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Miki Kuusi

Head of DoorDash International, DoorDash · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveoperatorinvestor@mikikuusi ↗LinkedIn ↗wolt.com ↗

He co-founded and served as CEO of the delivery platform Wolt, leading it to an acquisition by DoorDash in 2022. Earlier, he served as the founding CEO and main organizer of the European startup and technology conference Slush.

25statements → 5claims → 2claims resolved → 4.32/5average certainty → 2.12/5average debate potential → 4.3/5argument clarity · the sources → 8said about them ↓

0 supported 1 partly supported 1 contradicted 2 not yet assessed 1 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 4 assertions · 2 opinions · 11 insights · 7 disclosures · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, 2 are not yet assessed, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Miki argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
Supercell delayed the Android launch of Clash of Clans by two years
“Supercell launched Clash of Clans very famously only two years later on Android.”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 8:27 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
100% certainty 3
100% certainty 4
25% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

4.3 / 5 directness 4.6 · coherence 4.5 · precision 4.1 · compression 3.6

redirected or did not address 1 of 44 assessed questions (2%). Watch them ▸

This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →

How they sound: speaking style how? →

279 words/min while actually speaking · 15.9 um and uh per 1k words · 5.6 false starts per 1k · 29.1% of pauses land inside a clause

English is their second language (first language: Finnish). These numbers measure fluency in English. They do not measure thought; the argument clarity score above is read from substance alone.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 14,350 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 6/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 4/10
setup questions received 25%

Everything Miki Kuusi said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion
Founders who personally interview their first 1,000 hires show lack of trust
“The methodology of the founder or the, like the, all powerful CEO, it's almost like creating this picture of someone that, you know, like, you know, hires everyone up until a thousand employees, which to me tells that, oh, you don't trust your people to hire p…”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 15:34 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Hire high-potential candidates before they achieve major scaling milestones
“One mistake people make in hiring is that they're looking for the person that has already done you know, what you need. And you're like, we need to hire that person. He's done this before. He's going to do it for us. And it's going to be amazing. But what peop…”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 30:00 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Kees Koolen: A startup's first recruiter is its most important early hire
“One of the things he said to me was that, Miki, the most important hire you're going to make next is that you need a great recruiter. That's the most important hire, your first recruiter.”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 38:51 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Wolt received an acquisition offer at 3x its Series B valuation
“We even had an acquisition offer at three extra valuation that we raised money at.”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 55:20 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Sequoia research shows startup momentum is statistically difficult to lose once achieved
“Out of looking at 400 entrepreneurs, if you have achieved momentum, that momentum is statistically so incredibly difficult to lose.”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 58:28 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Kuusi: Advice from successful founders suffers from extreme survivorship bias
“Every advice you hear from an entrepreneur, Always be mindful about that, because like, you know, first of all, entrepreneurs, they're successful telling advice. It's like a lottery millionaire telling that, you know, keep on betting. You're gonna eventually w…”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 59:41 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Kuusi predicts future e-commerce delivery standard will be 10 to 30 minutes
“Like, you know, the future of e-commerce is mobile. The future of logistics and delivery is like, you know, not next day not, you know, even same day, not even next two hours, you know, next 10, 20, 30 minutes.”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 1:15:05 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Wolt granted stock options to every employee, including customer support staff
“In vault up until very late stages, every single employee, even in customer support was a stockholder of vault or shareholder or an option holder of vault.”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 16:49 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Partly supported
Wolt maintained a three-year PR blackout despite raising Series A and B
“We've raised our series A, it was ten million euros in January of 2016. The next round we've raised was in January 2018, two years later, that was our twenty seven million euro series B, and then we raised our series C in April of 2019, which we announced in J…”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 33:48 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Kuusi: Twitter adds very little value to building a company
“I've noticed Twitter adds very little value in company building, unfortunately.”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 46:35 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Kuusi rejected Wolt's first acquisition offer in 2015 despite being personally broke
“When we got our first acquisition offer. This was 2015. We're a one year old as a company and we get an acquisition offer, which had like cash or stock involved. And I was like, you know, 2015. I was 26. It was a big amount of money. Like when I started Walt, …”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 56:07 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Kuusi Held Personal Veto Power Over Any Wolt Acquisition
“So I had actually a personal blocking right to any M&A transaction of vault. So vault was not possible to get acquired by another company without, I actually have a placate. This is a placate for Allowing the company to be sold.”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 1:04:40 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Kuusi: Economic downturns and tech layoffs are ideal times to build startups
“When the world looks, you know, as fucked it is right now, that's a really good place to be starting something new. Because there's going to be a lot of things that get cleaned up from the economy. You know, right now you can see like a lot of tech tech compan…”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 0:36 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Miki Kuusi: Every e-commerce company is as much logistics as consumer brand
“The biggest realization was that, you know, every e-commerce company is as much of a consumer facing brand as they are a logistics company, because, you know, there's a coupling of. Things going online and people wanting things to come to them.”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 4:38 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Kuusi: High performance requires focusing on the smallest possible subset of priorities
“Like focus means making difficult decisions to put all of your effort in the smallest possible subset of things. And if I now think about performance, performance is the ability to decide what exactly are the things that you need to get right and getting that …”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 8:33 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Wolt cut all non-restaurant offerings for five years to focus on delivery
“And for the five first years of our existence, restaurant, food, delivery. When we saw that it worked, we were like cut everything else. This is really difficult to do. We're only going to focus on doing this with great, quick, consistent customer experience a…”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 9:18 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Kuusi: Delegating big responsibilities drives employee attention to minor details
“I think how you get people to care about the small things is that you give them ownership over the big things. And when people are responsible for the big things, they start to care about the small things that contribute to those big things.”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 17:48 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Kuusi: Growth companies are glorified recruiting operations
“What are growth companies? Growth companies are glorified recruiting operations. And every single senior person in a growth company has to become a great recruiter.”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 31:43 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Kuusi: Cross-time-zone expansion severely stresses small engineering teams
“The reason we stick to stuck to Europe in the early years was that time zones are expensive. Like longer flights are more expensive. If you need to support like, you know, customers six hours times away, it means there's going to be engineers up every night pr…”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 35:41 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Kuusi: Wolt avoided layoffs by maintaining a conservative spending strategy
“We haven't had to go through any layoffs, God forbid, like in the current landscape, at least so far. And the reason is that we were just always very careful. Because we were always like running out of money.”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 42:22 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Wolt laid off one-third of its staff in summer 2017
“We had to part ways with one third of our you know, staff in the summer of 2017.”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 50:16 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Kuusi: A tech company's biggest impact is its talent ecosystem, not its product
“Like if you think about like, you know companies like PayPal and Skype and so forth, like, you know, these companies, I would argue the biggest impact of those companies wasn't the services they created. It's the people that they touched and what those people …”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 1:13:00 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Contradicted
Supercell delayed the Android launch of Clash of Clans by two years
“Supercell launched Clash of Clans very famously only two years later on Android.”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 8:27 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Kuusi: Biggest founder sacrifice is personal mental bandwidth and freedom
“So someone once asked me a bit out of the blue that what has been the biggest thing you've had to sacrifice to build, you know, do these things and to build your company and your career. And after, you know, thinking about it for a while, I came to the conclus…”
Miki Kuusi Nov 28, 2022 ▶ 25:05 Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Show 1statements(1 left)

The other half of the tape: Miki Kuusi's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 7 times in 5 episodes on 20VC. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 3Oscar Pierre 2Rob Lacher 1Johannes Reck 1

Statements about Miki Kuusi, by other people (1)

Assertion Supported
Wolt received 68 Series B rejections before 83North invested
“For his Series B, he got 68 rejections before Laurel Bowden at 83 North said yes.”
Harry Stebbings Dec 21, 2022 ▶ 3:45 20VC Special: How To Fundraise Like a Pro: How to Size and Price a Round, How to Create FOMO and Urgency in a Fundraise, How to Structure Angel Allocations, The 7 Deadly Sins of Fundraising Decks, The 3 Signs a Potential Investor is Bad News

Every mention by year

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953 · 20VC with Harry Nov 28, 2022 58m
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