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An AI marketing stack for independent restaurants that gives away the website, online ordering and loyalty for free, charges for the AI layer on top, and sells the whole thing exclusively door-to-door — $3.5M ARR growing about 400% year over year with zero dollars spent on marketing
about 400% year-over-year growth, described as accelerating · roughly $6K average ACV per location · 300–400 demos a month · 25+ full-time staff, three engineers plus the founder · around EBITDA break-even (some months slightly up, some slightly down) · $450K of non-dilutive financing from Founderpath on a 16-month payback, about $35K a month fixed
Fewer bars = easier, cheaper, or faster for an AI-assisted solo builder. Editorial judgments based on the case details.
Carl Turner's pitch is deliberately unglamorous: "You can think about us as a super boring marketing agency, just that there is no one actually in the agency and it's AI." Swipe.by sells to SMB brick-and-mortar owners, and inside that it goes narrower still — independent restaurants. His read on the customer is the whole thesis. A restaurant owner "works in the business, not on the business": they make the food, they call Spectrum when the Wi-Fi is out, they call the oven guy when the oven breaks, they serve the food when two staff members did not show up. Marketing is the first thing that falls off that list, which is why the product runs on autopilot rather than handing the owner another dashboard with a magic-wand button to click. The company is at about $3.5M ARR, growing roughly 400% year over year and, in his words, accelerating. There are over 25 full-time people, of whom three are engineers plus Turner himself — everything else is distribution. It sells exclusively door-to-door, spends nothing on ads, and has no inbound funnel at all. Growth has been funded with angel and family-office money, then revenue factoring through Stripe, then $450K from Founderpath, all while running roughly at EBITDA break-even. Turner is open about how he got here: "I failed twice with this company. And failed hard. I mean, failed hard." The current shape is the third attempt, and he has term sheets on the table he is in no hurry to sign.
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Join the Unicorn Club — $5/moCancel in one click · first payment refundable for 7 daysData credibility: Founder interview. Every figure — $3.5M ARR, roughly 400% year-over-year growth, 25+ staff, ~$6K ACV, 300–400 demos a month, EBITDA break-even — is stated by Carl Turner on camera and is unaudited; no dashboard, filing or third-party source is shown. The interviewer runs Founderpath, which lent the company the $450K discussed in the interview, so an outside party has underwritten the revenue, but none of that underwriting data appears on camera and the conversation is promotional for both sides. Churn, net revenue retention, customer count and gross margin were never disclosed, and the valuation talk ($15M declined, term sheets at close to double, a $60–75M target) is negotiation in progress rather than a closed round. Our video metadata for this upload is incomplete: the channel name and exact title were not captured, and we identify the host only as Nathan of Founderpath, as addressed in the recording. The country is inferred from what is said — Miami as a named market, W-2 employment, Indeed recruiting — rather than from a stated headquarters.