Owner.com

Owner has raised $240M, reached a $2.3B valuation, and crossed $100M ARR.  Goldman Sachs Alternatives led the round, joined by Meritech, Redpoint, Headline, & Jack Altman. The world is racing to build AI to replace people’s jobs. Owner is building AI to do the opposite: To do the jobs for small business owners they’ve never been able to afford. I started building what would become Owner at 17, to help my mom. We've now helped thousands of local business owners like her. This year alone, more than $1 billion dollars will be made by local restaurant owners using Owner. We wouldn’t be here without our team, investors, and earliest supporters. Thank you to: Jack Altman, Jason M. Lemkin, Alex Bard, Dylan Field, Fidji Simo, Max Mullen, Shalini Rao, Alex Kurland, Naval Ravikant, Jonathan Neman, Claire Hughes Johnson, Dharmesh Shah, Cory Levy, John Andrew Entwistle, Andrew Steele, Joshua Browder, Sean Rad, Scott Belsky, Brett Schulman, Mike Vichich, Andy Pforzheimer, Harris Pollack, Stephen Kerns, Kimbal Musk, Max Altman, Ben Braverman, Geoff Donaker, Nick Bunick, Alexis Ohanian Sr., Kipp Bodnar, Ankur Nagpal, Henry Schuck, Parker Conrad, Justin Mateen, Marcus Lemonis, Shaan Puri, Sam Parr, Tanay Tandon, Josh R.on, Josh R., Immad Akhund, Garrett Langley, Guillermo Rauch. Dean Bloembergen, the team, and I are deeply grateful for everyone who has supported us, including those not tagged here. Owner exists to close the gap between small businesses and huge corporations. We’re starting with restaurant owners. They represent the American dream. 80% start as cooks or servers, then become first-time business owners. But they’re forced to compete with massive corporations, which spend billions on tech & marketing and hire entire teams of experts. We don't want local businesses to get crushed. Owner gives AI superpowers to small businesses, doing work they could never afford before, so they can do more than compete. They can win.

Owner has raised $240M, reached a $2.3B valuation, and crossed $100M ARR.  Goldman Sachs Alternatives led the round, joined by Meritech, Redpoint, Headline, & Jack Altman. The world is racing to build AI to replace people’s jobs. Owner is building AI to do the opposite: To do the jobs for small business owners they’ve never been able to afford. I started building what would become Owner at 17, to help my mom. We've now helped thousands of local business owners like her. This year alone, more than $1 billion dollars will be made by local restaurant owners using Owner. We wouldn’t be here without our team, investors, and earliest supporters. Thank you to: Jack Altman, Jason M. Lemkin, Alex Bard, Dylan Field, Fidji Simo, Max Mullen, Shalini Rao, Alex Kurland, Naval Ravikant, Jonathan Neman, Claire Hughes Johnson, Dharmesh Shah, Cory Levy, John Andrew Entwistle, Andrew Steele, Joshua Browder, Sean Rad, Scott Belsky, Brett Schulman, Mike Vichich, Andy Pforzheimer, Harris Pollack, Stephen Kerns, Kimbal Musk, Max Altman, Ben Braverman, Geoff Donaker, Nick Bunick, Alexis Ohanian Sr., Kipp Bodnar, Ankur Nagpal, Henry Schuck, Parker Conrad, Justin Mateen, Marcus Lemonis, Shaan Puri, Sam Parr, Tanay Tandon, Josh R.on, Josh R., Immad Akhund, Garrett Langley, Guillermo Rauch. Dean Bloembergen, the team, and I are deeply grateful for everyone who has supported us, including those not tagged here. Owner exists to close the gap between small businesses and huge corporations. We’re starting with restaurant owners. They represent the American dream. 80% start as cooks or servers, then become first-time business owners. But they’re forced to compete with massive corporations, which spend billions on tech & marketing and hire entire teams of experts. We don't want local businesses to get crushed. Owner gives AI superpowers to small businesses, doing work they could never afford before, so they can do more than compete. They can win.

Excited to share I've joined Owner.com as Chief Talent Officer! Across my time building teams, one thing has been constant: it all comes down to exceptional people with big ambitions. So when thinking about my next chapter, I looked for three things. #1 - A mission I'd be proud of. So much of AI today lives on screens, chatbots, copilots, tools for people who already work in tech. Owner is bringing AI to the real world. The taqueria on your corner. The family pizza shop. The physical spaces where people actually gather, eat, and live. These owners are experts at their craft, but they're competing against chains with entire technology teams. Owner puts that same firepower in their hands, so they can stay competitive and succeed. #2 - A massive opportunity. Local business is one of the largest and most human parts of the economy, and it's been severely underserved. AI will change that, and will shape what our neighborhoods and main streets look like for decades. Owner is building tools that raise a business owner's odds of success. Starting with restaurants, and eventually every local business. #3 - People I'd be lucky to work with. Adam Guild and Dean have built a company centered on exceptional talent, anchored by a value that immediately struck me: "Bring good energy." Every conversation with Rob, Quenton, Lauren, William, Katie, Darrin, Wyatt and the team confirmed it. These are people you want to spend long hours and late nights with. They obsess over customers, move with urgency, and hold an exceptionally high bar I'm excited to protect and raise. Grateful to everyone over the years who have shaped how I think about talent. And to the Ownerds who've been so welcoming, we are building something epic! Of course, we're hiring. Come build with us!

There's nothing more humbling than this: Being face to face. With real users of your product. No dashboard gives you the same immediate cold sweat and fierce determination as a customer telling you “your product aint quite good enough yet, but I'm willing to help you make it better.” At Owner we ensure every designer, engineer and PM gets lots of that face-time. We fly customers to our off-sites twice a year to spend a whole week with our team because it brings true clarity to our customers' problems. For that week, they aren’t an abstraction. They are hardworking business owners who BADLY need their problems solved. And so we encourage them to roast us, to build alongside us in our hackathons and to debate with us on our roadmap. And every time, our product gets so much better because of them. This past month, we were joined by a restaurant owner who has grown his business to 9 figures in annual revenue - after starting with a food truck. It lights me up to have played a part in that journey-- and we are still so early. Thank you Syed, Enga, LaToya, Said, Ricky, and Nate for your feedback, time, and trust. If this video gets you excited to build with us at Owner for hardworking business owners like this, link to our careers page in the comments 👇

Last week was a tipping point for our company. We announced that we’ve now driven over $1 Billion in sales for local business owners. When your company has a real mission (not just a mission statement), you can build enough momentum to turn your business into a movement. This is one of those moments where you really see that momentum take over. Small business owners are the most inspiring people in the world. They put everything on the line: their house, their savings to serve their community and make great food. They don’t have jobs, they have livelihoods. But they've been underserved by decades of tech solutions that give them more work, more complexity, and less profit in their pockets at the end of the day. Owner's movement is about helping these operators take back power. Independent restaurants have been forced to compete against big chains with massive structural advantages for decades. A mom and pop taqueria in Santa Monica is up against Taco Bell's Super Bowl ads. An independent pizzeria is up against Domino's hundred-person engineering team. They've been losing this fight quietly for a long time. Tools like ours are how they win. Our AI offers independent operators best-in-class marketing and agentic workflows that do the complex work of SEO, site design, and guest remarketing for them… All so they can get back to what they do best: making good food and serving their community. Movements sound impressive. But they aren't easy to build, and we need your help. If that inspires you, we'd love to have you join us. Link to apply to our 50+ open roles in the comments.

Grader has helped drive $1 Billion in sales for Owner.com customers. Here's how we built it.

I’m proud to announce Owner has driven $1B in sales for local restaurants. Today we’re introducing Grader: the world’s first AI CMO for restaurants that outperforms human marketing teams: I started Owner at 17 because of what I saw happening to my mom. Her small business was losing to a big corporation. Not because of her. Because they had huge marketing & software teams. They spent $10,000,000 optimizing their website, she built hers for $10 on Wix. They A/B tested every pixel, she couldn’t. They had a mobile app and CRM marketing automations, she didn’t. I built the first version of Owner for her. It changed her life. My mom went from struggling & stressed… To achieving millions in sales & feeling excited for her future. Now, we’re creating that transformation for thousands of small business owners. The problem: big corporations are winning with tech. They spend millions a month on it. Small businesses can’t. That’s why we’re building AI to help small business owners fight back and win  Our product has already driven over $1 billion in sales for restaurant owners. I’ve heard the dominant, doomer story about AI: “The end is near. AI is about to control everything and replace every job”. I disagree. I see a path for AI to do the jobs that small business owners can’t afford. The average independent restaurant profits $60K a year. They can’t afford to hire a CMO, CTO, or hundreds of engineers. Massive chains can. AI can be the CMO, CTO, and tech team for small business owners. Before AI, big corporations had every advantage. But now, small businesses can operate with even greater advantages, and win with AI. The revolution is already here: Thousands of new restaurants use Grader every week. 60,000,000+ users (1 in 4 American adults) have used Owner to interact with local restaurants. If you’re excited to build a future where small business owners survive and succeed: We’re hiring across 50+ roles! Page in the comments below. ––––– To celebrate this launch, I’m sharing the doc I wrote on the key lessons from scaling Owner to $1B. I’ve never shared this info publicly. Comment “Owner”, and I’ll send you the 19-page doc.