Shark Tank · investment pitch
Toast and Square sold local businesses a cash register. Boom Media gives them the whole growth engine — online ordering plus 15 integrated apps — run for them as a managed service, on infrastructure they own, with no proprietary hardware.
The 90-second open
Deliver this, then hand each Shark a one-pager and pull up a live client dashboard.
“Hello Sharks, I'm Eric, founder of Boom Media out of West Palm Beach. Toast and Square built billion-dollar companies selling local businesses a cash register. But a restaurant doesn't just need to take a payment — it needs to fill tables. Today that owner is duct-taping together fifteen different tools — ordering, menus, marketing, reviews, loyalty, signage — paying for all of them, owning none of them, and locked into hardware they can't walk away from.
Boom Media is the all-in-one platform that replaces that entire stack — online ordering plus fifteen integrated apps — and we run it for them as a managed service, on infrastructure they own, with no proprietary hardware to buy. We already have seven local businesses running their whole operation on our ecosystem. We did $103,000 this year, up 32%, at software margins.
I'm here because the exact playbook that won us those seven clients can win seven thousand. I'm asking for $200,000 for 12% to turn a proven local platform into the operating system for Main Street.”
The problem
The average local operator juggles a POS, an ordering platform, a scheduler, a review tool, an email tool, a loyalty punch-card, a signage subscription, a chatbot… 10–15 vendors, 10–15 bills, none of them talking to each other.
Toast and Square tie the business to proprietary terminals and payment processing. Leaving means ripping out hardware and re-training staff. That's the moat — against the customer.
Customer lists, order history, menus — trapped inside a platform the owner rents. Raise prices? They can't leave without losing everything.
Software is sold, not operated. The busy owner never sets up the loyalty program or the review funnel — so it never drives revenue. They needed a partner, not another login.
The solution
Boom Media is a full growth-and-operations stack for local business — 15 SaaS products plus Boom Online Ordering — that we deliver as a done-for-you managed service. Self-hosted, no proprietary hardware, no lock-in by force. We keep clients because it works, not because they're trapped.
The moat — the thing no competitor has
Boom Online Ordering is the single source of truth. Change a price once and it cascades — the website, the ordering page, the in-store TV menu boards, loyalty rewards, and review requests all update in sync. Toast can run your register. It can't run your whole business off one source of truth.
Why we beat them
We don't out-POS Toast head-on — we out-flank them. We own the growth & operations layer they were never built for, at software economics, for any local business (not just restaurants).
| Boom Media | Toast | Square | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Proprietary hardware required | No — any device / Fire TV | Yes — terminals | Yes — terminals |
| Who owns the data | The business (self-hosted) | The platform | The platform |
| Scope beyond POS/payments | Full stack: marketing, CX, ops, compliance | Restaurant ops add-ons | Limited SMB add-ons |
| Who operates it | We do — managed service | Self-serve | Self-serve |
| Business types served | Any local business | Restaurants only | Broad, shallow |
| Cost model | Flat SaaS + service, ~85% margin | Hardware + % of every sale | Hardware + % of every sale |
| Lock-in mechanism | Value & integration | Hardware & processing | Hardware & processing |
Toast and Square are the incumbents in payments — we're not fighting them for the register. We're taking the ten other things a local business pays for, and the relationship.
How we make money
Done-for-you setup and ongoing management — a monthly retainer per client. High-touch, high-trust, hard to churn. This is how all 7 current clients started.
Each of the 15 apps is a recurring subscription. A client that starts on one app expands across the ecosystem — ARPU grows without new customer-acquisition cost.
All 15 apps self-hosted on Coolify + Supabase on DigitalOcean — ~$180/mo total, shared across the whole portfolio. Vercel retired. Infra stays flat as customers grow → margin expands with scale.
Dashee white-labels the entire suite so other agencies resell it to their clients — a distribution multiplier that doesn't require us to sell every account ourselves.
Go-to-market & scale plan
Seven clients proved the motion. Here's how it compounds into thousands.
Get in the door with online ordering or one high-value app + managed setup. Low friction, immediate ROI.
Once one app is driving results, add the next — reviews, loyalty, signage, ads. ARPU climbs, churn drops.
Boom Online Ordering ties it together. Now leaving means losing an integrated system that works.
License the white-label suite to agencies via Dashee. Each partner sells to dozens of local businesses.
The numbers
Today's figures are verified from bank statements. The forward years are illustrative targets driven by client count × expanding ARPU across the ecosystem — the model, not a promise.
| Today (2026) | Year 1 ▲ | Year 2 ▲ | Year 3 ▲ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clients on ecosystem | 7 | 25 | 75 | 200 |
| Blended ARPU / mo | ~$1,225 | $1,400 | $1,600 | $1,800 |
| Revenue | $103K | $420K | $1.4M | $4.3M |
| Gross margin | ~85% | 85% | 86% | 87% |
| Reseller partners | 0 | 2 | 8 | 25 |
ARPU today reflects managed-service retainers + app subscriptions across 7 clients. Growth assumes the reseller channel (Dashee) carries the back half — Boom sells partners, partners sell businesses.
The ask
$200,000 for 12%
Implied $1.67M valuation. The premium over a pure agency multiple is the platform: 15 owned products, recurring revenue, ~85% margins, and a reseller channel — not billable hours. Fully adjustable; bring a range and your walk-away number.
Alternative framings to have ready: $150K / 10% (leaner), or $250K / 15% (if a Shark brings distribution). Anchor high on the platform story, concede on the number, hold on control.
Prep — anticipate the Sharks
The close
“Toast gave Main Street a cash register. I want to give it an operating system — and I'd rather build it with one of you than against all of you.”