Ilir Sela: How I Founded Slice Pizza & Became One of Macedonia’s Largest Employers | E1044

Founding Philosophy & Background

• Ilya, the sole founder of Slice, grew up in a small town in former Yugoslavia (border of Macedonia/Albania) with no traffic lights, where the "North Star" was simply obtaining a good job and buying a house.
• Upon immigrating to New York at age 10, his father advised the family never to squander the opportunity to be in the U.S., instilling a drive to prove that "anything is possible" through hard work.
• Ilya views building a small business as an inherently lonely journey due to the sudden need to become an expert in infinite, unforeseen problems, though he notes he is less isolated than independent shop owners due to having a team and resources.
• He describes his upbringing and the experience of living in a single 2-bedroom apartment with three families (his parents, uncle, and grandparents) as formative, teaching him to value hard work over financial security.
• Ilya characterizes himself as "running towards" building impactful products and teams rather than "running from" anything, driven by optimism rather than trauma.

Bootstrapping, Capital Strategy, and Early Traction

• In February 2015, Slice (then "MyPizza") generated $250,000 in profit in a single month with a tiny team, leading Ilya to impulsively buy a Bentley before immediately realizing the need to reinvest capital.
• Ilya rejected an $18 million acquisition offer for the business because he believed he could learn more by scaling the company as a new venture than by starting a similar one post-sale.
• He reached out to Wiley (then at First Round Capital) on Twitter after a friend's tip, not needing money but seeking introductions to leadership talent; Wiley invited him to an office after learning Slice operated 3,000 locations (far exceeding Wiley's initial 100–200 location benchmark).
• The decision to raise capital was driven by the desire to onboard key leadership (like Josh Kobelman) rather than a funding gap; Ilya notes capital was merely the mechanism to get the right people on board.
• Capital constraints forced Ilya to hire a team in Macedonia, where the average wage was ~$200/month, allowing him to pay double the national average to hire skilled talent at a fraction of US costs.
• Slice eventually employed 650 people in Macedonia and created internal English courses to upskill candidates who lacked language proficiency, a strategy necessitated by a talent shortage.
• Ilya acknowledges that a lack of capital slowed their go-to-market ramp, limiting sales hiring to a linear growth of 1 salesperson leading to 2, then 4, rather than launching a large sales class simultaneously.
• For five years, Slice operated with a single engineer, Sam Kennedy, who managed all product and engineering, often working late nights on backend tools while managing front-facing product during the day.

Management Philosophy and Organizational Structure

• Ilya rejects the maxim that "great CEOs get out of the way," stating that delegating decisions without deep involvement leads to failure because every business has unique details requiring leader alignment.
• He describes company growth as a collection of "mini pivots," arguing that CEOs must actively participate in decision-making trees to prevent deviation from the intended strategy.
• Communication is managed through high frequency and clarity of the "why," with a mentor advising that if a leader doesn't feel "nauseous" from repeating the same message, they haven't communicated enough.
• To prevent silos across US, UK (Belfast), and Macedonia teams, Ilya embraces geographic cultural differences rather than forcing a single cultural norm, utilizing separate all-hands meetings for each region.
• Slice's tech stack is intentionally simple, relying primarily on Slack and the Google Suite (Docs, Sheets, Meet) to avoid tool fragmentation and communication confusion.
• Ilya admits his primary leadership struggle is communication at scale, where his direct, authentic style is sometimes misinterpreted by remote teams, causing friction.
• After struggling to fundraise in 2019 despite 60–80% growth, Ilya realized he needed to stop "getting out of the way" and reintegrate himself into decision-making as the company's growth trajectory required 150% expansion for the next round.
• Post-2019, Ilya imposed strict hiring constraints, challenging the necessity of full-time roles and preventing the "snowball effect" of unnecessary headcount.
• He advises founders to avoid building products based on what customers say they need (e.g., payroll) and instead solve the problems that keep owners up at night, such as increasing customer lifetime value.

Product Strategy, Verticalization, and Market Dynamics

• Slice focuses on a vertical strategy (pizza) to create a vertically integrated ecosystem, arguing that horizontal solutions fail to solve the deep, specific disadvantages of independent small businesses.
• The "insertion point" for Slice was moving customers from phone ordering (where they were lost to memory) to digital channels to capture customer data and increase retention.
• Revenue is captured at ~7–8% of the merchant's total revenue; Slice does not measure averages, noting that a merchant generating $1.5M/year pays Slice ~$100k, while a new merchant might pay only $1,000.
• Slice's model expands the Total Addressable Market (TAM) by increasing sales per store and enabling the opening of new independent locations, growing the US pizza industry from $35B (60,000 shops) to $47B (80,000 shops) since launch.
• In economic recessions, independent pizzerias often thrive as consumers trade down from restaurants to home pizza nights, a trend that accelerated during the pandemic.
• Slice provides 24/7 support for merchant queries, handled by the Macedonia team, and utilizes "Partner Success Managers" who know merchant owners personally to determine the right time for upselling additional products.
• Slice claims 10% of an average independent pizza shop's revenue, with some power users generating over 50% of their volume through the platform, compared to Domino's where the bulk of revenue is digital.
• Ilya states that averages hide the truth and prefers tracking the number of merchants surpassing specific revenue thresholds to gauge product fit.
• Slice maintains a transparent policy where merchants retain full ownership and access to their customer data, countering the fear of third-party data monopolization.

Lessons, Future Outlook, and Personal Insights

• Ilya asserts that building a business worth over $5 billion is incompatible with a traditional work-life balance, as the increasing stakes require constant vigilance against disappointment.
• He believes luck and timing are largely illusions created by hard work and deep customer study, citing his early prediction that all pizza orders would eventually move to mobile.
• His first luxury purchase after making his first $250k profit was a Bentley, though he sold it quickly to reinvest in the business.
• In the early days, Slice leased Nissan Cubes, branded them, and parked them outside pizza shops to create a perception of scale and legitimacy in a hyper-local market.
• Ilya advises founders to treat board construction as a strategic decision rather than an accidental byproduct of fundraising, balancing investors with operators (like Deirdre Bigley and Kat Cole) who focus on the company, not just returns.
• Looking forward to 2028, Ilya aims for Slice to become a public company, providing financial liquidity to the team and enabling a "restart" phase to expand into new categories.
• Ilya's biggest regret regarding communication was not anticipating that the pressure of leading a scaling organization would increase, not decrease, as the number of stakeholders (investors, customers, employees) grew.
• He considers the "best pizza moment" to be eating an upside-down pizza (sauce on top of cheese) at L&B Spumoni Gardens in Brooklyn while sitting outside with a cold soda.