Aman Narang: 5 Lessons Scaling Toast to $14BN Market Cap | E1192

Aman Narang is the Co-Founder and CEO of Toast, one of the best-in-class vertical SaaS companies of our time with a market cap today of $13.5BN. Five astonishing stats that show the quality of the Toast business today:

$1.2bn in ARR with 48.4% from payments.

Toast Capital has reached $1bn in annualised loans originated.

875k restaurants in the US (Toast has 112k: 13% market share)

75% of locations are coming from inbound channels

The first investor in the company invested $500K at a $3M price
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Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro
(00:45) Childhood & Background
(05:13) The Importance of Speed
(09:31) The Right Time to Bring In Specialists
(14:10) How Do Startups Compete When They're Always Behind?
(17:07) Investing Story with Bessemer
(23:55) Why Aman Didn’t Take a Role of CEO Earlier
(30:16) Is Toast a Fintech Business or a SaaS Business?
(34:57) Biggest Miss on an Ancillary Product
(36:24) The Worst Product Expansion
(37:45) Biggest Lessons in Expanding to SMB & Enterprise
(44:34) Build vs. Buy: How To Approach International Expansion
(47:51) How Far You Can Push Revenue from Restaurants
(51:00) A Flaw That Led to Aman’s Success
(53:48) Is Humility a Good Value?
(56:33) Quick-Fire Round

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In Today's Episode with Aman Narang We Discuss:

1. The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make:

Why does Aman believe that founders should spend more time fundraising and with investors early?

Why does Aman believe founders should hire managers before they think they need them?

Why does Aman believe that founders do not give up control early enough?

2. Lessons Scaling to a $14BN Market Cap:

What did Aman and Toast do so successfully that allowed them to scale to $14BN market cap in 12 years? What worked?

What are the single biggest mistakes Toast made that hindered their growth most?

What are the first things to break in hyperscaling companies?

What opportunity did Aman and Toast not take that with the benefit of hindsight, he wishes they had taken?

3. Crucible Moment Decisions: Expansion:

How did Aman and Toast know when was the right time to release a second product?

What has enabled Toast Capital to scale to $1BN in loans so efficiently?

How did Aman and Toast scale so successfully into both enterprise and SMB? What are the biggest lessons from doing so? What did not work?

How do Aman and Toast approach geographic expansion? How do they choose which countries to expand into?
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