The internet trend is straightforward: a friend or family member looks into the camera and tells viewers, in a slightly aggressive tone, that they are about to witness a presentation and that they had better be nice. That’s exactly what Kendall, the sister of Lucious McDaniel IV, did. After she stepped aside, her brother pitched his company, BiteSight, a food delivery app that lets users watch videos of food before ordering. The app also allows customers to see what their friends have ordered and bookmark places to try. It taps into how young people engage with content—through short-form videos and recommendations from friends.
McDaniel posted the video and returned to work. Fifteen minutes later, his sister texted him that their post was going viral. “We were at 20,000 views in 15 minutes,” McDaniel told TechCrunch. The excitement was short-lived as chaos quickly followed. Parts of the app began to break under the surge of new users. The engineering team worked around the clock to keep BiteSight functional, while McDaniel documented the chaos in TikTok videos, which also went viral. He said people loved the authenticity of seeing what happens when an app explodes overnight.
The video of McDaniel presenting BiteSight has since amassed nearly four million likes on TikTok and a quarter of a million on Instagram. It’s part of a growing trend of young entrepreneurs using TikTok and Instagram Reels to gain traction. McDaniel told TechCrunch that the idea for the video came after watching a friend use the same trend for his dating app. “It got over a million views, and he suggested I try it for BiteSight,” he said.
At 24, McDaniel realized he was ordering too much takeout from the same few places because he struggled to discover new restaurants on delivery apps. “I’d hit this wall of identical-looking restaurants with stock photos, and somehow every place had 4.6 stars,” he explained. He started keeping a spreadsheet of restaurants he found on Instagram and TikTok, tracking real reviews and noting what his friends thought. “When I realized other people were doing the same thing, my co-founder Zac and I decided to build something better: an app that actually reflects how we discover food today,” he said, referring to Zac Schulwolf, the company’s CTO.
McDaniel is no stranger to the tech industry. He previously worked at General Atlantic, focusing on restaurant technology, and founded a payments company called Phly. He has also led product for recruitment software and angel invested in companies like the fintech Mercury. McDaniel and Schulwolf, 25, spent over a year building BiteSight, including participation in Y Combinator’s Winter 2024 cohort. They launched a limited beta around New York University in April, followed by an early version in mid-May with some social media marketing. In June, they posted their viral video.
“What made our video stand out was that what we are building resonates,” said McDaniel, who serves as BiteSight’s CEO (also known as chief eating officer). He added, “It’s clear that consumers, especially Gen Z, are ready for something that feels fresh and built for the way they engage.”
After the video, BiteSight briefly became the #2 app in the App Store’s Food and Beverage category, surpassing Uber Eats, Starbucks, and even McDonald’s. The app gained over 100,000 new users, and though it’s currently only available in New York, people in other cities began requesting a nationwide release. On the restaurant side, McDaniel said everyone from small family-owned spots to chain restaurants reached out to partner. “We’ve had a surge of investor interest from folks who see that this is where food delivery is going,” he noted.
McDaniel declined to comment on upcoming funding deals but said he expects to share news soon. BiteSight faces competition from well-funded giants like DoorDash and Uber Eats, but McDaniel believes being a startup in the AI era gives them an edge. While competitors needed hundreds of engineers early on, BiteSight leverages AI tools that perform ten times the work of a human at a fraction of the cost.
“By using AI to avoid massive overhead and infrastructure costs, we can do much more with much less and pass on the savings to small business owners and customers while maintaining healthy margins,” he said.
What also sets BiteSight apart is its focus on food and video. “We’re trying to be the go-to app for the generation that discovers everything through social recommendations and short-form video,” McDaniel said.