food-delivery
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Safee Shah Changed Vehicles, but Kept the Same Destination
From hedge-fund screens to ride-hailing streets and delivery-only kitchens, Safee Shah has spent a career testing how technology can widen opportunity in Pakistan.
Michael DiBenedetto Put the Delivery Apps on One Menu
A late-night takeout argument gave Michael DiBenedetto a durable idea: make delivery services compete before dinner gets cold. FoodBoss became his experiment in price transparency, patient aggregation, and the underrated craft of removing one small annoyance.
Joe Ariel
Joe Ariel is the founder and CEO of Goldbelly, the e-commerce marketplace that ships iconic regional dishes from more than 1,000 restaurants and food makers to doorsteps across the United States. A serial entrepreneur who previously led Eats.com and Delivery.com, Ariel built Goldbelly out of a simple frustration - the best food in America rarely leaves the town where it is made. In 2026 he was named Official Food Curator of America's 250th anniversary, leading the 'Taste of America250' program and a national storytelling project to define the canon of American cuisine.
Li-ran Navon
Li-ran Navon is the founder and CEO of Sauce, a white-label ordering, delivery, and AI-driven retention platform that lets independent restaurants own their online ordering, delivery logistics, and customer data instead of surrendering margin and relationships to third-party marketplaces. A serial entrepreneur who earlier built the voice-ordering startup Say2eat through Coca-Cola's incubator, Navon has grown Sauce from scratch to eight figures in revenue with a remote-first team spread across four continents, and says Sauce helped restaurants avoid more than $20 million in third-party fees in 2024.
Vishal Agarwal
Vishal Agarwal is the founder and CEO of Checkmate (itsacheckmate.com), a New York restaurant technology company that pipes online orders from delivery apps straight into restaurant point-of-sale systems and centralizes menu management across platforms. He started the company in 2016 after waiting too long for a check at a San Francisco airport restaurant, and grew it from a bill-splitting idea into a full digital operations suite used by brands from independent eateries to Arby's and Wendy's. A former Citigroup analyst and Choxi.com marketing chief, Agarwal built Checkmate past 100 million processed orders and, backed by Inspire Brands, expanded into kiosks, reconciliation, and voice AI.
Dara Khosrowshahi
Dara Khosrowshahi is the CEO of Uber, the global ride-hailing and delivery platform he has led since September 2017. An Iranian-American who fled Tehran as a child during the Revolution, he spent 12 years building Expedia into a travel giant before inheriting Uber at its most turbulent moment. Under his leadership, Uber went public in 2019, achieved sustained profitability, and expanded into a multi-service platform operating across 70+ countries with $193+ billion in annual gross bookings. A self-described gamer, sci-fi geek, and cycling enthusiast who once wore a Slayer T-shirt to his wedding, Khosrowshahi has rebuilt Uber's culture around a simple principle: 'We do the right thing. Period.'
Mahmoud Ghulman
Mahmoud Ghulman is the Co-Founder and CEO of Nash, a San Francisco-based AI logistics platform that serves as the delivery infrastructure layer for commerce - connecting businesses like Walmart, 7-Eleven, and thousands of restaurants to hundreds of delivery providers through a single API. A physics graduate from MIT, Ghulman spent nearly a decade building gig-economy and AI businesses before co-founding Nash in 2021 with high school friend Aziz Alghunaim. The company has raised $29.1M in total funding from Andreessen Horowitz and Y Combinator, and is pioneering agentic AI for last-mile delivery orchestration at enterprise scale.
Noureddine Tayebi
Noureddine Tayebi is the founder and CEO of Yassir, North Africa's most valuable tech startup and the leading super app for francophone Africa. Born in Algiers in 1977, he earned a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University after completing a master's degree at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He spent eight years at Intel in Silicon Valley accumulating over 50 patents before founding InSense, a nano-motion sensor startup acquired by Mojo Vision in 2018. In 2017, he co-founded Yassir, which has grown to serve 8 million+ users across 45 cities in six countries, offering ride-hailing, food delivery, grocery delivery, and fintech services. Yassir has raised $193.25 million in total, including a historic $150M Series B led by Mary Meeker's BOND, cementing Tayebi's position as a defining figure in Africa's digital economy.
Will Bewley
Will Bewley is the Co-Founder and CEO of Woflow, a San Francisco-based AI agent platform that structures and manages merchant and product data at scale for enterprises like DoorDash, Square, Walmart, Uber, and Deliveroo. Starting as a side project at a San Francisco co-working cafe, Woflow has digitized over 60 million products for 800,000+ restaurants and retail stores globally. Bewley, a Chartered Accountant from the UK who transitioned from London finance into Silicon Valley entrepreneurship, raised $10.8M in funding and grew Woflow into one of Inc. 5000's fastest-growing private companies.
Tony Xu
Tony Xu is the co-founder and CEO of DoorDash, the food delivery giant commanding roughly 60% of the U.S. market. Born Xu Xun in Nanjing, China, he immigrated to the United States at age four, grew up washing dishes alongside his mother, and turned that lived understanding of the service economy into a company now valued near $100 billion. He led DoorDash through its blockbuster 2020 IPO, the $8.1B acquisition of Wolt, and the $3.9B acquisition of Deliveroo, while also serving on Meta's board of directors.