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Toast immpresses on debut; FDA authorizes booster shots for people over 65

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 Toast’s surge past $30 billion in market cap in its stock market debut on Wednesday turned all three of its co-founders into billionaires.

Steve Fredette, Aman Narang, and Jonathan Grimm started the company in 2012 after their prior employer, Endeca, was sold to Oracle for $1 billion. They stayed home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Endeca was based, and built their restaurant hardware and software system by testing products on local bars, restaurants, and cafes.

Fredette, Toast’s president, owns 33.2 million shares, for a stake worth $2.1 billion as of Wednesday’s close. Grimm, the company’s chief technology officer, controls 26.8 million shares, worth $1.7 billion, while Narang, the chief operating officer, owns 24.6 million shares, for a stake valued at just over $1.5 billion.

One of the most popular products of the company has been mobile ordering, which consumers use from their devices to avoid physical menus and to pay automatically without waiting for a check. It’s exactly what the company wanted to do eight years ago when the technology was far from ready.

The three founders and other insiders are restricted from selling the stock for 180 days as part of the lockup agreement, so the value of their stakes could go up or down dramatically by the time they can start cashing out.

But based on the stock’s debut price Wednesday, the trio joins a growing list of tech executives and founders who are seeing their net worth swell during a booming year for IPOs and expanding tech valuations.

The founders of Coinbase, UiPath, Roblox, and Robinhood are among others who have joined the three-comma club in 2021.

At least 19 tech companies that have gone public this year are now worth at least $10 billion.

Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid-19 booster shots for people 65 and older and other vulnerable Americans six months after they complete their first two doses, making many Americans eligible to receive the shots now.

The FDA’s decision largely follows recommendations given Friday by its key vaccine advisory committee meeting that stretched to a long 8 hours. The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee voted 16-2 against distributing the vaccines to Americans 16 and older, before unanimously embracing an alternate plan to give boosters to older Americans and those at a high risk of suffering from severe illness if they get the virus.

The FDA granted emergency use authorization to administer the shots to older Americans and people from 18- to 64-years-old with medical conditions that place them at risk of getting severely sick.

Though Americans 65 and older make up roughly 17% of the U.S. population, they are the most at risk of dying from Covid, accounting for more than 77% of all Covid deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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