Entrepreneur Spotlight Series: Mandy Poston
- Carlos E. Juarez
- Mar 17, 2023
- 3 min read
Updated: Feb 7, 2024
Villanova’s John F. Scarpa Center for Entrepreneurship and Law’s Entrepreneur Spotlight Series aims to highlight emerging companies and the founders at the forefront of their industries. In a recent interview, Carlos Juarez, Class of 2025, sat down with Mandy Poston, a Philadelphia-based entrepreneur and Founder & CEO of Availyst.
Innovation and interpretation have a lot in common.
Introduce us to your company.
Availyst is an app finally answering the question “What the fork are we going to do for dinner?!” Our mission is to help people find the food they love and make it easier to get. We let people connect with and compare local food options and surface results to them using preference-driven artificial intelligence.
How did the idea for Availyst come about?
The idea came while sipping whiskey at a socially-distanced firepit with friends. It was year one of the COVID pandemic, and everyone was struggling to source food to order. Our friends had a new baby, and the stress was high for them to limit exposure to the virus as much as possible. We’d all gotten creative to find new delivery times, waking up at 2 a.m. to find delivery slots, but we sort of all threw up our hands and said, “there’s got to be a better way!” The more I dug into this issue, the more I realized the problem wasn’t too many orders—it was broken search. Search tools today drive people to the same results; ultimately, consumers and businesses are losing money. By verticalizing search and personalizing results, you make better matches.
How are you marketing your business, and which tactics have been most successful?
Make your value proposition as clear as possible and start narrow. We’ve had a lot of organic growth and word-of-mouth exposure because we’ve armed people in select cities
with the tools to easily describe our product. When it comes to digital strategies, we’ve focused on 2-3 channels that help us learn lessons and improve our return on our investment.
Shifting gears, what are some of the most important legal issues that affect your industry?
We’re consumer-facing, so privacy is at the forefront of everything we do. We build our app with the intention to protect against privacy and data security breaches. However, in many cases, we have to develop our app more because of the policy changes that come from gatekeepers and sweeping legislative changes. People who built consumer apps a generation ago assume we know everything about our customers. In reality, the rules and insights differ from every acquisition channel, and you have to build specifically to reach and understand your user base today.
In funding your business, did you face any barriers to accessing capital? How did you overcome those barriers?
Yes. Stats from 2022 show that 1.9% of venture capital funding went to female-founded companies and even less to LGBTQ+ founders. When I started, I thought my background and the idea would get me far. I was wrong. As an underrepresented founder, you have to show progress, not intention. You are judged on what you’ve done, not what you can do. The more I focused on building the product, the more progress I made in finding funding. That said, the most productive thing I did (and still do) is build a network. From the beginning, I tried to connect with as many people as possible, tell them about what I was building, ask for advice, and offer anything I had to give. A lot of our success is due to the support of our mentors and advisors.
What piece of advice would you give to law school students/graduates who want to become entrepreneurs?
Do it. I think there is a lot of overlap between successful entrepreneurs and lawyers. Learn the rules and structure of the system so you can maneuver within it and change it. Innovation and interpretation have a lot in common.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. To read Carlos' full conversation with Mandy, click below.
Comments