This $1.5 Trillion Industry Still Runs on Paper and Fax Machines

By Y Combinator

Categories: VC, Startup

Summary

The $1.5 trillion grocery retail industry—larger than restaurants and hotels combined—still operates on paper and fax machines. Vory built a point-of-sale and inventory management system that processed $500M in payments in two years by starting with a single wedge feature (supplier reordering) before expanding into a full store management platform.

Key Takeaways

  1. Start with a wedge, not the full vision. Vory launched with just supplier reordering via mobile app (not full POS) to validate demand before building the broader platform—this narrow focus drove growth from 1 to hundreds of stores in year one.
  2. Door-knocking for first customers works even with zero social proof. Vory's founding team physically visited stores, demonstrated the pain point solution (hours saved on paper-based ordering), and got their first begged-for customer through direct relationship building.
  3. 220,000+ addressable TAM with $1.5 trillion processing volume creates enormous expansion potential. Grocery is the most frequent consumer shopping behavior globally, yet remains the largest undigitized retail format—a market overlooked by most tech founders.
  4. Founder domain expertise compounds execution speed. Third-generation grocery background gave Brandon insider knowledge of pain points, supplier relationships, and buyer psychology—this translated to 24 customers by YC demo day including respected names like Molly Stones and Berkeley Bowl.
  5. Vertical SaaS can scale rapidly once product-market fit is proven. Two years post-launch, Vory reached $500M in processed payments and 1M+ shoppers across the US—demonstrating how a focused solution addressing acute B2B pain scales in underserved categories.

Topics

Transcript Excerpt

I'm excited to welcome Brandon from Vory here to announce a $22 million series B led from Cherry Rock Capital. Brandon, thank you so much for joining. >> Super excited to be here. >> Yeah, maybe to start things off, uh, tell us a little bit about what Vory does and give us the state of the business right now. Vori is an all-in-one point of sale and a gentic store management system for supermarkets. So, just to lay the framework, there is over 220,000 food and beverage retailers across the United States of America, generating $1.5 trillion overall processing volume. And Vor is helping them move off of paper and pencil to run their stores more profitably and to feed their communities more sustainably. Vory's business. Today, we're processing over $500 million in payments since launch two yea…