How the Startup Slice Got Their First 1k Customers | Hacker News Reader

How the Startup Slice Got Their First 1k Customers

first1000.substack.com

91 pointsabouelatta21 comments

Slice hijacks Google Maps listings with their own websites that mimic local pizzeria websites.

For example: Mario's Pizza in Dorchester, Massachusetts

The Google Maps listing [1] links to https://www.mariospizzeriadorchester.com/ , which is a site owned and operated by Slice.

The ACTUAL Mario's Pizza site is https://www.pizzabymario.com/ .

This "growth hack" was previously discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16824992

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mario%E2%80%99s+Pizzeria,+...

So another "tech" start-up using (VC?) money to outby competitors and others on SEO and marketing. And pretty sneaky, registering duplicat websites for pizzerias in order to divert traffic and a take 20% share for that "service".

EDIT: The pitch they used to get pizzerias on board has nothing to do with the "growth hack" described in OP's link.

The Google search results do show the owner' site as #1.

https://seobrowse.com/share/25c8f9129eaea94bf34531dd780a9438...

But if you look at the right sidebar under Menu and Order, you get all the Valley players who are trying to get a cut from the order...

Update: wow this is even worse. Slice is "verified" by Google as owner and abuses this by posting their coupons as "news" in the sidebar (look at "Mario's on Google" part lower down).

https://support.google.com/knowledgepanel/answer/7534902?hl=...

Looked into what tricks they are doing in a short write-up here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23348815

Sucks that it seems like it got flagged off the front page almost immediately, thanks for doing the research and writing it up. I'm surprised to see just how aggressive Slice is about this, they must believe the upside outweighs any associated risks from being caught. Wouldn't be the first startup I've seen try to play games like this with Google though...

I'll try again: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=23349819

This may be a bit off-topic but their pizza is actually pretty decent by Boston standards.

UPDATE: looks like Google finally accepted the website change, which had been pending for many months at least. I must assume these posts had something to do with it.

I suspect that part of the reason that these types of things are so successful, is that restaurants tend to have God-awful sites, if any site at all.

The good ones work by word-of-mouth, so SEO doesn't mean squat to them.

They also run on razor-thin margins, so they don't spend a dime they can't see immediate, measurable ROI on.

I have a couple of friends that own restaurants. One of them is a really well-known (local) place with a tasting menu that costs about $250/per person (cash-only).

When I was getting started setting up Web sites (I did a lot, but always for free, for NPOs), I offered to do their sites for free.

They declined, and their sites sucked, for YEARS.

Didn't hurt their business at all.

Now, they have sites, but their domains are an SEO graveyard, because they waited so long (I guess an AngelFire subdomain wasn't really that good an idea, in hindsight, eh?).

I'll bet they are representative of many restaurants, which tells me that this is a well-fertilized field for this kind of scam.

> They also run on razor-thin margins, so they don't spend a dime they can't see immediate, measurable ROI on.

You're not wrong, but if their margins are so thin, where is slice making its money? VCs? Or is slice raising prices (Delivery fee, increase per item cost, etc).

Couldn't these restaurant owners just increase their prices to what Slice is charging?

> Couldn't these restaurant owners just increase their prices to what Slice is charging?

Not possible (in the traditional market). Competition is ferocious.

Maybe that will change, with all the interceptors and delivery companies.

It's a miserable market. I don't think I'd last five minutes in it.

I was happy my local pizza place set up their own ordering system so I could stop using Slice and the rest. These "growth hacks" are just another example of our awful startup/VC model.

Another post today focuses on how Slice is running an SEO scam on Google to get free top placement in results without having to pay for ads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23349819

Wow, that's some hustle:

- wrap your car and park it outside pizzeria prospect locations

- then do a sales pitch in person

- then change your system flow to support existing fax numbers.

My annoyance with the app is that I discovered by directly searching for one of the highest award winning pizza places in Chicago, Art of Pizza, and being recommended to buy through their app.

As much as I love deep dish and their specific pizza they don't really show up when I try to search for pizza around me. There are dozens of mediocre places with less than 100 reviews and art of Pizza shows up way down the list with thousands of reviews that are much higher up and me being well within their first choice delivery zone.

Maybe they are specifically good for pizza shops but they are pretty useless when you want good pizza and are searching for what's around you.

I especially liked the part where he converted the online orders into faxes.

That was basically the only part of this story that showed an actual value-add rather than just injecting himself into the revenue stream of existing businesses via unethical "growth hacks".

So now we start unbundling grubhub and local shops start losing even more?

I love startup stories like this. Cleverness + determination = :thumbsup:

Where you see cleverness, I see unethical behavior (Google hijacking) linked with powerful knowledge.

Instead of using their knowledge and skills for good, they are exploiting loopholes in technology to take a slice of others' businesses that were built with real hustle and determination.

Edit: to clarify the unethical piece (which is left out of the op)... nothing wrong with the in person sales pitch and fax optimization

Regulation and laws need to catch up with this nonsense. Identity theft plain and simple. If it crosses state lines it should bring federal civil penalties and sanctions. I'm ranting a bit of course, but this is disgusting.

On the other hand, perhaps you were just being sarcastic...

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