Where do you think you struggle as a leader? I heard so many great things about you from your passion, your hard work. We'll talk about both. Where do you think you struggle?

A Oh, I struggle in, in many areas, I would say, uh, my number one struggle, my ability to really, um, empathize with a team at scale when it comes to my own communication. So for example, I'll communicate broadly Um, with the assumption that everyone knows exactly who I am and with the assumption that everyone understands my intentions with the assumption that like, there are no, you know, like knowledge gaps. And so I communicate very, I want to say authentically and directly, uh, especially when it comes to like company-wide forums. And that typically has been a struggle because sometimes I'll say things that are To be fair to our team, incredibly easy to misinterpret. And then, you know, that can create a lot of friction or it can create this idea that people need to go into a different direction when my intention was probably something different. So I want to say just my ability to communicate more broadly to team at scale, uh, in a way that's clear, simple, and. Leaves as little room as possible to, you know, misinterpretation.

AI assessment note: “my number one struggle, my ability to really, um, empathize with a team at scale”

Q what I mean? So like payroll would not be the first thing necessarily because it's post a lot of other things happening or lending may not be because it's generally in a phase where you've got a lot of things in place. How do you advise founders who do take that very vertical focused approach on picking the right insertion point that puts them at the start of the chain?

A Well, uh, one, you have to immerse yourself in that category, in that industry, in that problem. You know, you just have to make sure that you really, really understand what the customer in that segment is really going through, not just in a moment in time, but like every day, every week, every year, What's happening not only with the individual location. So getting to the very detailed parts, but also what's happening overall with the industry. I think too many people perhaps start with leading questions with customers. So they'll go to a customer and they'll say, Hey, if, uh, are you having trouble with payroll? And they'll say, yeah, sure. I'm having trouble with payroll. I'd love for someone to fix that. What they don't ask is in what order of priority is payroll? Your trouble. And so what they end up doing is they'll build a product for payroll, and then they realize no one's really using it because for an owner, while payroll may be a problem, it's their eighth problem. Really what you want to ask the customer is what is your big, like, what is the problem that keeps you up at night? What is the thing that you are trying to solve for? And then you want to sort of, uh, triangulate that to a solution that isn't them telling you, here's what I need. But it's you then figuring out, uh, through your own research and capabilities and product on how to solve that problem in a wa…

AI assessment note: “What they don't ask is in what order of priority is payroll?”

Q Are you decisive? You mentioned that mini pivots. Are you decisive in your thought process?

A Not as decisive as I would like to be. Um, I feel like I'm progressing. I'm getting better at it. I used to be really bad at it. I used to really try to run companies, uh, the company with consensus, right? It was like, go into these exec meetings and say, okay, what do you think? And what do you think? And everyone had a say, and we had to like all get on the same page eventually. And it would be this really slow process because it's hard to get consensus when you have, you know, five, six, seven strong-minded, experienced people around the table. And we've been fortunate to have really good leaders of the company. I think that that was a terrible way to run a business. I think people want, especially great leaders look for, um, someone to make decisions. They want someone to carve out a vision for where we're headed. So I feel like I've become better, but I'm still not as good as I think I need to be.

AI assessment note: “Not as decisive as I would like to be.”

Q I thought that was a wonderfully concise way to put it. Um, I think that that's like decision-making in many ways. The other thing that's fascinating is you mentioned the mini pivots. With mini pivots, you need good communication to discuss why you're moving, where you're moving to, and the thought process around it. What have been your biggest lessons in effective communication in management, given the many, many pivots?

A I think the number one thing is really just the frequency of communication. So the same thing really needs to be communicated incredibly frequently, especially as the company scales. There's no communication debt in the early days. It's a small team. Everyone kind of is in the same place. Everyone's talking about the same stuff. Nothing's lost in translation. As the company scales, the first thing you want to do is obviously Communicate these things multiple times. A mentor of mine once said, if you're not feeling nauseous, Because you're communicating the same thing over and over that you just feel like, you know, why am I saying this again? Do it one more time. That's how you know that you've communicated enough. I think the other part is, I think it's very rare that people clearly communicate the why, because the why is very, very important. Not just the decision we're making, but why are we making that decision? And how can we articulate that? Not just a step ahead, but like five steps ahead. How can we connect the current why with some future decisions? I think it's a really important part of clear communication because then you want people, the team members to be able to make their own little mini decisions. And if they don't understand the why, then how can they make the right decisions? I mean, you can't be, you can't be present for every single one of them. So communic…

AI assessment note: “I think the number one thing is really just the frequency of communication.”

Q Can I ask you a weird one? What infrastructure do you work on across all of those different teams and geographies? Is it Slack with Airtable and Asana? How do you, from a technology infrastructure standpoint, make them come together in some cohesive way?

A Uh, to be quite honest, it's mostly slack and, uh, just Google, uh, Google sort of a suite, uh, docs, sheets, uh, presentations, things like that. And then, um, you know, phone calls and, you know, Google meet, uh, things like that. But I want to say like our stack is actually incredibly simple. Uh, I'm, I'm a big fan of like eliminating, uh, Uh, tools versus introducing more and more tools. Cause then what happens is things become fragmented that no one knows what should I slack versus what should I email, but what should I present via video? And so I'm going through this process of elimination where like, how do we streamline and, and focus our communication as much as possible? That's probably more important than always going and sort of turning on more and more tools.

AI assessment note: “to be quite honest, it's mostly slack and, uh, just Google”

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 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: “Uh, it's a combination. So I'm really, really proud”

Q I love that. What do you know to be true that others do not agree with? So mine would be, you cannot build a great, great business, which I would define as five billion dollar plus with work life balance. It is not possible.

A Oh, I mean, can I use that? I, um, you know, cause you have luck, timing, and then hard work as the three elements of success. And I think it's really just mostly hard work because if you work hard enough, you will understand what tailwinds are being created or where the world is moving because you're studying, you're understanding the customer. So that helps you create timing. When I launched slice, I knew all orders would move to mobile. It was just, you know, a matter of time. It could have been in 10 years, 20 years, but eventually it would happen. And I knew that. I studied that. I wasn't like I was just lucky to choose what we did in a moment in time. And then I worked really hard at it. It was kind of the other way around. So I would say, I don't know that luck and timing really exist. It's really mostly hard work.

AI assessment note: “I don't know that luck and timing really exist. It's really mostly hard work.”

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: “I went and followed a number of Really great founders... tweeted at... Wiley”

Q Where did you not spend money because you didn't have it, but with the benefit of hindsight, You wish you had have done?

A It was really mostly probably in the go-to-market side of things. One, I was limited by the number of salespeople I can get based on the profits or the amount of money that we were, you know, making at the time, and it took a long time to ramp up. Like it took five years to get to a point where we had real scale. You know, one salesperson led to two, two led to four, four led to six, but it was like a very slow ramp. I couldn't hire like sales classes to go and introduce this product to as many locations as possible. That created a very slower ramp time. The other part was product. I mean, I had one engineer, uh, his name is Sam Kennedy. He's incredible. He's the only engineer and product person and tech person. He's the only tech person we had in the company for five years.

AI assessment note: “It was really mostly probably in the go-to-market side of things.”