How a Y Combinator food-delivery app used TikTok to soar in the App Store

The video of McDaniel presenting this concept has since amassed almost 4 million likes on TikTok and a quarter of a million on Instagram, becoming a member of a development of young entrepreneurs using TikTok and Instagram Reels to gain traction and deal flow. 

McDaniel instructed TechCrunch that the concept to make this video got here after watching a buddy partake in the identical web development for his relationship app. “It bought over 1,000,000 views, and he urged I attempt it for BiteSight.”

Twenty-four-year-old McDaniel mentioned he, like many younger folks, realized he was consuming an excessive amount of takeout, ordering from the identical three locations as a result of he couldn’t uncover new eating places on supply apps. “I’d hit this wall of identical-looking eating places with inventory photographs, and by some means each place had 4.6 stars.” 

He began holding a spreadsheet of eating places he’d discovered on Instagram and TikTok, monitoring precise evaluations, and seeing what his associates considered mentioned locations. “After I realized different folks have been doing the very same factor, my co-founder Zac and I made a decision to construct one thing higher: an app that truly displays how we uncover meals at the moment,” he mentioned, referring to Zac Schulwolf, the corporate’s CTO. 

McDaniel is not any stranger to the tech trade. He beforehand labored at Normal Atlantic, the place considered one of his major focus areas was restaurant expertise. He beforehand based a funds firm known as Phly, led product for a recruitment software program, and has even angel invested in a couple of corporations, together with the fintech Mercury. 

He and Schulwolf, 25, spent over a yr constructing BiteSight, together with participation in Y Combinator’s Winter 2024 cohort. They then did a restricted beta round New York College in April. In mid-Could, the corporate launched an early model and did a little bit of social media advertising. In June, they made their viral video.

“What made our video stand out was that what we’re constructing resonates,” mentioned McDaniel, who’s BiteSight’s CEO (also called chief consuming officer). He added that “it’s clear that customers, and particularly Gen Z, are prepared for one thing that feels recent and constructed for the best way they have interaction.” 

After the video, BiteSight briefly grew to become No. 2 within the App Retailer’s Meals and Beverage class, bypassing Uber Eats, Starbucks, and even McDonald’s.

McDaniel mentioned the app additionally gained greater than 100,000 new customers, and although it’s only out there in New York in the meanwhile, folks in different cities began messaging for a nationwide launch. On the restaurant aspect, McDaniel mentioned everybody from small family-owned spots to chain eating places has reached out to accomplice and, in fact, “we’ve had a surge of investor curiosity from people who see that that is the place meals supply goes.” 

He declined to touch upon the dimensions of any upcoming funding offers, besides to say he expects to have information to share quickly.

After all, BiteSight has a whole lot of large, well-funded competitors like DoorDash and Uber Eats. McDaniel believes, nonetheless, that being a startup within the age of AI might be his benefit. For instance, whereas most of its opponents wanted lots of of engineers of their early days, BiteSight can work with AI instruments that carry out 10x the work of a human for a lot much less of the price.

“By utilizing AI to keep away from huge overhead and infrastructure prices, we are able to do far more with a lot much less and move on the financial savings to the small enterprise house owners and prospects who want it most whereas nonetheless sustaining wholesome margins,” he mentioned. 

What additionally differentiates BiteSight is its give attention to meals and video, slightly than different classes in the meanwhile.

“We’re making an attempt to be the go-to app for the technology that discovers the whole lot by means of social suggestions and short-form video.”