How a Y Combinator food-delivery app used TikTok to soar in the App Store
In an age where digital trends dictate success, a food-delivery app from the Y Combinator cohort, BiteSight, has masterfully leveraged the power of TikTok to achieve unprecedented App Store dominance. Co-founded by Lucious McDaniel IV and Zac Schulwolf, BiteSight’s journey from a nascent idea to a viral sensation underscores a significant shift in how startups capture audience attention and disrupt established markets.
The catalyst for BiteSight’s meteoric rise was a simple yet profoundly effective TikTok video. Following a popular internet trend, McDaniel’s sister, Kendall, introduced him to the camera, where he then pitched BiteSight – an innovative food-delivery app that allows users to watch short-form videos of dishes before ordering. The app also integrates social recommendations, letting users see what friends have ordered and bookmark places, directly appealing to how younger generations engage with content.
The immediate aftermath was nothing short of extraordinary. McDaniel recounted to TechCrunch how his sister texted him just fifteen minutes after posting the video, reporting it had already garnered 20,000 views. While excitement surged, the app’s infrastructure faced an immense strain. “Parts of our app started to break as we got more users,” McDaniel revealed. The engineering team worked tirelessly to stabilize the platform, while McDaniel, with remarkable ingenuity, began creating new TikToks documenting the ensuing chaos. These authentic glimpses into a startup’s overnight explosion resonated deeply, going viral themselves and amplifying BiteSight’s reach.
The initial pitch video alone has since amassed nearly 4 million likes on TikTok and a quarter of a million on Instagram, positioning BiteSight at the forefront of a burgeoning trend where young entrepreneurs utilize TikTok and Instagram Reels for significant traction and deal flow. The inspiration for this strategy came from a friend’s dating app, which similarly achieved over a million views through the same viral presentation format.
McDaniel, 24, conceived the idea for BiteSight out of personal frustration. Like many of his peers, he found himself repeatedly ordering from the same limited selection of restaurants on existing delivery apps, hindered by generic stock photos and ubiquitous 4.6-star ratings that offered no true discovery. He began meticulously tracking restaurants found on Instagram and TikTok in a personal spreadsheet, noting actual reviews and friends’ opinions. Realizing this was a widespread pain point, he and Schulwolf set out to build an app that mirrored contemporary food discovery behaviors.
McDaniel’s extensive background in the tech industry, including a focus on restaurant technology at General Atlantic, founding a payments company (Phly), leading product for recruitment software, and even angel investing in companies like Mercury, provided a robust foundation for BiteSight. He and Schulwolf, 25, dedicated over a year to developing the app, participating in Y Combinator’s Winter 2024 cohort. Following a limited beta launch around New York University in April and an early public release in mid-May, their viral video ignited in June, transforming their trajectory.
“What made our video stand out was that what we are building resonates,” stated McDaniel, who humorously dubs himself BiteSight’s CEO and “chief eating officer.” He emphasized that consumers, particularly Gen Z, are eager for a fresh, purpose-built app that aligns with their content consumption habits.
The immediate impact was profound: BiteSight briefly climbed to the No. 2 spot in the App Store’s Food and Beverage category, notably surpassing industry titans like Uber Eats, Starbucks, and McDonald’s. The app gained more than 100,000 new users, sparking demand for a nationwide rollout beyond its current New York-only availability. The viral success also led to a surge of interest from restaurants—ranging from small family-owned businesses to large chains—seeking partnerships, alongside significant investor attention from those who recognize BiteSight as the future of food delivery. McDaniel anticipates sharing news on upcoming funding deals soon.
Despite formidable competition from well-funded giants like DoorDash and Uber Eats, McDaniel believes BiteSight’s startup agility in the age of AI provides a distinct advantage. Unlike competitors who required hundreds of engineers in their early stages, BiteSight leverages AI tools capable of performing ten times the work of a human at a fraction of the cost. “By using AI to avoid massive overhead and infrastructure costs, we can do much more with much less and pass on the savings to the small business owners and customers who need it most while still maintaining healthy margins,” he explained. BiteSight’s focused approach on food and video, rather than diversifying into multiple categories, further differentiates it. “We’re trying to be the go-to app for the generation that discovers everything through social recommendations and short-form video,” McDaniel concluded.
