Latest news with #MeritechCapital
Forbes
13-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
This Tech Startup Is Using AI To Help Local Restaurants
CEO and cofounder Adam Guild, who is both a Thiel Fellow and Forbes 30 under 30 alumnus, first launched Owner, then called Placepull, in 2018 after he built a website to support his mother's dog grooming business. Boris Zharkov Photography 2023 Local chains and mom-and-pop restaurants are perhaps the last places you'd envision using AI. But thanks to Owner, a startup that provides digital services like mobile app creation and now AI-powered marketing and website optimization for more than 10,000 restaurants, Florida-based Talkin' Tacos has been able to increase the number of locations it operates and grow annual sales to more than $60 million. "We've had hundreds of customers drive hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional profit,' Owner CEO and cofounder Adam Guild told Forbes. 'We saw this coming when we started playing with GPT-3 at the time, and the way it's evolved has surpassed our wildest expectations,' referencing OpenAI's earlier large language model released in 2020. That success helped Owner close a $120 million fundraise co-led by Meritech Capital and Headline Growth, vaulting it to a $1 billion valuation just over a year after raising a $33 million Series B — and just eight months after being on Forbes Next Billion-Dollar Startups list. Owner provides software to manage mobile food orders, organize marketing campaigns, generate a search engine-friendly website, build a mobile app and set up a loyalty program, all without needing to write a single line of code. To start the process for free, a user simply enters their restaurant's name into a search bar, and Owner pulls information from the web to evaluate its current standings. With the purchase of a monthly $499 subscription, it then automatically generates a website based on what it finds online and creates optimized text that the user can edit. The websites also implement ordering and delivery systems, where Owner takes a smaller fee than other delivery platforms, and use an image editing AI program to improve photos of menu items. Owner's website said it can do all this in about a week or less. From there, it continues to recommend ways to boost the website and expand sales with other offerings. It's 'leveling the playing field and making it so that independent restaurant owners don't get crushed by large corporations, but instead get empowered by this tech,' Guild said. He envisions Owner as a one-stop shop for restaurant owners to manage and market their businesses. The company has also incorporated generative AI into these tools to help draft emails or to improve website text to bolster search engine rankings. Its biggest upcoming product, which is currently available but expected to be released broadly later this year, is a set of what the company calls 'AI executives' to provide advice on finances and marketing. Restaurant owners can chat with these bots, which can do things like remind a business owner that they're out of an ingredient and disable that dish on the menu, or share how sales performed that chatbots are 'cobbled together' from several different AI models from companies including OpenAI, Anthropic and Stability and trained on data collected from the menus and orders of the thousands of restaurants using its platform, Guild said. Owner's own revenue has grown, too. Guild declined to share a specific number or discuss profitability but said that it has now reached 'multiple tens of millions.' The company currently has 200 employees. Besides expanding its offerings, Guild said the new raise enabled Owner to bring on strategic investors like Shalini Rao, a partner at Headline Growth and co-lead on the round, who is known for being part of Toast's Series C round. 'This is a company that has been on our radar for a very long time,' Rao said. Guild, who is both a Thiel Fellow and Forbes 30 under 30 alumnus, first launched Owner, then called Placepull, in 2018 after he built a website to support his mother's dog grooming business. He raised millions in a seed round from angel investors like Tinder founder Sean Rad and Kimbal Musk in 2020. (Guild says Musk's investment came from his interest in restauranting, adding the two remain connected.) The new billion-dollar valuation is a big jump from its January 2024 funding round, which valued the company at just $200 million and landed the company on Forbes' list of Next Billion Dollar Startups. Jack Altman, an Owner investor who founded management tech firm Lattice, told Forbes it's less of a surprise to him. 'It's been doing well for a while now, and it's definitely accelerating and the momentum builds,' he said. Altman first invested in his company at the seed stage in 2020 and has reinvested in each round, he said. Even Guild admitted he hadn't intended to raise additional funding so quickly. 'About a month ago, I poked my head up from building product and talking to customers, ' he said. 'I had a few conversations with investors and sharing our data, and within six days of sharing our data with investors, we had six offers.' Several angel investors also joined the round, including Fidji Simo, the CEO of Instacart who was recently appointed CEO of Applications at OpenAI; Jonathan Neman, the CEO of Sweetgreen; and Brett Schulman, cofounder and CEO of CAVA. Investors point to Guild's devotion as a big reason for their bet. Guild told Forbes that he hasn't taken a day off since he founded the company, and that he spends his Saturdays filming videos and marketing materials for the company's YouTube channel, which rakes in millions of views with videos catered to the restaurant world. The channel's most popular video provides information on calculating food costs, while his most recent video is an interview with an Owner success story. He took some inspiration from his younger brother, Topper Guild, who has a following of more than 62 million on YouTube. That channel helped bring Alex Kurland, a general partner at Meritech Capital and co-lead of the round, on board to invest. He told Forbes that Guild's YouTube videos helped him understand Owner's potential, which he views as similar to DoorDash, another of his investments. 'In the restaurant vertical, with cloud, you saw the Toast point-of-sale be built; with mobile, you saw DoorDash being built, and I think with AI, you're going to see Owner build a very large company,' Kurland said.
Bloomberg
13-05-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Restaurant Tech Startup Owner.com Hits $1 Billion Valuation
Inc., a startup making software for restaurants and other small businesses, has raised a new funding round at a $1 billion valuation — quintuple its value a year ago. The company raised $120 million in a funding round led by Meritech Capital and the VC firm Headline, with participation from other investors including Alt Capital.
Forbes
10-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
How Forbes Compiled The 2025 AI 50 List
Forbes' AI 50 list spotlights the most promising privately-held companies applying artificial intelligence to solve real-world challenges. Created in partnership with data partners Sequoia and Meritech Capital, the seventh annual installment reflects how companies across industries are using AI tools to streamline and even fully take over tasks previously done by humans. The selection process begins with both a public call for nominations and targeted outreach to thousands of eligible startups by our partner, Meritech Capital. There is no fee to apply. Nominees are asked to provide both qualitative insights into aspects such as their business models, technical talent and how they're building and using AI-enabled technology—as well as quantitative metrics including valuation, revenue and fundraising history. Companies may opt to submit some data confidentially. While optional, we also encourage submission of diversity-related metrics. Forbes In parallel, Forbes, Meritech and Sequoia identify standout AI companies that may not have applied but merit evaluation. For these, we rely on publicly accessible sources such as PitchBook, Crunchbase and LinkedIn. Since 2023, eligibility has extended beyond North America to include privately-held companies worldwide. This year, Forbes received 1,861 submissions—making this year one of our most competitive yet. An initial quantitative review of nominees is conducted using a proprietary algorithm developed by Sequoia Capital partner Konstantine Buhler. This model considers a mix of company-submitted data and external signals (including employee satisfaction scores, funding history and customer traction) to assess three core dimensions: financial strength, organizational culture and diversity. While withholding data does not harm an application, submitting comprehensive details can improve visibility in the review process. From there, the top 100 companies are reviewed by a panel of expert judges with backgrounds in academia, research and leading technology firms (full list below). These reviewers assess the nominees' technical rigor, innovation potential and team strength. The most promising 70 companies are then evaluated by a group of seasoned AI investors, who weigh in with market-focused perspectives on competitiveness and scalability. Any judge with a financial stake in a candidate company is recused from evaluating it. The final AI 50 list is curated by Forbes editors and reflects the most compelling AI startups of the year. Companies are presented alphabetically and are not ranked. Expert Judges Joy Buolamwini Dr. Joy Buolamwini is the founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, a research institute that focuses on the harms and social implications of artificial intelligence. As a researcher at MIT, her paper titled 'Gender Shades' revealed how facial recognition systems from leading companies like IBM, Amazon and Microsoft misgendered women and darker-skinned individuals. She was the protagonist of an Emmy-nominated documentary called "Coded Bias" which demonstrated the dangers of algorithmic biases. She has also advised Congress and other government agencies on equitable AI policy. Tanya Berger-Wolf Tanya Berger-Wolf is a professor of computer science engineering, electrical and computer engineering, and evolution, ecology and organismal biology at Ohio State University, as well as the director of the school's Translational Data Analytics Institute. Berger-Wolf serves as a scientific advisor for organizations including the U.S. National Academies Board on Life Sciences, the U.S. National Committee for the International Union of Biological Sciences, the Global Partnership on AI and The Nature Conservancy. Thomas Dohmke Thomas Dohmke is CEO of Microsoft-owned GitHub. He has overseen the launch of the world's first at-scale AI developer tool, GitHub Copilot, as well as its successors Copilot Workspace and GitHub Models. Dohmke previously cofounded HockeyApp and led the company as CEO through its acquisition by Microsoft in 2014. Prior to taking the helm at Github, he was a vice president and chief product officer. Joe Edwards Joe Edwards is a director of product marketing at UiPath, an AI-powered workforce automation company with a $6 billion market capitalization. Prior to UiPath, Joe was a program manager within the U.S. Treasury Department, where he led a team that built the agency's first apps for mobile check deposit and digital ticketing. R. David Edelman R. David Edelman is the director of the Project on Technology, the Economy & National Security at the MIT Internet Policy Research Initiative. He has been a global strategy and public policy lead for various startups; a venture capital investor in deep tech companies; and a special assistant to President Barack Obama on issues of economic and technology policy. In that role, he coauthored the federal government's foundational AI strategy. Anna Korhonen Anna Korhonen is a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Cambridge where she is the co-director of the Cambridge Language Technology Lab and the director of the Centre for Human-Inspired Artificial Intelligence. Her research focuses on natural language processing and AI for social and global good. Jason Mars Jason Mars is a professor of computer science at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on conversational artificial intelligence, computer vision and natural language processing. Mars has cofounded several companies with valuations that have exceeded $200 million. Most recently, he is the founder and CEO of Jaseci Labs, a company that provides open-source tools for AI product development. Nashlie Sephus Nashlie Sephus is the principal AI/ML evangelist for AWS AI, where she focuses on fairness and identifying biases in artificial intelligence. After joining Amazon as an applied science manager in 2016, she led multiple product launches including visual search for replacement parts on the Amazon Shopping app in 2018. She is also the CEO and founder of Bean Path, a nonprofit focused on local technical assistance and economic development in Jackson, Mississippi. Sophie Lebrecht Sophie Lebrecht is the chief operating officer at Ai2, a nonprofit AI research institute founded by Paul Allen. Prior to joining Ai2, Lebrecht led next-generation Machine Intelligence efforts at Apple while also leading M&A for Apple's AI/ML division. She was the Senior Vice President of Strategy and Operations and led product development and partnership deals at an Ai2 spinout that created low-power AI tools that weren't based on the cloud, until it was acquired by Apple in 2020. Investor Panel Konstantine Buhler Konstantine Buhler is a partner at Sequoia Capital, investing in AI and machine learning. Buhler—who also served as a data partner for Forbes' 2025 AI 50 List—is a partner at security tech company Verkada, biotech company Xaira and AI-fueled security company XBOW, among others. Before joining Sequoia in 2019, Buhler—who was also an angel investor in OpenSea and a principal at Meritech Capital. Sarah Catanzaro is a general partner at Amplify Partners, where she focuses on investing in and advising startups in AI, data management and distributed systems. Catanzaro previously worked on data strategy and led data science and AI teams for defense tech companies including Mattermark, Palantir, Cyveillance and the Center for Advanced Defense Studies. Sameer Dholakia Sameer Dholakia is a partner of the growth investment practice at Bessemer Venture Partners, where he invests in cloud and AI startups. Before Bessemer, Sameer served as the CEO of SendGrid in 2014, leading the company through a successful IPO in 2017 and subsequent acquisition by cloud communications company Twilio for approximately $3 billion in 2019. Miles Grimshaw Miles Grimshaw is a general partner at Thrive Capital, where he's invested in AI, applications, developer infrastructure and consumer tech. He's led investments in Github, Slack and ScaleAI—and has partnered with founders at AI-powered code editor Cursor, digital operations platform Airtable and employee engagement software Lattice, to name a few. Miles has served on the boards of multiple companies, including Benchling, Segment, Monzo, Chai, LangChain, Glide and Supergreat. Sarah Guo Sarah Guo is the founder and a partner at Conviction, a venture capital firm launched in 2022 to invest in intelligent software. Prior to starting her own firm, she spent a decade as a general partner at Greylock Partners. Guo has been an early investor or advisor to more than 50 companies, and co-hosts an AI podcast called 'No Priors' with Color cofounder Elad Gil. In January, Conviction closed on its second fund with $230 million, twice the size of the firm's first. Aaref Hilaly Aaref Hilaly is a partner at Bain Capital Ventures, investing in early-stage AI companies, including Contextual AI, Decagon and EvenUp. Before Hilaly was an investor, he was an entrepreneur, cofounding two companies that were acquired by Sun Microsystems and Symantec. Prior to his role at BCV, Hilaly spent seven years as a partner at Sequoia and served on the boards of biotech company Guardant (NASDAQ: GH) and revenue platform provider Clari. Jocelyn Goldfein Jocelyn Goldfein is a managing director at Zetta Ventures Partners, where she invests at the seed stage in AI-native application and infrastructure companies. She has backed startups like AI infrastructure platform Weaviate and Databricks-acquired firm Tabular. Goldfein previously worked as an engineering executive at VMware and Facebook. She launched her career as a software engineer and entrepreneur after studying computer science at Stanford. Christopher Manning Christopher Manning is a partner at AIX Ventures, an investment firm leveraging industry expertise to advance the AI space. Manning is also an associate director of Stanford University's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, and the school's inaugural Thomas M. Siebel professor in machine learning. Considered a pioneer in natural language processing, he was previously the director of Stanford's AI lab and has received two ACL Test of Time Awards and the IEEE John von Neumann Medal. Ravi Mhatre Ravi Mhatre is a founding partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. With over 25 years of venture capital experience under his belt, he has invested in a broad spectrum of tech companies and played a key role in Anthropic's latest funding round. He sits on the board of Anthropic and has also invested in companies like Anduril, AppDynamics, Glean, Guardant, MuleSoft, Natera, Nutanix, Offchain Labs, Rubrik, ThoughtSpot, Zscaler and Wiz. Matt Murphy is a partner at Menlo Ventures, where he backs companies from pre-revenue to growth in focus areas including AI infrastructure stack, developer workflows and AI-first applications. Murphy has been a venture capitalist for more than two decades, working at Kleiner Perkins before joining Menlo in 2015. He began his career as a product manager at Sun Microsystems and NetBoost, a startup which was later acquired by Intel. In July 2024, Menlo Ventures announced a $100 million fund in partnership with Anthropic to invest in up and coming AI startups. Rudina Seseri Rudina Seseri is the founder and managing partner of Glasswing Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in enterprise and security companies using AI. It has more than $300 million in assets under management. Seseri has nearly two decades of investing and operational experience in high-growth companies across enterprise software, data infrastructure and automation. She is also an executive fellow at Harvard Business School and a Connection Science Fellow at MIT. Rob Toews is a partner at Radical Ventures and leads its San Francisco Bay Area office. Toews previously led AI investment as an investor at Highland Capital. He spent several years in the world of autonomous vehicles, helping lead the strategy team at Zoox (acquired by Amazon for $1.3 billion in 2020) and working on autonomous vehicle policy in the White House under President Barack Obama. In August, the firm raised $800 million in new capital to invest in later-stage AI startups. Rob Ward Rob Ward is the cofounder of Meritech Capital Partners which he cofounded in 1999 alongside Mike Gordon and Paul Madera. Ward currently helps lead the firm's investment in infrastructure, application software, and data and analytics companies. He has been an integral part of numerous Meritech investments over the past 25 years, including companies like Facebook, NetSuite, Roblox, Salesforce, Snowflake and Tableau. Emily Zhao Emily Zhao is a principal at Salesforce Ventures where she leads the fund's AI infrastructure investments. Zhao partners with founders from Series A onwards to help them scale their go-to-market strategy. She has backed companies like Together AI, Hugging Face, Anthropic, Runway and World Labs. Zhao launched her investment career in private equity at Blackstone, and before joining Salesforce Ventures three years ago, she worked as an investor at New York-based Avenir Growth Capital. Forbes
