Story
Slice: cloning Domino's ordering for indie pizzerias to a $1B company
Shaan recounts how Slice gave independent pizza shops an app replicating Domino's slick mobile ordering and progress-bar tracking, letting them compete on pizza quality rather than tech — becoming a billion-dollar company on that white-label pattern.
“what Slice did was Slice went to every indie poppy, uh, indie pizza shop and basically gave them an app that was the Domino's mobile ordering experience and said, hey, now you can compete against that. So let's just compete on the basis of whose pizza is the best rather than, well, they made it so easy and fun to order and mine still is like, call me and I'll write it down on a piece of paper. Um, and they became a billion dollar company doing that in that space.”
Billy
The Domino's-of-India franchisee with 9,000 stores teaching Indians to eat pizza
Shaan marvels at dinner-party operators he met in India who hold exclusive franchise/distribution rights—one is the exclusive Jockey underwear seller, another runs ~9,000 Domino's stores after essentially teaching Indians to eat pizza.
“Next guy at the dinner table, what do you do? Oh, we're the Domino's guys in India. What? Yeah, we're the exclusive franchisee of Domino's for India. Um, okay. What does that mean? Well, we have like, Indians didn't really eat pizza before this. So we're like teaching people to eat pizza. They fucking love it. Turns out. Uh, and so we have like, you know, 9,000 Domino's throughout India now.”
Number
$1 in Domino's IPO beat Google's IPO by 5x
Sam cites that a dollar invested in Domino's IPO would have returned five times more than the same dollar invested in Google's IPO, partly because the tech names were priced high from the start.
$5
Domino's IPO return vs Google IPO · x
“If you invested $1 in Domino's IPO vs. Google's IPO, you would have made 5 times more.”
Fact
Why Domino's stock soared: marketing and tech innovation
Sam attributes Domino's stock run to aggressive, innovative marketing for the category, like touting a new mobile oven that delivers pizza hotter, which makes customers want to buy regardless of whether it works.
“They're crushing it on marketing. They are quite innovative for the space. Like, they do like little cutesy things that is— they're like, we're testing this new mobile oven, so it's gonna show up even hotter, right? Which, who knows if that works, but it makes you want to buy it.”