Deb Golden

📢 Big personal announcement 📢 I’ve officially joined @Slice to lead the marketing team! First, the fun part: Retweet this and I’ll DM you a personal code for anywhere from $5 to $100 off your next Slice order. Next, I’d like to explain why joining Slice was one of the easiest professional decisions I’ve ever made. The Mission: I’ve tweeted a lot about housing, neighborhoods, and walkable cities. Much of what gives a local community it’s personality is a thriving, independent business ecosystem. If you’ve never heard of Slice before, they provide independent pizza shops with the same technological advantages that most major restaurant franchisee already have. I want to see MORE independent shops flourish, and Slice helps level the playing field. The Opportunity: Slice has been around since 2015, but it still feels like they’re just getting started. While there is strong adoption and awareness on the east coast, the rest of the US isn’t as familiar with the brand or product. This is a start-up marketer's dream. It’s something that already has proven “product market fit”, and only requires expansion. It’s not to say it will be easy, but it is to say it can be done. What exactly does Slice do? Before I joined, I thought Slice was just like any other 3rd-party delivery app (eg, Uber Eats, DoorDash, etc), but they’re built entirely different. 3rd-party apps are great at helping customers discover and order from new restaurants, but they take up to 30% in part because acquiring new customers is so expensive. Instead of focusing on acquiring new customers, Slice focuses on digitizing as much customer data as possible. Every single order is a data point, and most shops are either not collecting it (call-in orders, walk-ins), or are giving it away for free (3rd-party delivery apps who then use that data to get consumers to order from different shops). Without this data, shops have little ability to market to their own customers (think of Slice kind of like Hubspot for independent shops). So instead of having to constantly acquire new customers (unsustainable and expensive), shops can more easily turn casual customers into loyal patrons (much more cost effective). It's much easier to get a current customer to order 2-3 more times a year than it is to attract 2-3 new customers that quickly churn. This savings is then passed on to consumers like me and you (many shops literally charge 10% less on Slice). The Slice app isn’t really about discovering new shops, it’s about making it as easy (and cheap) as possible to order from your favorite spot. It’s why shops literally tell their customers "please, only order from us via Slice!" The Leadership: @IlirSela's story is the American Dream (I'll let him tell it). After several conversations with Ilir before I joined, it was clear to me that he was built specifically to create this company. He combines passion/expertise (having grown up in and around his family's pizzerias), technical know-how (built and sold a previous tech company), and clear strategic vision (understands the future direction of the company and how to get there). When joining a start-up, you're betting as much on the idea as you are the founder. I promise I'm only partly buttering up my new boss, but I would not have joined Slice if it wasn't for Ilir. What's next? I'm back to my B2B2C roots. Step One: Build a marketing strategy that 1) clearly outlines the benefits of Slice to independent shops, and 2) makes Slice a household name across the rest of the US. Step Two: Build out a marketing team that can make step one a reality. There is already a role posted for a Pizza Influencer (no, seriously) and I will be hiring for a few other roles in the near future. If pizza excites you - and you want to work for me - shoot me a DM pitching why you'd be an asset to Slice. Lastly, I'm serious about RTing this and getting a discount code. I think consumer marketing should be fun. And what's more fun than free pizza?