After waiting too long to pay his restaurant bill, Aman Narang thought there had to be a better way. His first idea—a mobile payment app—flopped.
But that failure revealed a much bigger opportunity.
Restaurants were struggling with outdated software that many owners hated. Payment systems were expensive, unreliable, and trapped on servers hidden in back offices. Replacing them cost time and money.
But that’s exactly what Aman and his co-founders set out to do: create an entirely new POS system for restaurants—from scratch.
They worked from an unfinished basement, answered customer calls on their own phones, crashed their first restaurant on day one, survived years of rejection from investors—and eventually grew Toast into a business that generates more than $2 billion in annual revenue.
In this episode, Aman shares how a failed product became a billion-dollar company.
What you'll learn:
Timestamps:
This episode was produced by Sam Paulson with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Casey Herman. Our engineer was Kwesi Lee.
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