Acquired by SoundHound AI

Allset

From commission-only immigrant to VP in 8 months

📅 Nov 2016 — Sep 2018
👤 VP of Sales
📍 New York, NY
Acquisition News → LinkedIn
✨ Exit
Acquired by SoundHound AI (Nasdaq: SOUN) in June 2024
0
Months to VP
11x
Location Growth
300 → 3,400+
13x
Deal Velocity
15 → 200/mo
90%
Churn Cut

The Story

Day 1
Fresh immigrant. Limited English. Commission-only.
The 6-person sales team was closing 15-30 restaurants/month doing door-to-door. That wasn't going to work for me. I needed to hack the system.
Month 5
Built a system that 10x'd the team.
Created the "legend" email strategy — 95% open rates, 75% conversion. Trained the whole team. We went from 15-30 to 100 deals/month.
Month 8
VP of Sales.
I was closing 100 deals/month personally. Team closed another 100. Created the B2B segment that saved the Series A. Promoted.

About Allset

Allset was a food ordering platform designed for local pickup, providing a seamless, cost-effective dining experience that allowed both consumers and restaurants to bypass the high fees charged by delivery apps like DoorDash and Uber Eats.

Founded in 2015 by Ukrainian founders Stas Matviyenko and Anna Polishchuk, Allset was backed by Andreessen Horowitz and raised through Series A. During my time there, I scaled the restaurant footprint from 300 to 3,400+ locations across 14 cities.

In June 2024, Allset was acquired by SoundHound AI (Nasdaq: SOUN) to accelerate their vision of voice-enabled food ordering across cars, TVs, and smart devices.

What I Built

📧 The "Legend" Outreach System

  • Door-to-door wasn't working — built Yelp scraper + Outreach.io sequences
  • Crafted "private dining reservation" subject lines that got 95% open rates
  • Message framed corporate clients wanting to dine at their restaurant
  • 75% conversion rate — trained entire team on the system

🏢 Corporate Segment (B2B)

  • Company was burning money on $10 user credits with no real traction
  • Proposed selling to companies for employee meal benefits
  • This became the lifeline that convinced investors to fund Series A
  • Unlocked national chain partnerships and multi-location deals

🔄 Retention Playbook

  • Restaurants churning because no users were showing up
  • Redistributed promo credits strategically to new restaurant partners
  • Marketing created content featuring new partners on social
  • Cut churn by 90% — restaurant owners became advocates

📈 Team & Scale

  • Led 7 direct reports + 2 team leads (lead gen, onboarding)
  • Built CRM systems and sales tracking infrastructure
  • Scaled from 300 to 3,400+ locations across 14 cities
  • Team went from 15-30 deals/month to 200 deals/month

Results

🚀 0 → VP in 8 months
📈 300 → 3,400+ locations
💰 Enabled $5M Series A
📧 95% open / 75% close rate
🔄 90% churn reduction
👥 9 direct reports
🏢 Built B2B segment
🎯 Acquired by SoundHound

What I Learned

  • When the existing playbook doesn't work for you, build your own
  • Constraints (limited English, no experience) force creative solutions
  • Marketplaces fail when you sign supply faster than you can activate demand
  • The right "legend" (story/framing) matters more than volume of outreach
  • Retention problems are often onboarding + activation problems in disguise
  • B2B segments can save a struggling B2C business model
  • Rapid promotion comes from solving problems nobody asked you to solve

Resources

📰 Acquisition Press Release 📖 Restaurant Dive Coverage 💼 Allset on LinkedIn