The Exchanges

Q One element I do just have to discuss before we do a quick fire is regulation. Regulation is difficult to implement, and sometimes poorly done. When I look at the market that you operate a lot of time in, it seems that Uber have a lot of freedom to do what they want to do, and you maybe don't. Is regulation enacted fairly?

A Yeah, first of all, it's, it's, uh, it's, of course the geek economy is, is, uh, needs more regulation, right? It's a reality that has hit, uh, has grown everywhere in the world and operating this business across 23 different markets with all governments realizing that they need to regulate it somehow, right? Because it's growing so much and so many people are working and generating revenues from it. It's been tough. Like, it's been tough. We have to build, uh, public affairs themes in every single country, etc. And unfortunately, the, the, yeah, the country where we suffer from regulation the most is Spain. I'm not going to go into the details, but it's so extreme that I'm now in a, in a criminal process for, uh, so the, the, yeah, the prosecutor, the general attorney accused me with six years of prison for, uh, running with a freelancer's model, which is something that has been validated by judges in Spain up to 14 times. Um, it has gotten really political, but, but the reality is that I'm there. I had to go declare, uh, three months ago. I think it's the only country in the world where a founder, a CEO of a, of a digital platform, uh, has to be, you know, declaring with criminal accusations.

AI assessment note: “unfortunately, the, the, yeah, the country where we suffer from regulation the most is Spain.”

Q When do you think you have product market fit? You said a year there. When do you think you have product market fit?

A For a very long time, I could see we were delivering a service that, uh, that people liked, but we had very negative unit economics. And there was a, there was a very, most of the investor community didn't believe that this new industry would turn into profitability, right? So that's not really product market fit because you're delivering a service that people like, but, uh, but at the price that people don't want to pay. So it took a while until you started seeing the power of network effects, you know, the fleet of couriers. Growing, getting, gaining all the efficiencies. And then at some point, which is the key of this business, of course, is you start moving the revenue stream to the, what we call the, the merchant, not the partner, not the, the restaurants, the stores, the groceries. So you, you can start making the service cheaper and cheaper for the customer.

AI assessment note: “took a while until you started seeing the power of network effects”

Q You mentioned some of the other competitors, you mentioned at your deliveries of the world, you raised a lot more money. If your other competitors are raising a lot of money, do you have to raise a lot of money?

A We raised as much money as we, as we could. We, in the, in the seven years of, uh, of fundraising, I could never choose. I, I never said no to an investor. That's how little optionality I have. And back to that Brown that I was telling before, the series A. When there were no VCs left to pitch to, Glovo was saved because I was in a, I was in an event of the FCB, Football Club Barcelona, whose sponsor back then was Rakuten. Rakuten is the Amazon of Japan. And Mikitani was, which is the founder, he was there in the party and, uh, in the event and, and, and he met me and for some reason he liked the company. He had seen the backpacks in the streets of the couriers and, and he decided to lead the run. So it's, it's, you can work really.

AI assessment note: “We raised as much money as we, as we could.”

Q You mentioned layoffs in Brazil. Super hard thing to do. I do want to talk about talent. Um, building a business is merely a collection of people. Uh, you said some great things before about talent. You said to me before about rewriting values. Everyone might, you know, I speak to mostly Americans, and they love mission and values. Um, what are your biggest lessons on rewriting values?

A It's something that I've pushed, uh, In, in my, in my, in the executive team every single year, right? So we block a few hours, we look at the values, and even though 12 months ago we all agreed on every single word on how to define each one of the six values that we have, every time we sit down and we look at them, we're like, ah, this doesn't feel right anymore. We should, we can improve it with this word or changing this or maybe adding a new value, right? We haven't changed the values so much. But we have proactively worked on them on a yearly basis. I think the problem was when we got to like a thousand employees, uh, that's when we messed up the culture. That's when we, and it, it was all my fault because.

AI assessment note: “we block a few hours, we look at the values”

Q You mentioned some of the other competitors, you mentioned at your deliveries of the world, you raised a lot more money. If your other competitors are raising a lot of money, do you have to raise a lot of money?

A We raised as much money as we, as we could. We, in the, in the seven years of, uh, of fundraising, I could never choose. I, I never said no to an investor. That's how little optionality I have. And back to that Brown that I was telling before, the series A. When there were no VCs left to pitch to, Glovo was saved because I was in a, I was in an event of the FCB, Football Club Barcelona, whose sponsor back then was Rakuten. Rakuten is the Amazon of Japan. And Mikitani was, which is the founder, he was there in the party and, uh, in the event and, and, and he met me and for some reason he liked the company. He had seen the backpacks in the streets of the couriers and, and he decided to lead the run. So it's, it's, you can work really.

AI assessment note: “We raised as much money as we, as we could.”

Q Do you have any other big management lessons? You've managed now thousands of people for years. Any other big ones?

A Look, I've had two, two stages at Glovo. One was hyperscaling. And, and as I said before, I think in hyperscaling, things can work with the CEO being away fundraising, because there's just so much energy. Into the business that, that is transmitted. Um, and it, you know, and actually that's what I had to do. I was all day fundraising. No, I was almost until six hours a day fundraising. And then I, I worked in the business. Um, and then my new stage was when, you know, after acquisition of the labor hero, which coincided when we started growing at, I know, 30% year on year. And, and when you're at this growth rates, which, which are good. It's not hyper scale or hyper growth. Um, that's when you need, you cannot sit back. No, you need to be injecting velocity and energy into what I said before, not into any single meeting where you go.

AI assessment note: “you cannot sit back. No, you need to be injecting velocity and energy”

Q When we were chatting before, you said about speeding up market expansion to capture time. What did you mean by that?

A So look, going back to our history, right? So we, we cracked Spain, um, And we cracked it. And I can tell the story later because we, we, we, we unlocked the biggest deal of all history of food delivery, which was McDonald's. So this is back in turn. The CEO of McDonald's in Chicago, uh, sends a message to all the countries, uh, and says, Hey, we, we have to go into delivery and we have one exclusive partner, which is Uber Eats. That was in 2018. Back then we were competing against three players in Spain. Uber. Deliveroo and, and just eat. And when we read the news, we were like, you know, we're, we're screwed. Like if, if Uber gets this deal and can start delivering McDonald's for one or two year delivery, we like, we shut down the company for sure. So we, we found who the decision maker, decision maker was. It was a lady called Suzette. And we went to Madrid. At least I traveled there like, uh, 40 times to, to see her. And we convinced her. To, to break the global exclusivity and give us a test. For some reason, she, she, she trusted us more than above Uber Eats and, and she gave us that test and that was a huge inflection point.

AI assessment note: “So look, going back to our history, right? So we, we cracked Spain”

Q leadership, but the challenge is some people find that abrasive and bluntly too direct. And part of me listens to this and goes, haha, I'm right to be this way. Like brilliant. I'm not affected by kind of bluntly weak people who get offended by it, but then you do have talented people who you want to feel empowered and opinionated and great. How do you think about that balance?

A The day I realized I was, uh, I was, uh, uh, ruining the culture was in a, in a Christmas party of Glovo. And I, I was in a, in a conversation with a few engineers. At that moment, there was a company poaching a lot of our engineers and that company, I'm not going to name the, who it is, but they, they were, they, they, they worked really hard there. Now they had a very hard working culture. And I heard one engineer saying, yeah, I was also poached, but I decided not to go there because they worked really hard there. And when I said that, when I heard that, I was like, shit, like, it's not only that the, the, the intensity starts going down of the company, it's that you're losing. The hardworking people to another company that is achieving to set and keep that intensity, right? So it's also a network effect that you need to keep working on.

AI assessment note: “it's not only that the, the, the intensity starts going down of the company”

Q When we were chatting before, you said about speeding up market expansion to capture time. What did you mean by that?

A So look, going back to our history, right? So we, we cracked Spain, um, And we cracked it. And I can tell the story later because we, we, we, we unlocked the biggest deal of all history of food delivery, which was McDonald's. So this is back in turn. The CEO of McDonald's in Chicago, uh, sends a message to all the countries, uh, and says, Hey, we, we have to go into delivery and we have one exclusive partner, which is Uber Eats. That was in 2018. Back then we were competing against three players in Spain. Uber. Deliveroo and, and just eat. And when we read the news, we were like, you know, we're, we're screwed. Like if, if Uber gets this deal and can start delivering McDonald's for one or two year delivery, we like, we shut down the company for sure. So we, we found who the decision maker, decision maker was. It was a lady called Suzette. And we went to Madrid. At least I traveled there like, uh, 40 times to, to see her. And we convinced her. To, to break the global exclusivity and give us a test. For some reason, she, she, she trusted us more than above Uber Eats and, and she gave us that test and that was a huge inflection point.

AI assessment note: “going back to our history, right? So we, we cracked Spain”

Q leadership, but the challenge is some people find that abrasive and bluntly too direct. And part of me listens to this and goes, haha, I'm right to be this way. Like brilliant. I'm not affected by kind of bluntly weak people who get offended by it, but then you do have talented people who you want to feel empowered and opinionated and great. How do you think about that balance?

A The day I realized I was, uh, I was, uh, uh, ruining the culture was in a, in a Christmas party of Glovo. And I, I was in a, in a conversation with a few engineers. At that moment, there was a company poaching a lot of our engineers and that company, I'm not going to name the, who it is, but they, they were, they, they, they worked really hard there. Now they had a very hard working culture. And I heard one engineer saying, yeah, I was also poached, but I decided not to go there because they worked really hard there. And when I said that, when I heard that, I was like, shit, like, it's not only that the, the, the intensity starts going down of the company, it's that you're losing. The hardworking people to another company that is achieving to set and keep that intensity, right? So it's also a network effect that you need to keep working on.

AI assessment note: “The day I realized I was, uh, I was, uh, uh, ruining the culture”