Endeca founder Steve Papa invested $500,000 to seed Toast
Aman Narang · Toast: Aman Narang. How a Long Wait for the Dinner Check Launched a $2 Billion Business. · Jul 20, 2026 · at 24:24
Toast co-founder Aman Narang recounts raising early angel funding after abandoning their original consumer app to build cloud-based POS software.
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“Steve Papa, who was the founder of Indeca, invested I think it was 500 K to get started.”
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Toast laid off 55 percent of its workforce during early pandemic
“Because restaurants weren't taking payments, and when restaurants aren't open, they can't really pay their software fees, and so we had to make the hard decision to cut, I think it was like, 55% of the team, and then also to like, get on a call with the team a…”
Toast built custom hardware by leveraging Android's open ecosystem
“We could make these, this technology a lot better by moving it to the cloud and by taking advantage of Android hardware, because Android hardware actually is open, which allows for which allowed us to build our own hardware, which was critical to building some…”
Toast found an edge by building vertical software exclusively for restaurants
“Because there were a bunch of providers that were building something more horizontal, where you could be a restaurant, or a coffee shop, or a flower shop, or a picture of a small retail business, and we felt like our unique edge, because we had gotten a sense …”
Narang says Toast revenues plummeted over 90 percent in April 2020
“We had aggressive plans that year, and then I think early April of 2020, we had gone from this company that was growing like this to maybe revenues down over 90%.”
Toast's share of US restaurant sales volume exceeds its location share
“Even though we have 20 plus percent of the restaurants, we actually have more of the sales volume, because the average restaurant that's on toast has more sales than the average restaurant in America”
Toast disrupted legacy POS systems costing $50,000 to $100,000 upfront
“Instead of spending, like for a restaurant like Finale, for them to go buy a legacy on-prem system, you know, you might spend 50 to a hundred K up front. And so our pitch was very little up front and sometimes nothing up front. Then we had a SAS fee.”