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Ilir Sela: How I Founded Slice Pizza & Became One of Macedonia’s Largest Employers | E1044

Ilir Sela is the Founder and CEO of Slice, the all-in-one ordering and marketing tech platform for local pizzerias. Through its partnerships, Slice has driven over $1B in earnings for over 18,000 independent pizzerias nationwide. Fun fact, Slice is also one of the largest employers in Macedonia and at one point, employed so many people there, they had to start their own school to train more people. Before Slice, Ilir started Nerd Force and sold it in 2008. Huge thanks to Jeff Richards (GGV) and Ben Sun (Primary) for some amazing questions today. -------------------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 0:00 Background and Early Ventures 13:19 Entrepreneurial Journey and Building a Team 23:59 Management and Company Structure 36:44 Building a Business: Strategy and Point of Entry 46:20 E-commerce and Market Trends 56:53 Personal Reflections and Inspirations 1:05:01 Looking Towards the Future ----------------------------------------------------- In Today’s Discussion with Ilir Sela We Discuss: 1. From Macedonia to the Bright Lights of NYC and Bentley Buying: How Ilir made his way into the world of startups having grown up in Macedonia? How did his less affluent upbringing impact his approach to company building? How does Ilir think about the importance of money? How did he come to buy a Bentley? What does Ilir know now that he wishes he had known when he started? 2. Why Bootstrapped Was Best & The Decision to Fundraise: Why did Ilir scale the business to $4M in revenue without ever fundraising? What does Ilir believe are the benefits of scaling businesses with less money? What would Ilir have done differently had he raised money earlier? What advice does Ilir have for founders who see competitors raising more money than them? 3. Why Delegation is BS and Your Upbringing F***** You Up: Why does Ilir believe that much of our upbringing can instill principles which make us a worse leader? Why does Ilir believe it is BS to hire great people and get out of the way? What are the single biggest mistakes Ilir sees founders make in company scaling? What have been some of Ilir’s biggest lessons in talent acquisition? 4. Decision-Making 101: How does Ilir analyze his decision-making framework today? Where does he need to improve as a leader today? What does he need to do to get there? What has been the single best decision he made with Slice? What did he learn from it? What has been the worst decision he has made in the scaling process? How did that change his mindset? ---------------------------------------------------------- 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 Ilir Sela on Twitter: https://twitter.com/IlirSela Follow 20VC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20vc_reels 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 ---------------------------------------------- #IlirSela #SlicePizza #HarryStebbings #20vc #business #technology #venturecapital

Ilir SelaguestHarry Stebbingshost
Aug 3, 20231h 8mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Bootstrapped Pizza Tech: From Tiny Macedonian Town To US Powerhouse

  1. Ilir Sela, founder of Slice, recounts his journey from a small Albanian town in Macedonia and immigrant life in Staten Island to building a highly profitable, then venture-backed, pizza-tech platform.
  2. He explains how capital constraints led him to build a 650-person team in Macedonia, become one of the country’s largest employers, and obsess over deeply vertical solutions for independent pizzerias.
  3. The conversation covers the loneliness of small-business ownership, the pitfalls of delegating too much as a CEO, the nuances of vertical vs. horizontal SaaS, and how Slice drives digital transformation and higher same-store sales for mom-and-pop pizza shops.
  4. Sela also dives into leadership lessons on communication, decision-making, board construction, fundraising in good and bad times, and why he believes success is driven far more by hard work than luck or timing.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Capital constraints can create durable competitive advantages.

Bootstrapping forced Sela to build a cost-effective, highly loyal team in Macedonia, invest in talent via English schools, and engineer lean processes that would be hard for well-funded competitors to replicate.

Delegating without deep alignment is just outsourcing key decisions.

When Sela ‘got out of the way’ and relied too heavily on new executives, growth slowed; he realized founders must stay close to details and decisions until motions are truly proven and repeatable.

Vertical focus enables deeper value creation than broad horizontal tools.

By focusing solely on independent pizzerias, Slice can build an end-to-end stack tailored to their exact workflows, increasing same-store sales and survival rates rather than just solving a narrow problem.

The best wedge is solving the customer’s top problem, not their eighth.

Sela emphasizes deeply understanding what actually keeps customers up at night; in pizza, that meant growing revenue from existing customers via digital ordering, not shiny but lower-priority tools like payroll.

Communication must be frequent, explicit, and grounded in the ‘why’.

As Slice scaled across geographies, Sela learned he had to repeat core messages until he felt nauseous and always tie decisions to a clear, multi-step rationale so teams could make aligned micro-decisions.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

Building a small business is an incredibly lonely journey.

— Ilir Sela

Capital constraints create some incredible solutions that are very hard to replicate.

— Ilir Sela

I don’t believe in getting out of the way of anybody. It’s about being teammates and going along the journey together.

— Ilir Sela

Averages hide the truth. I want to know how many merchants are beyond a certain threshold of revenue.

— Ilir Sela

I don’t know that luck and timing really exist. It’s really mostly hard work.

— Ilir Sela

Founding story: immigrant upbringing, small-business roots, and early bootstrap daysCapital constraints, Macedonian operations, and becoming a major employerFounder loneliness, solo founding, and evolving leadership styleVertical SaaS strategy for independent pizzerias and TAM expansionFundraising dynamics: from profitable bootstrapping to venture-backed growthOrganizational design: delegation, decision-making, and communication at scaleCustomer success model, product expansion, and economic resilience of pizza

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