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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 ----------------------------------------------- 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 ----------------------------------------------- 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? ----------------------------------------------- Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZTtgTNBKwtZBMHvl?si=85bc9196860e4466 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465 Follow Harry Stebbings on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Toast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ToastTab Follow 20VC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20vchq Follow 20VC on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@20vc_tok Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/contact ----------------------------------------------- #20vc #harrystebbings #arannarang #toastcapita #restaurantbusiness #venturecapital #ceo #hiring #smb #productmarketfit #fintech #saas

Aman NarangguestHarry Stebbingshost
Aug 20, 20241h 7mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Aman Narang Reveals How Toast Scaled Relentlessly While Staying Scrappy

  1. Aman Narang, co‑founder and CEO of Toast, walks through Toast’s journey from an unfocused early startup to a $14B+ public company powering restaurant operations and payments.
  2. He emphasizes the primacy of speed once you see product–market fit, the importance of hiring great people and real managers earlier, and learning when to press the growth pedal versus pause to fix foundations.
  3. Narang explains key strategic pivots: from QR code ordering to full POS, from pure software to embedded fintech, and from mid‑market restaurants into both SMB and larger chains.
  4. Throughout, he stresses customer obsession, grit under scarcity, disciplined product expansion, and building a culture that balances entrepreneurial generalists with seasoned specialists.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Move extremely fast once you see product–market fit, but not before.

Toast spent months flailing on ideas, but once they saw clear demand for cloud POS and handhelds, the company accelerated aggressively; Narang wishes they had added leadership and infrastructure sooner once that signal appeared.

Hire real managers and specialists earlier to gain leverage beyond founders.

Early on, the founders tried to “do all the management” and only hire doers; Narang now sees that professional managers and domain experts dramatically increase speed, quality, and scalability once there is traction.

Let customer pull, not clever ideas, guide your product direction.

The QR‑code ordering concept generated apathy, while POS discussions had restaurateurs giving Toast hours of their time—strong signal that a “non‑sexy” rebuild of POS was actually the real 10x opportunity.

Combine software with embedded fintech to make the business model work.

Pure SaaS economics on restaurant POS were challenging; adding payments and later lending (Toast Capital) created stronger unit economics, better customer value, and a richer data advantage.

Don’t overextend product and segment scope; integrated but mediocre isn’t enough.

Toast learned that simply bundling commodity products (e.g., phone systems) or porting enterprise‑grade tools downmarket fails if the product isn’t clearly better for that specific segment and buyer.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

Speed matters a lot in business, a lot. Once you see signal that you've got product–market fit, you gotta move fast.

— Aman Narang

Toast wouldn't exist without Android and cloud and embedded payments.

— Aman Narang

One of the biggest mistakes was not recognizing that you don't just get leverage from hiring salespeople or engineers—you get a ton of leverage from just hiring people to help you.

— Aman Narang

We were trying to move very fast and trying to scale as fast as possible… I think we could have slowed down to speed up.

— Aman Narang

Business is about people. You can have any strategy you want on a slide, but it's about the people.

— Aman Narang

Early life, grit, and co‑founder formation at EndecaFinding product–market fit: pivot from QR codes to restaurant POSSpeed vs. foundations: scaling sales, management, and cultureFundraising journey, repeated VC rejections, and early angel backingPlatform and product expansion, especially embedded payments and Toast CapitalSegment and geographic expansion strategy (SMB, mid‑market, enterprise, international)Leadership evolution, hiring, culture, and the role of humility and authenticityAI, data, and the future of restaurant technology and vertical SaaS

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