Everyone knows the moment. The meal is over, the conversation is winding down, and then the check lands in the middle of the table. The mood shifts. Someone reaches for their phone calculator, someone else offers to just cover it, and a small, familiar awkwardness settles over the group. That moment, repeated millions of times a night across the world, is the problem Akam Hamak and his co-founder built TabSlice to solve.
TabSlice is a hospitality-focused platform that simplifies splitting a restaurant bill. Hamak co-founded it and serves as CEO. He built the product with his girlfriend, Melissa, whose original idea inspired it; his part was turning that idea into working software. The framing matters: it is built with restaurants and their guests in mind, designed for the realities of dining rather than bolted on as a generic utility. The goal is to make an ordinary, slightly uncomfortable moment smoother for everyone at the table, and easier for the businesses serving them.
The product is a clean expression of how Hamak thinks about opportunity. “Creating products that solve everyday problems” is how he describes a core part of his focus, and few problems are more everyday than the check at the end of a meal. It is not a glamorous problem. It will never trend. But its sheer frequency is exactly what makes it worth solving well.
Frequency is the strategic insight buried in TabSlice. A friction that people hit constantly is a friction a good product can keep relieving, day after day, which makes it a durable foundation for a business rather than a one-time novelty. Hamak is drawn to that durability. He would rather solve a small problem people have every week than a large one they have once in a lifetime.
Building TabSlice also let Hamak do something his acquisition work does not: create from scratch. Much of his portfolio consists of internet businesses he bought and improved, but TabSlice is an original product, conceived and built rather than purchased. It is the part of his work where his builder instinct, honed since his teenage coding years, gets to run.
That instinct is well suited to the task. Hamak has been writing software since before AI tools made development accessible, and an unglamorous, high-frequency consumer problem is precisely the kind of challenge a seasoned builder can turn into a clean, dependable tool. The hard part of a product like this is not flash; it is getting the simple thing exactly right, every time, for every table.
Hospitality is a deliberate choice of arena. Restaurants operate on thin margins and high volume, and anything that smooths the guest experience without adding friction for staff has real value. By framing TabSlice around the needs of operators as well as diners, Hamak positions it as a tool that serves the business, not just the individual splitting their share. That dual focus reflects his broader interest in products that create value on multiple sides.
TabSlice does not stand alone. It sits inside a wider body of work: acquiring and operating internet businesses, investing across digital assets and Florida real estate, and running it all through his group of companies from Miami. The platform is one node in a diversified system, the piece where Hamak builds rather than buys, surrounded by the assets he holds for the long term.
It also fits his temperament about value. Everyday problems do not promise overnight fame, and Hamak is fine with that. “My focus on compounding value over many years rather than chasing short-term trends” describes TabSlice as much as it describes his investing. A product that quietly solves a real problem can compound its usefulness, and its worth, over a long horizon.
There is something characteristic in the modesty of the idea. A founder chasing headlines might have picked a flashier problem. Hamak picked the check at dinner, because the check at dinner is real, recurring, and unsolved enough to matter. That is the kind of bet he likes: small in concept, broad in application, durable over time.
Hospitality is a deliberate and revealing choice of arena. It is a high-volume, thin-margin industry where small frictions repeat thousands of times a day, which means even a modest improvement to a single recurring moment can add up to real value across an operator’s service. Hamak’s decision to design for restaurants and their guests together, rather than building a generic utility, reflects an instinct for where a product can create value on more than one side of a transaction.
The product also marks the boundary between Hamak the buyer and Hamak the builder. Much of his enterprise consists of businesses he acquired and improved, where the creative work is optimization. TabSlice is the opposite: a problem he chose to solve from a blank page, drawing on the building instincts he developed as a teenager. It is the part of his portfolio where he gets to make something new, and it shows that his preference for acquisition is a strategic choice rather than a limit on what he can do.
For diners tired of the post-meal math and operators looking to smooth the final moment of service, TabSlice is Hamak’s answer, built by someone who clearly believes the best products often hide in the most ordinary problems. Details on TabSlice and his other ventures are available at his website.
Learn more: akamhamak.com | Connect on TikTok
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