
A ski-hotel shift taught Axel Lingbert that hospitality improves when staff can leave the screen. Now the Zaplar co-founder is trying to redesign the software that keeps them stuck there.

Aakar Khanna is the co-founder and CEO of Marble (formerly Truffle), a Y Combinator S26 startup building an AI-native operating system for the restaurant back-of-house. He grew up inside his family's multi-unit restaurant business, cut his teeth as a Goldman Sachs analyst covering restaurants and food & beverage, then spent years in operations roles at venture-backed startups AtoB and Kouper before building software to tackle the two costs that quietly sink restaurants: inventory and labor.
Nick Miller is the founder and CEO of Universe, an Atlanta-based holding company that buys and builds vertical software businesses. He first built Gather, a hospitality SaaS platform for private events that grew from a 200-square-foot closet to a company acquired by Vista Equity Partners and later merged into Tripleseat. With Universe he now owns and operates Goldie, an all-in-one business tool for solopreneurs, and Equilab, a training community for equestrians, applying lessons from one exit to a portfolio of purpose-built software for overlooked markets.