Slice, the software company that wants every independent pizza company to compete on a level tech playing field with “Big Pizza” (aka Domino’s) has raised another $40 million. The round brings the company’s cumulative funding to $125 million since its 2010 founding. Though notably, Slice bootstrapped its first several years before raising $4 million in 2015.
This round was led by Cross Creek, but the notable story may be in the secondary investors. GGV Capital joined this round, as it has every round since Slice’s $15 million Series A round in 2017. Also joining this round are the legendary private equity KKR and 01 Advisors. The latter is a venture firm led by two Twitter veterans — ex-CEO Dick Costolo and former COO Adam Bain.
A ‘Quick Round’
In its announcement, Slice makes it clear that the round was built at least in part around bringing in Costolo and Bain.
“This insider-led round, allows Slice to tap into the expertise of 01 Advisors as the company continues to invest in vertical solutions for its partner shops, expand its product roadmap, and scale Slice Accelerate — an ongoing program, inspired by the constraints of COVID-19, that bolsters shops with $15,000 each worth of technology and services.”
In fact, Slice CEO Founder & CEO Ilir Sela told TechCrunch that the new round was a “quick round” designed in part to bring Costolo and Bain into the fold. After all, the company raised $43 million last spring. Typically, funding rounds get larger over time. Sala also indicated the company may seek more funding in the near term.
Slice has been actively expanding its product set, based on the principle that pizzerias are unique businesses. And general use software or even software designed for restaurants won’t cut it. The most recent example is Slice’s POS product, which we covered back in March. Slice currently serves 15,000 independent pizza restaurants across 3,000 cities and in all 50 U.S. states. Slice has roughly 900 employees worldwide.
Time to Hit the Gas
Costolo and Bain joined Slice Founder Ilir Sela and GGV Capital Managing Partner Jeff Richards on an engaging “Unscripted” (a much more enticing title than “Scripted”) webinar this afternoon. Sala and the investors began the webinar by talking about the new round and the rationale for investing in Slice.
Sela made it clear that he takes pride in Slice’s use of capital so far. “We’ll do over $100 million in revenue this year and we’ve burned about $25 million in capital to get there, which I’m pretty proud of,” Ilir said on the webinar.
However, he added that there are times in a company’s development when it’s necessary to burn the capital a little faster.
“There are moments in time where it’s time to hit the gas pedal, ” he said. “And so I would say now is one of those moments. And the way I like to solve problems isn’t bleeding with capital. It’s by surrounding myself with people who have done it before.”
Clearly a reference to his fellow webinar guests.
Betting on Pizza
Bain says half-jokingly that he would bet on pizza “all day.” But digging deeper, he said the opportunity that excited him was using technology to level the playing field between the big brands and the local independent shop.
“You’ve got these large institutional players which maybe have a lesser product at the front of the house. But they’ve done wonders behind the scenes in the back of the house on the technology side,” Bain said. “And so part of when we’re looking at slides part of what this, what we saw was a company that’s helping these family businesses compete on the back of the house we already know the front of the house is much better.”
Costolo noted that Slice is further along its path to scale than most of the companies 01 invests in. But one of the criteria they look for is a total addressable market that is bigger than it appears to be. And he sees that with Slice.
“This thing could probably be like a Toast or SpotOn or a Stripe,” Costolo said. “Much bigger than anyone currently thinks it could be.”
The webinar was actually much less about the Slice investment than it was a bull session about what it takes to be a successful founder and tech startup leader. We will follow up this week with a post summarizing the broader discussion sharing hard-earned wisdom on what it takes to build a technology company.
