How a Y Combinator meals supply app used TikTok to soar within the App Retailer
The web development is easy: A good friend or member of the family seems into the digicam and tells viewers, in a barely aggressive tone, that they’re about to witness a presentation and that they’d higher be good.
That’s what Kendall, the sister of Lucious McDaniel IV, did, and after she stepped apart, her brother pitched his firm, BiteSight, a meals supply app that lets customers watch movies of meals earlier than ordering. It additionally lets clients see what their mates have ordered and bookmark locations to check out. The app performs on how younger folks interact with content material — by short-form movies and proposals from mates.
McDaniel posted the video and went again to work. Fifteen minutes later, his sister texted him that their submit was going viral. “We have been at 20,000 views in quarter-hour,” McDaniel instructed TechCrunch. Pleasure got here, however then chaos ensued as “elements of our app began to interrupt as we acquired extra customers.”
The engineering crew labored across the clock to maintain BiteSight purposeful, whereas McDaniel took to creating TikToks in regards to the chaos, which ended up going viral, too. He mentioned folks cherished the “authenticity” behind seeing what occurs when “your app explodes in a single day.”
The video of McDaniel presenting this concept has since amassed virtually 4 million likes on TikTok and 1 / 4 of 1,000,000 on Instagram, becoming a member of a development of younger entrepreneurs utilizing TikTok and Instagram Reels to achieve traction and deal move.
McDaniel instructed TechCrunch that the thought to make this video got here after watching a good friend partake in the identical web development for his courting app. “It acquired over 1,000,000 views, and he instructed I attempt it for BiteSight.”
McDaniel, who’s 24, 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 pictures, and one way or the other each place had 4.6 stars.”
Techcrunch occasion
San Francisco
|
October 27-29, 2025
He began conserving a spreadsheet of eating places he’d discovered on Instagram and TikTok, monitoring precise evaluations, and seeing what his mates thought of 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 really displays how we uncover meals as we speak,” he mentioned, referring to Zac Schulwolf, the corporate’s CTO.
McDaniel is not any stranger to the tech trade. He beforehand labored at Common Atlantic, the place one in every of his principal focus areas was restaurant know-how. 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 firms, together with the fintech Mercury.
McDaniel and Schulwolf, 25, spent over a yr constructing BiteSight, together with participation within the Winter 2024 cohort of YCombinator. They then did a restricted beta round New York College in April. In mid-Might, the corporate launched an early model and did a little bit of social media advertising and marketing. 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 (often known as chief consuming officer). He added that “it’s clear that customers, and particularly Gen-Z, are prepared for one thing that feels contemporary and constructed for the way in which they interact.”
After the video, BiteSight briefly turned #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 the app is just obtainable in New York in the intervening time, folks in different cities began messaging for a nationwide launch. On the restaurant facet, McDaniel mentioned everybody from small family-owned spots to chain eating places has reached out to companion and, after all, “we’ve had a surge of investor curiosity from of us who see that that is the place meals supply goes.”
He declined to touch upon the scale of any upcoming funding offers, besides to say he expects to have information to share quickly.
In fact, BiteSight has a number of large, well-funded competitors like DoorDash and UberEats. McDaniel believes, nonetheless, that being a startup within the age of AI will probably be his benefit. For instance, whereas most of its rivals wanted a whole bunch 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 fee.
“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 cross on the financial savings to the small enterprise homeowners and clients who want it most whereas nonetheless sustaining wholesome margins,” he mentioned.
What additionally differentiates BiteSight is its deal with meals and video, reasonably than different classes in the intervening time.
“We’re making an attempt to be the go-to app for the technology that discovers every thing by social suggestions and short-form video.”