A frustrating wait for a restaurant bill sparked Aman Narang to build a mobile payment app—which failed. But that failure revealed a massive opportunity: restaurants desperately needed modern point-of-sale software. Toast grew from a basement startup answering customer calls on personal phones to a $2 billion revenue business serving one in five US restaurants. Aman and his team discovered their real market opportunity only after their initial mobile payment app failed, forcing them to pivot to replacing entire restaurant operating systems rather than one feature.