Ilir Sela at Grimaldi's Pizzeria | Standing Table #5

**Ilir Sela** (0:00)
I bootstrapped this company for about four or five years. I'm running this entire thing off of an Excel sheet, and I opened this Excel sheet, and I want to see what my January 2025 sales were. 300,000 was just pure profit. I took the 300,000, I went to Manhattan Motorcars, and I bought a Bentley.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:16)
No, you did not. I did.

**Ilir Sela** (0:19)
And that was the moment where I was like, okay, this is crazy. But that was a lesson for me, because once I bought that car, I knew that that wasn't the path. Like, that's just crazy.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:28)
No, it's not.

**Ilir Sela** (0:29)
It was not the path. But I had to learn it on my own.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:32)
New York City, the finance capital of the world. It has more ambition than one tiny island can handle.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:38)
And it's not a bad place to get a bite to eat either. For three decades, we've made it here on the markets, calling our shots, and always speaking our minds. But the best conversations happen across the table.
So pull up a chair while we break bread with founders, CEOs, and creators, all in the iconic spots that define the greatest city on Earth. This is Standing Table.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:07)
Presented by Apex Fintech Solutions.
In New York, pizza is not just food, it's part of the city's DNA. And that story runs deep in Brooklyn, where working-class immigrant neighborhoods help shape the New York pizza we know today.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:25)
That's where Grimaldi's comes in. Sitting in the shadows of the Brooklyn Bridge, this Dumbo pizza restaurant serves authentic, coal-fired brick oven pizza.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:34)
This pie is sought out by tourists, appreciated by locals, and even draws the celebs. Like this guy, Ilir Sela, the founder and CEO of Slice.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:44)
As an Albanian raised in Staten Island, you could say pizza was his destiny.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:49)
Growing up, he was surrounded by family members and friends who owned local pizza shops. This was his secret weapon in founding Slice.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:56)
Slice transformed mom-and-pop shops with access to the technology, reach, and economies of scale they need to stand stronger against the chains.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:05)
Today, Slice is the largest network of independent pizzerias in America.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:11)
Thanks for joining us.

**Ilir Sela** (2:12)
Thanks for having me.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:12)
It was fun. It was a great choice, kind of old-school corner. This is like your mecca right here. We got pizza there, we got pizza there, we got pizza here. What is it about this little corner of Brooklyn that is just filled with...

**Ilir Sela** (2:25)
Yeah, you have a lot of history here. Obviously, Grimaldi's is an iconic institution. What you have is these pizza makers that decide to go on their own. So maybe somebody worked at Grimaldi's and then decided to open up their own shop and so it sort of expands from there.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:38)
It's like the mecca of pizza right here.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:40)
I would think that's fair.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:42)
Staten Island, where our main man is from, by the way.

**Ilir Sela** (2:45)
What do you mean?

**SPEAKER_3** (2:45)
What are you doing? That's fair.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:47)
I think the people in Brooklyn would like to say that they still have the crown.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:51)
You think?

**Ilir Sela** (2:51)
Well, let me tell you something. Staten Island, the most amount of pizza shops in terms of density in the world. 130 pizza shops on Staten Island.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:01)
Yeah, there are a lot of Met fans, too. It doesn't mean they're any good.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:04)
I don't know if we've ever had pizza together, have we? We've done a lot of the New York City classics, that sort of thing. But you gotta tell Guy, I told him a little bit about it. You know, like, pizza shop is in your family, and we never talked about how you got into it. You call it the pizza business, you obviously built a tech company, a logistics company, but take us all the way back, because this is like in the family.

**Ilir Sela** (3:24)
That's right. So I have a ton of family members that own pizza shops. I am Albanian.
Albanians, by the way, Albanians are behind a lot of the pizza shops that are even...

**SPEAKER_3** (3:33)
Did you know that?

**SPEAKER_2** (3:35)
You go to Arthur Avenue, and it's all Albanian. All Albanian?

**Ilir Sela** (3:38)
Yeah, that's right. And it's sort of this natural migration. Albania is just a stone's throw away from Italy. And so as people migrate away from Albania, they go to Italy, spend some time there, work at restaurants, work at pizza shops, pick up the craft, and then move over to the US., to New York.