Owner

How Adam Guild Built Owner.com To $20M ARR At 21 Years Old

Monthly Revenue

$1.67M

Founders

Employees

50 (est.)

Profitable

Yes

Year Started

2019

Customer

B2B & B2C

Founders

Employees

50 (est.)

Profitable

Yes

Year Started

2019

Customer

B2B & B2C

Who is Adam Guild?

Adam Guild, the co-founder and CEO of Owner.com, began his entrepreneurial journey at a young age by creating one of the largest Minecraft server networks in the world, and he dropped out of high school to scale his early ventures. Originating from Los Angeles, he started Owner.com to solve the marketing challenges his mother faced in her small business, eventually securing funding and growing the company to serve thousands of restaurants.

What problem does Owner solve?

Owner.com excels by offering restaurants a cost-effective, data-rich online ordering system to counter prohibitive third-party fees and loss of customer relationships. High fees and lack of direct control over customer data are significant pain points for independent restaurants. Solving these makes Owner.com an essential service, ensuring better profit margins and customer engagement.

How did Adam come up with the idea for Owner?

Adam Guild, co-founder of Owner.com, began his entrepreneurial journey early by running a successful Minecraft server and later dabbling in game development. His inspiration for Owner.com stemmed from a more personal experience—watching his mother struggle to attract customers to her small service business. Using his knowledge of growth hacking acquired from the gaming world, he developed tools to help her improve her business’s online presence and customer acquisition.

Realizing that his solutions had broader applications, Adam extensively reached out to other small business owners to understand their challenges. Initial feedback validated the potential of his offering, encouraging him to refine and tailor his product specifically for restaurant owners. The biggest hurdles came during the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced him to pivot from focusing on in-store traffic solutions to developing an online ordering system that addressed new market pain points.

Key lessons Adam learned include the importance of deeply understanding the end-users' needs and being adaptable in the face of changing market conditions. These insights allowed him to survive challenging periods and ultimately build a platform that resonated well with its target users.

How did Adam build the initial version of Owner?

Adam Guild built Owner.com by rapidly prototyping and iterating an online ordering system tailored to restaurant owners' needs during the pandemic. After cold calling hundreds of restaurant owners and identifying their pain points with existing online ordering systems, he created a basic prototype that solved issues like high transaction fees and loss of customer data. This initial MVP was developed quickly under financial pressure and was far from perfect but effectively addressed the core problems. Guild utilized his programming skills and growth hacking techniques from his gaming experience to build and refine the platform. Despite the substantial initial challenges, such as dealing with numerous bugs and system downtimes, the product was continuously improved, eventually gaining traction and leading to rapid growth.

What were the initial startup costs for Owner?

Initial Funding: Owner.com received early investments from SaaStr Fund, Redpoint Ventures, and Day One Ventures, as well as multiple high-profile individuals.
Thiel Fellowship: Adam Guild, the founder, secured a $100,000 Thiel fellowship which provided crucial funding.
Early Development: Guild initially faced financial difficulties and had to lay off staff during the early stage of the pandemic, incurring additional unexpected costs.
Scaling Difficulties: During the growth phase, the company experienced significant early churn with a 30% churn rate in the first 90 days post-close, indicating inefficiencies that needed to be corrected.

How did Adam launch Owner and get initial traction?

Cold Calling and Client Feedback

Owner.com, initially struggling to stay afloat during the pandemic, turned things around by directly reaching out to hundreds of restaurant owners. Adam Guild, the CEO, made cold calls and simply asked business owners how he could help them. Within the first week of these calls, they started getting hundreds of inbound leads from restaurants who appreciated this proactive approach.

Initial Product Offering

To respond to the pressing needs of these restaurants, Owner.com launched a basic online ordering system that addressed major pain points such as high transaction fees and the loss of customer data to third-party ordering platforms. They offered this system for free during the initial launch. This product saved restaurant owners 20% to 30% on fees and gave them full access to their customer data. This led to hundreds of restaurants signing up right away, validating the product-market fit.

Inbound Leads and Early Revenue

Upon launch, Owner.com saw a surge in inbound leads due to the critical need they fulfilled. Within the first few months, they went from having very little revenue to millions in annual recurring revenue (ARR). They managed to sign up over 1,000 restaurants in about a year. This rapid growth indicated a strong demand and helped Owner.com attract further investment.

Referral-Based Growth

The business started by helping Adam's mother and then grew through word-of-mouth. As more restaurant owners experienced the benefits of the platform, they referred other owners. This organic growth helped Owner.com sustain its momentum in the early days, leading to robust initial metrics that could support future scaling efforts.

What was the growth strategy for Owner and how did they scale?

Cold Calling

During the pandemic, Adam Guild and the Owner.com team pivoted their product and strategy by cold calling hundreds of restaurant owners. They aimed to understand the specific challenges these restaurants faced with online ordering systems like DoorDash and Uber Eats. By directly engaging with potential customers, they identified the need for a better online ordering system that addressed pain points such as high fees and loss of customer data. This active listening approach through cold calling helped Owner.com create a product that directly met the needs of their target market.

Extreme Focus on Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Kyle Norton, Chief Revenue Officer at Owner.com, emphasized the importance of focusing on a very narrow Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) to maximize efficiency. By analyzing data on existing customers, the team identified high-quality customers using a scoring algorithm called Estimated Gross Merchandise Volume (EGMB). They then adjusted their sales strategy to only pursue leads that fit this specific profile, reducing churn and enhancing customer satisfaction. This focus not only stabilized their revenue but also helped align their sales and onboarding teams, eliminating chaos and improving overall business efficiency.

Data Enrichment for Outbound Sales

Owner.com tackled the inefficiency of their outbound sales by investing heavily in data enrichment. Kyle Norton discussed how they scraped data from various sources and used machine learning models to score potential leads, significantly improving contact accuracy. The team also integrated mobile phone numbers through third-party data providers like People Data Labs, which drastically increased their call-to-decision maker contact rate from 3% to 16%. This meticulous approach to data quality enabled their BDR teams to book more meetings and close more deals, making the outbound sales process highly efficient.

What's the pricing strategy for Owner?

Owner.com prices its services by charging restaurants a commission on transactions made through their platform, targeting SMBs with usage-based pricing and offering free trial periods to attract customers.

What were the biggest lessons learned from building Owner?

Embrace Radical Persistence: Adam Guild’s relentless outreach to potential customers and team members showed that persistence pays off. He reached out multiple times until he got the responses he needed, which led to significant breakthroughs in both customer acquisition and building a talented team.
Adapt to Shifting Markets: When the pandemic hit, Owner.com quickly pivoted from focusing on restaurant reservations to solving new pain points for restaurants related to online ordering. This adaptability based on direct customer feedback saved the business and resulted in rapid growth.
Focus on Quality, Not Quantity: Initially, Owner.com had issues with customer churn because they signed on any restaurant interested. By refining their customer acquisition strategy to target high-quality, profitable customers, they improved retention and overall business health.
Invest Early in Infrastructure: Building strong operational foundations, including robust data collection and customer onboarding processes, helped Owner.com scale efficiently. Early investment in tools and processes paid off as the company grew.
Team is Everything: Guild emphasized the importance of building a strong, mission-aligned team. By combining young talent (undiscovered prodigies) and experienced industry veterans, Owner.com benefited from innovation and practical expertise, driving the company forward.