Exciting news! Owner has raised our $33m Series B.
The round was led by Redpoint and Jack Altman.
Restaurant owners are being crushed online by huge corporations.
We’re using this cash to help them fight back.
•
Just 5 years ago, you’d succeed as a restaurant if you
Sam Altman is seen as a genius, but his kindness often goes unseen.
When I first moved to the Bay Area, I was a high school dropout that knew nobody in tech.
I emailed a few founders to ask for advice. Sam was the only one that replied.
He spent hours helping me and asked for
Exciting news! Owner has raised our $15M Series A led by Altman Capital, joined by 17+ unicorn founders and operators.
Restaurant owners are being hurt by huge corporations like GrubHub.
We’re using this round to scale helping them fight back.
Got to co-work from a
@Wander
in Bandon Dunes, Oregon this weekend and it has been paradise.
Beautiful place to do Zoom calls and deep work, while taking magical beach walk breaks.
Everyone in our group agrees: best travel platform ever. Wander is the future of nomadic work
If you’re a founder building an ambitious startup, getting
@jaltma
as an investor is a superpower.
On a journey with many helpful investors, he stands out as especially great.
He is kind (even during hard times) and moves mountains for his founders. Truly outstanding guy.
Woke up this morning and saw that Forbes put
@Owner
on the Next Billion-Dollar Startups list.
It hit me hard. 🥹 I teared up, because this was a dream come true.
I started Owner as a 17-year-old high school dropout. I didn’t know anyone in tech. But I watched the tech world
After our company nearly died from COVID, I’m excited to announce that Owner came out on the other side a year later with 7 figures in revenue and $10,000,000+ in seed investment led by SaaStr Fund and Redpoint.
When I invested in Wander, it was a bet on John Andrew
@jaentwistle
— one of the best founders I’ve ever met. Brilliant, kind, perseverant.
Proud to see the team evolving it into one of my favorite products.
Honored to be on the journey.
@Wander
is the future of travel.
🚨 Attention Bay Area startup people
Hosting a lava cake meetup in Palo Alto (near Stanford) on Saturday afternoon with
@Cory
and a few other folks from startup world
We have room for 5 more folks from Twitter 🌎
Like and DM for details!
Worked today from a
@Wander
and I am amazed.
It is freeing to have all travel hassle taken care of automatically, so that you can focus on work and feel at home while exploring a new city.
Everyone in my group agrees: best travel platform ever.
@Wander
is the future of travel.
Quick appreciation tweet for
@DoNotPayLaw
and
@jbrowder1
Their legal knowledge and products are unrivaled. Recently helped someone I know escape a dangerous and complicated legal situation that their lawyer thought was hopeless
DoNotPay has the potential to change the world
Just went on Bloomberg News to discuss how restaurant owners are thinking about the downturn, and what
@Owner
is doing to help them. Clip below.
Interested in joining us to help restaurant owners fight back against huge corporations?
DM me or visit
🚀 How to get your dream job at a startup in 2022:
1) Research.
2) Plan how you would help.
3) Send an email to the founders sharing your plan.
4) Follow up until they reply.
Your initiative alone will make them want to hire you. So valuable in startups yet so rare.
Big news today from Siqi (
@blader
), Arya, and the
@runwayco
team!
I was blown away by their demo in March.
Siqi and Arya are outstanding founders and great people. It's obvious that they're building a world class product with a top notch team, and just getting started!
🚀🎉
Two bits of
@runwayco
news to share today:
1. We raised $27.5M led by
@initialized
.
@garrytan
will be joining our board.
2. We signed a partnership with
@Rippling
: Runway is now the only finance platform on the planet with a Rippling integration.
Obligatory 🧵with more:
In recruiting a startup’s team, optimizing heavily for industry experience is a mistake.
Better to optimize for slope (rate of learning) over y-intercept (current knowledge).
Experience is conditioning to the status quo. Good to have, but only in small proportions.
I've been reflecting, and want to give a shoutout to
@jasonlk
and the
@saastr
team:
Thank you for sharing such great content for free for 10+ years now.
Every few weeks, I hear more people RAVE about SaaStr. It's wild how many you've helped!
Best learning resource in B2B.
Excited to announce this milestone in helping local restaurant owners take back control of their businesses
And grateful to be joined by great investors and friends on this journey
It’s no secret that restaurant owners are being hurt by huge corporations like GrubHub. They take 30% fees in an industry where profit margins average 5% (!)
Worse, they steal all of the restaurant’s data — blocking their ability to communicate with their own customers.
The most important trait for early employees at startups to have is optimism, because there will always be at least one thing badly broken.
Optimistic teammates stay positive, have faith, and focus on solutions.
Pessimistic teammates complain, give up, and slow everyone down.
That’s where Owner comes in.
Our platform powers websites, online ordering, marketing automation, recruiting, and more — all in one place. We help them own their business, relationships, and profits online.
Amazon : Shopify :: DoorDash : Owner
When you raise money from Jack, you don’t just get an investor — you get a true partner.
A partner with the insight, founder empathy, and power to help.
He’s had a trajectory-changing impact on
@Owner
since investing at seed.
Excited to see him build Alt Capital into
I’m very excited today to share my next chapter…Alt Capital, a new $150M fund to back early stage founders!
Truly pinching myself that I’m going to get to spend all my time doing this. Fired up and ready to go. If you’re working on a startup I’d love to hear from you!
There are no overnight successes.
Saw my brother grind on social media for the last 7 years.
For the first 4 years, his channel had less than 10,000 views total.
In 2021, he hit 5.9 billion views on YouTube.
Here's his latest, from today.
So proud!
❄️ Holidays reminder:
While this is the best time of year for those of us lucky enough to have close families and financial steadiness…
Others feel most lonely and stressed during this time.
So be especially kind and inclusive.
Some people need that most right now.
THIS is what value-add looks like.
The hour trouble began with SVB,
@alexbard
from Redpoint reached out to see if we needed help.
It turned out that even though their fund money got frozen in SVB…
They felt compelled to help, so…
(1/2)
Then I found out it was their own personal capital they were using, not LP Money. 🤯
Talk about going way the fuck above and beyond to help in a crisis.
I will forever remember this moment.
"We are nowhere without our founders." What a beautiful sentence.
You and
@cory
were our earliest backers and I cannot say enough about how helpful you’ve each been throughout. One of the best decisions I’ve ever made to accept investment from each of you. A+ investors and humans - thanks for everything. So grateful
Proud to be the first investor in ProftBoss and
@adamguild
in 2019 and to have doubled down in their round last week. The company helps small businesses break free from large platforms (e.g Grubhub). Explosive growth; Shopify for the real world!
Also…
Shoutout to the best cofounder and CTO in the world
@deanbloembergen
. Every day, I feel blessed to be your partner in this.
And shoutout to the amazing team at
@Owner
, who deserve all of the credit for working hard to help restaurant owners survive these difficult times.
Disclosure: after years of reading SaaStr obsessively, I got the opportunity to work with Jason (SaaStr fund) as an investor in
@owner
where he has been great. Just as brilliant and helpful as you would expect from his posts.
But this tweet is just a random SaaStr shoutout.
I was part of the most recent batch of Avra. It’s a dream come true as a growth stage CEO. The program is packed with great insights and world-class speakers. It accelerates the learning process.
And the Avra team is fantastic. They care deeply about creating an A+ experience
We are thrilled to announce the launch of avra — a 7-week program designed specifically for post-Series A CEOs looking to scale their companies effectively.
As most startup founders are first-time CEOs, the journey can be daunting, and resources are scarce. That’s why we created
He and the
@Redpoint
partnership decided to pool personal money to give interest-free loans until this was resolved. Truly amazing!
We were fortunate to be unaffected, but feel grateful to have such amazing and selfless partners on this journey.
Proud friend today seeing
@KianSadeghi5
announce Nucleus Genomic’s latest round!
Nothing better than seeing your friends crush it.
Kian is a force of nature and seeing his fast rate of improvement on this journey has been inspiring.
Nucleus to the moon! 🚀🙌
Interested in helping restaurant owners fight back?
We’re HIRING for ALL ROLES and offer top of market compensation, a world class team, and a product that changes people’s lives
Learn more at or email me at Adam
@Owner
.com for more details!
Honored to have gotten to invest in
@jaentwistle
and
@wander
He is one of the most impressive people I’ve ever met — super smart and hard working while also being unbelievably kind
Excited to see the Wander team build the future of work and travel
I’m excited to announce
@wander
’s $7m round lead by
@redpointvc
So what is
@wander
, and why am I dedicating the rest of my life to it?
Read more below:
@jasonlk
@owner
just seeing this and it made my night 🙌
thank you Jason 🥲 we appreciate the congratulations and couldn't have done it without you
and while we appreciate the congrats, we recognize we still have lots to figure out from here
excited to continue evolving our business with you!
10 years and 226 Fellows later, Thiel Fellowship projects and companies are worth $70 billion and 99% say they learned more during their Fellowship than they would have in a classroom.
@cory
@owner
Thank you, Cory!
Having you as one of our first investors has been one of the biggest blessings on this journey.
I am so grateful for you and everything you've done for us.
@wander
Wander is a special company with a special team. John Andrew is one of the best CEOs I've seen in action.
Also, great video. Wild how much progress you've made in 3 years, and I know you're just getting started!
Excited to see you all continue to crush it.
The first step to getting what you want is to define it. What exactly do you want? You can't hit a target if you don't know where to aim. This seems obvious until you realize that the vast majority of people don't clarify this to themselves (and then feel unfulfilled)
Be selective about who you take advice from. Someone who hasn't achieved a result can't tell you how to achieve it. Age does NOT equal wisdom. This is something that probably should be obvious, but isn't – especially to younger people
🚨 Great opportunity for anyone considering starting a Web3 project.
Cory is one of the most kind, brilliant, and helpful investors in the tech world today. He moves mountains for his portfolio companies and Z Fellows.
Highly recommend applying and working with him!
@Levidjones
@onbeeper
@deanbloembergen
@owner
so stoked that you decided to join us to build
@owner
Levi
you are the best designer we’ve ever worked with and an amazing guy
@deanbloembergen
and I could not feel more blessed to have you on the team officially and to help millions of business owners survive together
@mashadrokova
@DayOneVC
Congrats Masha!! 🚀 Well deserved
So happy for you and the Day One team.
We feel so grateful to have you as investors on our journey, and for all of your help along the way!
@samdblond
@jasonlk
completely agree with this and especially the second part
@jasonlk
has helped us with those things plus a whole lot more as an investor. he has proven to be a true superpower to have on our side
works like a founder for his founders
2020 was a rollercoaster. it went from nearly bankrupting my startup because of COVID destroying all of our revenue overnight to finding the opportunity to help others in the chaos, which led to massive growth
religious people are more successful by every measure (happiness, income, health, etc) which indicates there is ironically no more-logical decision than the one to embrace your relationship with God
@deanbloembergen
So well said!
Eternally grateful for you, Dean! I thank God every morning to have you as a friend and partner on this journey. You are the best co-founder and CTO we could have. Owner wouldn't be Owner without you.
Excited to continue to build together!
Honored to see
@Owner
featured in this amazing article today about the startups helping restaurant owners win the war against large technology corporations. Great analysis by
@FastFoodMaven
@wellsdouraghy
@alexisohanian
@sevensevensix
@benmtaft
@cory
@KianSadeghi5
Congrats, Wells!
Your work ethic, perseverance, and user obsession over the last 18 months makes this so well deserved!
It has been an honor watching you build this platform that creators like my brother Topper have fallen in love with.
So excited for you and Team July 🚀
Our mission?
To power the movement of restaurant owners taking back control of their businesses from technology corporations
By building resources to help them own their businesses, online
Like online ordering, marketing automation, feedback, CRM, and more
We’re now called because restaurant owners take great pride in finally being owners after over 80% worked their way up from being employees in others’ restaurants.
here’s one of my proudest moments from this year where I went on-air with Bloomberg News to discuss the journey and how we adapted in the pandemic by helping restaurants across the United States survive
@jaentwistle
thanks John Andrew! super grateful for your support and friendship. you've been the best investor and friend we could've dreamt of -- saving us from jank on more than one occasion!
@jasonlk
I'm super grateful that you did! 🥹🙌
Having you as an investor so early on has been one of the best things for us on this journey.
I wouldn't be the CEO I am today without you.
Thank you for believing in us and always helping!
I am a proud Christian and it was largely that principle from my faith, that there was a reason that my business had gotten devastated and that I had to keep going through the pain to find it, that led to the proudest year of my life so far
@maxaltman
Boom!! So excited for you and for Saga 🚀 ❤️
Any startup would be lucky to have you, Thomson Nguyen, and Ben Braverman as investors.
Having you as investors has been a superpower for us at Owner. Seeing you do a fund together is a huge win for founders.
@jaltma
ok so Jack’s strength is not in avoiding sounding like he’s using a thesaurus to write Twitter replies
but he’s amazing in other ways I swear!!
c;
@jbrowder1
@donotpay
Truly amazing work, Josh and DNP!
These applications of the latest in AI accelerate a very exciting future for DoNotPay! 🚀
The benefits of GPT models for companies are obvious, but applications like these in DoNotPay democratize the benefits of AI to the masses.
@jaltma
great post 🔥🚀🐐
super important habit to develop if a company believes in hiring for slope (rate of improvement) over Y intercept (current experience)
A huge thanks to everyone who has contributed on our journey so far, especially to our brilliant cofounder Dean
@deanodeeno
and to our awesome team. Grateful to get to work with you every day!
we’re losing religion in the west largely because people think it’s smart to follow “logic” instead. but practicing faith (especially when there is no clear evidence) and the other principles that Christianity, Judaism, and other religions impart are important to preserve
@jaentwistle
@owner
Thank you, John Andrew! Having you as one of our earliest investors has been one of the biggest blessings on this journey.
We're eternally grateful for you.
@ankurnagpal
@teachable
Thank you Ankur! We feel blessed to have you as a partner on this journey given how helpful you are and the decade of relevant experience you bring!
@jasonlk
Thank you Jason, for believing in us so early when things were especially janky!!
We feel so blessed to have you as a partner on this journey.
BOOOOOOOOOM!!!
@daytonmills
@_johnnydallas_
@nikitabier
Agreed. Minecraft servers are an optimal practice environment for running a startup
SWE, customer discovery, monetization, growth hacking, triaging disasters, community building
Ended up replacing my traditional school experience in many ways
@blader
🥹
This means the world coming from you, Siqi. Thank you ❤️
I’m a huge fan of yours, and love what you’re building at Runway.
You’re the type of angel investor that founders dream of having!
@KyleTibbitts
@bkavoussi
@lukeburgis
@wander
When I've used AirBNB, each time was a disappointment.
Similar idea but hassle-free. Not worrying whether the Wifi works, whether the beds are comfortable, or whether it will look like the pictures.
Every detail handled. Full control from your phone. Convenience to the max.
@thesamparr
Thank you, Sam! 🙌❤️ Grateful to have you as an early investor and friend
Your show is an awesome resource for founders that I’ve found myself learning a lot from!
that’s my end of year rant. happy to discuss in replies if anyone disagrees, that’s how we learn from each other. happy new year. cheers to making 2021 our best year yet
But restaurant owners are struggling.
Corporations like GrubHub are taking their customer relationships and forcing them to pay 20% fees on every transaction in an industry where profit margins average 5%.
To survive, restaurant owners need to fight back before it’s too late!
@adamnash
@owner
Thank you :) we try! Always on time for 4 years now.
Have never even been 1 day late :D
Credit to the team for making it happen.
Lots of people help to make it possible.
@jaltma
we feel so blessed to have you as a partner on this journey, Jack!
thank you for being such an incredible partner, friend, and mentor to us! 🐐♥️
so excited for our future! LFG!! 📈🦄🎉
@_pranavnt
wow! yeah super impressive
doing it on Twitter takes this strategy to the next level because it simultaneously helps promote the company AND the candidate
I want to meet that candidate now haha. shows initiative and clearly entrepreneurial