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Founder / Operator·Payments

Aman Narang

CEO and Co-founder at Toast

Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

AN
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Why they matter

Founder-CEO of a public $20B+ restaurant payments/POS platform, giving him unmatched insight into vertical SaaS payments economics, SMB merchant acquiring, and embedded fintech competitive dynamics.

Background

Aman Narang co-founded Toast, Inc. in 2011 with Steve Fredette and Jonathan Grimm after the trio, MIT-connected colleagues from Endeca (later acquired by Oracle), got frustrated waiting on a paper check at a Kendall Square restaurant and set out to build cloud-based restaurant POS and payments software. He built and ran Toast's sales, marketing, customer success, business development, and fintech functions as President and COO before being named CEO effective January 1, 2024, succeeding Chris Comparato. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from MIT.

Notable deals

  • 2011
    Co-founded Toast with Steve Fredette and Jonathan Grimm, building an all-in-one restaurant POS, front-of-house/back-of-house, and payments platform
  • 2020
    Helped lead Toast to a $400M Series F raise at a $4.9B valuation, led by Bessemer Venture Partners, TPG, Greenoaks and Tiger Global
  • 2021
    Took Toast public on the NYSE as COO/co-founder, with the stock popping to a market cap above $30B and making him a billionaire
  • 2024
    Named CEO of Toast (announced Sept 2023, effective Jan 1, 2024), succeeding Chris Comparato after leading sales, marketing and fintech as COO

Call-prep brief

Aman Narang — CEO & Co-founder, Toast (NYSE: TOST)

Background: MIT-trained engineer who spent time at Endeca (acquired by Oracle) before co-founding Toast in 2011 with Steve Fredette and Jonathan Grimm. Ran sales, marketing, customer success, BD, and fintech as President/COO for over a decade before becoming CEO on Jan 1, 2024.

Current focus: Scaling Toast's embedded fintech stack (payments, payroll, capital/lending) across its restaurant base, pushing upmarket into enterprise multi-location chains, and defending share against Square, Clover, and PAR/Punchh in SMB point-of-sale.

What he cares about: Restaurant-industry-specific product depth over horizontal POS breadth; data-driven decision-making as the company scales past founder-instinct mode; profitable growth after the post-IPO cost discipline era.

Recent moves: Reversed a controversial customer-facing fee that drew restaurant-owner backlash; steering Toast's next growth phase as a newly independent public-company CEO (distinct from prior co-president structure).

Potential sensitivities: Public-company disclosure limits on forward guidance; the 2023 fee controversy is reputationally sensitive; competitive dynamics with payments processors/acquirers should be framed as industry landscape questions, not requests for confidential Toast strategy.

Questions to ask:

  • How is embedded fintech penetration (payments take-rate, lending, payroll attach) trending as a share of Toast's revenue mix, directionally?
  • What separates winners from also-rans in vertical SaaS + payments bundles, from a merchant-acquiring economics standpoint?
  • How is the competitive set (Square, Clover, PAR) responding as restaurant tech consolidates, and where do independent processors still win deals?

Outreach draft

Subject
Quick call on restaurant payments landscape?
Hi Aman, I'm on the deal team at a private equity firm doing work in payments and merchant acquiring, and Toast's build-out of embedded fintech alongside your core POS business is a reference point we keep coming back to. We're trying to sharpen our view on how vertical SaaS platforms monetize payments versus pure-play acquirers, and where the competitive lines are moving. Given your vantage point building this from the ground up, I'd value 20-30 minutes to hear your perspective — happy to work around your schedule. Would you be open to a short call in the next couple of weeks? Best, [Your Name]

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