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

Pizza, in the US at least, is a staple. It is a product that is low cost, travels well, it feeds an entire family or group of friends. In recessions, in fact, consumers will tend to turn their nights out in, and instead of going out to a restaurant, they'll order pizza at home and they'll have a family pizza night. Pizzerias thrive, especially in the most challenging times, and this was also true in the middle of COVID. It became probably the last option standing in many suburbs and small towns across the country.

(music) Elia, I am so excited for this show. I heard so many good things from, from Ben Sun, from Wily, from Jeff Richards. So, thank you so much for joining me today.

Thank you so much for hosting me. I'm, uh, I'm looking forward to this one. Let's have some fun.

It's gonna be great. But I wanna start, and you know, I'm secretly an armchair psychologist, so I like to dig into people's childhoods. But, uh, you know, you saw your parents running small businesses, and your grandparents even. What is the single biggest takeaway for you from seeing your parents and grandparents build their small business in your more formative years?

Yeah. The, the biggest takeaway is that building a small business is an incredibly lonely journey. It's lonely, uh, because you kinda start off this business trying to solve one problem, and then you inherit an infinite amount of other problems that you suddenly have to be an expert in solving. Um, and so that process can be incredibly lonely.

It's a lonely process. And then you decide to be a sole founder. (laughs) Can you talk to me-

That's right.

Uh, it is so lonely, why did you decide to be a sole founder when you could have had a co-founder? And do you find it lonely today? I know I do.

Being a founder, a CEO, is, uh, can certainly be a lonely job. Uh, I think it's very different than what small independent businesses face. Uh, I'm fortunate enough to have the resources, uh, to be able to surround myself with an amazing team, and so that makes my journey much less lonely than, imagine a pizza shop owner or a bakery owner and the lack of resources or time or know-how that they may be facing with in order to have the same luxury that I do. So, it's a very different, uh, experience. But for me, I think being a sole founder, I'll be honest, I didn't, I didn't really come, come through sort of the VC or Silicon Valley sort of part of, uh, the business world. I was just raised to build businesses by creating something that the world needs. Um, you know, if that cost me a dollar, charge two dollars for it, and do that as many times as possible.

(laughs)

Like, I, you know, I'm much more of a small business owner at heart than I am, uh, this person who sought out to build, you know, a multi-billion dollar company.