YC Root Access

Making Every Supermarket in America Autonomous

Grocery stores do more volume than restaurants and hotels, and most of them still run on clipboards. In this episode of Founder Firesides, YC's Aaron Epstein sat down with Brandon Hill, the co-founder and CEO of Vori, a modern operating system for grocery stores. They discussed renting a refrigerated truck to save a botched dairy order, building AI agents that automatically update items on the shelf when costs change, and why Vori's $22 million Series B is a bet on the future of independent retail. Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs

AEAaron EpsteinhostBHBrandon Hillguest

May 11, 2026·28m·Watch on YouTube ↗

📖 CHAPTERS

1. 1

   Vori today: all-in-one POS + agentic store management for supermarkets

   Brandon explains Vori’s mission to digitize supermarkets with a combined point-of-sale and “agentic” operating system. He quantifies the market and shares current traction since launch, emphasizing scale and geographic breadth.

2. 2

   Why grocery: a huge, overlooked category compared to restaurants and hotels

   Aaron and Brandon discuss how grocery is often underestimated despite being an enormous segment of the economy. The conversation frames grocery as a frequent, essential consumer behavior with major opportunity for modernization.

3. 3

   Third-generation grocery roots and the “stack of paper” wake-up call

   Brandon shares his family history in grocery and CPG sales, then the moment that triggered Vori: discovering that stores still ran on paper invoices and catalogs in 2019. The contrast between advanced tech elsewhere and clipboard-based grocery operations crystallized the problem.

4. 4

   YC origin story: pitching the ‘operating system for grocery’

   Brandon recounts applying to Y Combinator and literally bringing the paper stack into the interview to make the problem tangible. The founders framed their ambition as building an end-to-end operating system for grocery, starting from a painfully manual workflow.

5. 5

   The wedge product: digitizing reorders from wholesale suppliers

   Vori began with a narrow product that helped stores reorder inventory without paper, pencil, or fax. That small mobile app created initial adoption and credibility, which later enabled broader platform expansion.

6. 6

   Early traction: 24 stores by Demo Day and why early adopters said yes

   Brandon shares that Vori reached about 24 stores by Demo Day, including respected Bay Area grocers. These customers adopted because Vori removed hours of manual ordering and reduced out-of-stocks by making replenishment fast and reliable.

7. 7

   How they sold before social proof: relationship-driven door-to-door persistence

   Brandon explains that grocery sales depend on trust and persistence, so the team walked aisles, learned each store, and repeatedly asked for owner time. This hands-on approach helped them diagnose real problems and earn a first pilot despite skepticism.

8. 8

   The ‘goosebumps’ moment: building an MVP in 11 days for the dairy aisle

   After a Palo Alto store described ordering failures and waste, the founders rapidly built an app and tested it directly on the floor. A dairy clerk’s emotional reaction (“goosebumps” and a bear hug) signaled a strong pain point and early product love.

9. 9

   From love to learning: redesign with a grocer and scaling to revenue

   Brandon describes iterating with a store director who helped redesign the interface—literally sketching it on a napkin. The team rebuilt in the store’s back office, expanded store-by-store, and began generating meaningful revenue.

10. 10

    Four-year R&D journey to full-stack grocery OS (POS, payments, inventory, pricing)

    Vori evolved from a simple ordering app into a full supermarket platform after years of deep field research. Brandon highlights grocery’s complexity—regulations like EBT/WIC and massive SKU counts—as the reason a full end-to-end build was necessary.

11. 11

    Scaling go-to-market: from founder-led to a national field sales team

    Brandon outlines Vori’s sales evolution: founders knocking doors, then a small regional team, then a national organization with field reps and an inside motion. Despite scaling, the winning motion remains relationship-driven and in-person.

12. 12

    Convincing stores to replace POS: pitching directly to P&L levers

    Replacing a POS is like a “heart transplant,” so Vori sells by tying outcomes to store economics. Brandon breaks the pitch into three levers—sales, gross margin, and labor—citing measurable lifts and fast sales/deployment cycles.

13. 13

    AI at Vori: autonomous agents, faster shipping, and a ‘physical AI’ moat

    Brandon explains AI’s role in product value, internal efficiency, and defensibility. Vori uses multiple agents (inventory, pricing, marketing) and benefits from a hardware + payments + regulatory “HALO” stack that is harder for competitors to replicate.

14. 14

    A near-disaster: the dropped dairy order and ‘superhero’ customer service

    Brandon shares a low point where a critical dairy order failed, risking customer trust and brand reputation. The team rented a refrigerated truck, bought replacement inventory from retailers, and delivered it in time—turning a failure into a loyalty-building moment.

15. 15

    The long-term vision: a ‘self-driving grocery store’ and food supply-chain clearinghouse

    Brandon outlines Vori’s roadmap: scale to ~3,000 stores and $100M ARR, then broaden into financial services and supply-chain infrastructure. The end state is an augmented, human-friendly store where software automates manual tasks across record, action, and transactions.