20VC: Five Lessons Scaling Toast to $14BN Market Cap | The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make in Fundraising, Hiring and Selling with Aman Narang, CEO @ Toast

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 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?