A famously lean operation, ZeroCater has built a $100 million-plus company after raising only $1.5 million in its 2011 seed round.

Founded in 2009, ZeroCater was born from a frustration: founder Arram Sabeti sought a way to ease the difficulty of feeding a corporate team easily, healthfully, and efficiently. After more than a year of bootstrapping, ZeroCater was accepted to Silicon Valley-based startup accelerator Y Combinator in 2011. Today, ZeroCater partners with independent restaurants, food trucks, and private chefs to bring meals to offices in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Chicago, Washington, DC, and Austin. In August 2015, the company announced that it had surpassed $100 million in sales. It has continued to grow over the past year and now serves over 1,000 companies tens of thousands of meals each day.

With this new round of funding, ZeroCater will expand its product and engineering teams. 'We're focused on building a scalable and responsible business, and typical venture capital practices didn't resonate with our business model,' says Sabeti. The company sought to avoid firms that push to invest more money without focusing on the unique needs of the business. Its decision to partner with two smaller, more flexible funds resonated better with its overarching mission.

'We seek to partner with and help build industry leaders,' says Krishna K. Gupta, Managing Partner at Romulus Capital. 'We also also love lean and hungry teams. Arram and his team are really exemplary in the way they've built this company, and we're confident they can continue to out-execute others in the massive corporate catering industry.' ZeroCater's focus on lean growth and smart execution has resulted in its becoming the largest player in the corporate catering space.

About ZeroCater

Arram Sabeti founded ZeroCater in 2009 while working in the Bay Area. Based in the heart of Silicon Valley, ZeroCater provides a concierge corporate catering service, bringing local food vendors onsite to clients' offices. ZeroCater seeks to increase companies' productivity by providing delicious, family-style meals to employees.

With operations in San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, Washington, DC, and Austin, ZeroCater has grown into the largest catering provider of its kind in the world. For more information, visit www.zerocater.com.

About Romulus Capital

With approximately $150 million in assets under management, Romulus Capital is one of the fastest-growing venture capital firms in the United States. Founded in an MIT dorm room in 2008, Romulus invests in and helps build early-stage technology and science-enabled businesses, partnering frequently with companies that leverage technology to solve problems across industries. Learn more at romuluscap.com.