Embrace the Suck: How Olo Survived 10 Years to Product-Market Fit With Noah Glass

Dec 5, 2025

Noah Glass, founder and former CEO of Olo, shares his inspiring journey from a startup in 2005 to a public company by 2021. He discusses the extreme patience required in the first decade and how the mantra 'embrace the suck' shaped company culture. Noah reveals the pivotal shift from B2C to B2B that turned losses into profits, and explains how adding delivery services unlocked major growth. He reflects on the importance of industry advisors, the benefits of partnering with Thoma Bravo, and critiques the current trend of homegrown tech stacks.

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INSIGHT

Embrace The Suck Mentality

Noah Glass says the first eight to ten years required extreme "pain tolerance" and a cultural mantra of "embrace the suck."
Focusing on small wins and celebrating green shoots kept the team together until broad adoption arrived.

ANECDOTE

Early Team Bonds Last Decades

Many early Olo employees stayed 18–19 years and hold annual reunions, forming lifelong bonds.
Noah compares the shared hardship to military initiation, creating deep loyalty among early teammates.

ANECDOTE

The B2C Start That Pivoted To B2B

Olo began as a B2C text-based ordering service and raised a $7M Series A in March 2008.
After seeing unaffordable $15 CAC, a pilot with Muya showed B2B economics were viable and led to a full pivot to enterprise.

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Noah Glass is the founder and CEO of Olo, an enterprise platform for mobile and online ordering that powers digital commerce for 800+ restaurant brands and nearly 90,000 locations. Founded in 2005, Olo went public in 2021 at a $3.5B valuation and was acquired by Thoma Bravo in 2024—a 20-year journey from scrappy startup to category leader.

What you'll learn:

Why Olo's first 10 years required extreme "pain tolerance" waiting for product-market fit
The B2C to B2B pivot that transformed their unit economics from burning $15 per customer to earning revenue while scaling
How "embrace the suck"—borrowed from the Marine Corps—became the cultural mantra that kept the team going
Why going public was about customer confidence and long-term credibility, not exit or liquidity
The role of industry advisors in bridging credibility gaps when selling to traditional enterprises
How adding delivery-as-a-service (Dispatch) in 2015 unlocked escape velocity and scale advantage
The challenges and benefits of operating as a public company in a misunderstood industry
Why partnering with Thoma Bravo PE offers better alignment than quarterly public market pressures
Noah's philosophy on founder loyalty and the lifelong bonds formed with early team members
Why the current "homegrown tech stack" trend in enterprise is a passing fad that misses SaaS fundamentals

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction and the "embrace the suck" mentality

(01:03) Early days and the long wait for product-market fit

(05:30) Why YC's "grow fast or quit" advice doesn't apply to every company

(08:06) The deep bonds formed with early team members

(12:14) Deciding between B2B vs B2C business models

(13:34) The B2C beginning and Good Morning America moment

(16:08) The pivot to B2B enterprise software

(20:43) How third-party delivery and DoorDash changed the industry

(23:04) The journey as a public company (2021-2024)

(27:49) Why going public signaled long-term stability to enterprise customers

(30:15) Operating under private equity with Thoma Bravo

(36:10) Breaking into enterprise sales with industry advisors

(44:45) The importance of reliability at scale for enterprise

(46:58) Thinking about market size and expansion in vertical software

(48:25) Rapid fire: Which founder inspires you most

(49:01) Uncomfortable feedback on being overly loyal

(50:48) Current trend prediction: Homegrown enterprise software is a fad