The Ledger
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Mignot: Building venture-backed hyper-growth startups requires seven-day workweeks
“If you look at the most incredible companies in the past, you know, you look at Revolut, you look at Deliveroo, all of these companies, the amount of work that these founders and these early teams put in was tremendous. I mean, it was seven days a week, you kn…”
Kanji: Deliveroo altered legal docs to strip Hoxton's pro-rata rights
“And then we had a weird scenario in that particular company where our pro rata rights got taken away from us, and in the legal documents, they changed the definition of who would get the pro rata, To basically, I mean, basically singling us out.”
Östberg: Deliveroo is undervalued by public markets and will continue growing profitably
“And we can argue if Deliveroo is correctly valued today, I would argue they are too low value today. I don't know. It's a profitable business. It's growing and will continue to grow and it will make more money. So, so I do think that it's clear value in that b…”
Destin: Requiring Proven Unit Economics Would Have Killed Deliveroo and PillPack
“We would never have funded Deliveroo. We would never have funded PillPack. You know, in fact, Kareem probably would never have taken in any capital because you have to project yourself into sometimes a three or four year cycle before these unit economics reall…”
Destin: Deliveroo has almost no customer overlap with Just Eat or Delivery Hero
“We have almost no overlap with Just Eat or Delivery Hero.”
Stebbings: DoorDash bought Deliveroo for $2.9B at a $1.4B premium
“Delivery is also getting bought by door dash for 2.9 billion. Just to put that in context for you guys, and I don't mean that rudely, but I'm sure you're not aware of public markets in the UK. It was valued at between 1.4 and 1.5 billion. That is a 1.4 billion…”
Östberg: Just Eat, Deliveroo, and Uber Eats are all profitable in the UK
“Just Eat, Deliveroo and Uber Eats, and they all make money in the UK, I would say decently so.”
Most European VCs Passed on Glovo, Doubting It Could Beat Uber Eats
“All the European VCs or most of them passed on us. Nobody believed in our story, you know, a bunch of kids from Barcelona beating the Deliveros and the Uber Eats of the world who were always like one step ahead in fundraising, right?”
Hudack: Deliveroo's backend logistics mattered far more than consumer app
“Most of the work in Deliveroo for a really long time was actually in what we called the Delivery organization. We created an organization called Delivery, and that was core machine learning systems, dispatch systems, rider pay, rider app, all that kind of stuf…”
Mike Hudack: Deliveroo was late on 40% of deliveries when he joined
“We were late. 40% more, you know, 40% of the time.”
Hudack: Products should empower consumer trade-offs rather than restrict choices
“One of the great insights, one of the things that I really learned here was that it's so important to allow people to make their own choices. It's just so important to let people make their own choices. Like, if somebody wants a soggy burger, and you've given …”
Deliveroo CEO Will Shu admits he is not a professional manager
“Practical, tactical elements of management, frankly, are things that you learn at other companies. And we're building this muscle today, but that's one area where I'm like, hey man, there's a million people better at that than me. I'm not a professional CEO, r…”
Will Shu: Over 50% of Deliveroo riders work on multiple platforms
“Over 50% of our riders work on multiple platforms.”
Destin: Stride does not compete on price or match inflated valuation bids
“And, you know, I've definitely gone into negotiations saying we are, in fact, deliver is a good example. We are not going to match the other prices. I'm sorry. I'm not going to go up to the level of people who are desperate to get in and are competing based on…”
Accel would back Deliveroo founder Will Shu on virtually any idea
“Will Shue over at Deliveroo. I mean, the guy could get anything off the ground. I think it's just a level of ambition and sheer bloody mindedness that makes you want to back him no matter what company. He could come in with Facebook for dogs and I think we'd p…”
Destin: Accel Won Deliveroo Deal Despite Below-Market Valuation Offer
“We dug into microeconomics fairly hard, and then it was an insane feeding frenzy, because I think they had five or six competing term sheets. We were in first, we were well below market valuation”
Bek: Luciana Lixandru is Sequoia's best company picker
“That one's easy. Luciana Alessandro my partner who actually Brought me into Sequoia. We worked together at Excel before, so I've worked with Luciana for most of my career now. She, you know, when I met her, she had just invested in Deliveroo then she did Frame…”
Mignot: Deliveroo's core product is sub-20 minute delivery speed, not the app
“Look at, you know, Will at Deliveroo, for example, his insight was very much the product is the delivery, which sounds obvious, but it's not the digital experience. It's the speed and quality of the delivery, and it has to come below 20 minutes. That's the, if…”
Östberg: Antitrust regulations prevent food delivery consolidation in the UK
“Now, I don't think that there is, it's possible to consolidate UK and a few other market due to high trust. Reasons. So you can probably not consult at Deliveroo and just eat the Uber and Deliveroo and so on.”
Glovo's Paris Expansion Failed Due to Launching Years Behind Competitors
“Milan worked really well. Paris didn't work well. And the main reason was because in Paris we were late. No, we were launching maybe like two or three years after Deliveroo and Uber Eats launched. So we never gained the scale and the leadership to be a sustain…”
Kanji: Deliveroo grew 5-7% week-on-week prior to Hoxton's seed check
“And the, and he was growing five, seven percent, week on week.”
Kanji: Hoxton Ventures achieved a 34x realized return on Deliveroo
“The best investment on paper was, I mean, not paper, like, realized was Deliveroo. It was about 34 X on the first check.”
Hudack: Deliveroo fundamentally has only one product—food
“Deliveroo has one product really, which is food. And then everything else is kind of a feature or a way of delivering that.”
Hudack: Logistics apps ship fast for brand promises, not growth metrics
“At Facebook you may ship really quickly because you believe that shipping really quickly is the best way to make the graph go up. At a real time logistics company, which is moving food for people who get cranky if it doesn't arrive in 32 minutes, or 15 minutes…”
Will Shu: Tracking rider drops per hour leads to gamed metrics
“We don't track drops per hour because it's a number that's highly prone to gaming by the teams.”
Deliveroo CEO Will Shu has never had formal mentors or advisors
“I've never developed a sort of regular relationship with someone where you meet them once a week or once a month. The sort of advice has been more ad hoc as needed.”
Shu: Grocery accounts for over 7% of Deliveroo's business
“Our grocery business, I think we said in our H-one results is over seven percent of our business now, right?”
Will Shu: Monitoring short-term stock price makes leaders worse
“I think that, you know, focusing on a share price in the short term is something that's probably inevitable, right? People do it. I certainly do it, right? I'm sure my employees do it. But it actually doesn't help do your job in any way at all. It actually, it…”
Will Shu: European online food delivery penetration remains at just 3%
“Online penetration of food is three to five percent still today. Now, I think the US sort of leapfrogged a lot during COVID, but if you look at Europe, It's still in that, you know, one meal out of 21 a week is online. So I think we're super, super early.”
Will Shu: Food delivery unit economics require hyper-local order density
“What we realized pretty quickly was driving density of orders would actually make the unit economics work pretty quickly, but it's kind of hard to do that all at once, you know, let's say 200 cities, because this is a hyper local marketplace, right?”
Deliveroo Is the Fastest-Growing Startup Fred Destin Has Ever Backed
“Deliveroo is the fastest growing startup I've been involved with.”
Biggart: B2C food tech is crowded, but B2B catering software has few competitors
“What's interesting with our market is there is a huge explosion of B to C food technology offerings. I'm thinking of seamless. I'm thinking of Grubhub, Deliveroo, Just Eat in the UK big, big technology platforms making it easier for consumers to order their pi…”
Kanji: Hoxton Sold Out of Deliveroo Fully at IPO
“We sold out a delivery at the IPO. We thought it was a, we thought it was like very Fairly valued at the time.”
Kanji: Hoxton invested approximately £1M in Deliveroo's initial round
“We put in just around a million of that first round.”
Lixandru: Deliveroo achieved early viral growth with virtually zero marketing spend
“This was pretty much no marketing, all word of mouth, and you could really tell they had hit the nail on the head in terms of customer demand”
Will Shu personally performed Deliveroo food deliveries for a full year
“I did the most unscalable things. I did deliveries for an entire year. I, you know, signed up every restaurant at nighttime worked on product.”
Deliveroo skipped investment bankers because of Will Shu's finance background
“Look, we didn't use a banker because we never used a banker. I come from finance, so I understand, you know, the concept of a participating preferred, and, you know, I can have a sort of high-level understanding of this stuff.”
Will Shu self-funded Deliveroo's 2012 launch with 30,000 pounds
“I funded the company myself. It's not like we had any money. It was a very different fundraising environment in 2012. So I had savings, you know, I put in 30,000 dollars or pounds.”
Deliveroo launched with only three initial restaurant sign-ups
“So before that, we were setting everything up, and I could only get three restaurants to sign up.”
Will Shu personally signed Deliveroo's first 50 restaurants
“But I signed up every single restaurant up until probably, you know, restaurant number 50, and then I hired a guy called Justin, who's still at the company, and he, him and I worked on that side of things.”
Deliveroo raised over $1.7 billion prior to its 2021 IPO
“Prior to their IPO earlier this year, Will raised over 1.7 billion dollars for the company from some of the best in the business, including Excel, Index, General Catalyst, Green Oaks and more.”
Deliveroo's 12 markets represent a $1.8 trillion total addressable market
“If you think about the tan of the 12 markets we're in between grocery and restaurant food, it's 1.2 trillion pounds or 1.8 trillion dollars, right?”
Shu: Deliveroo CEO still completes rider deliveries every few weeks
“I was a delivery writer for a year every day. I do the job, you know, every few weeks now. I just did it in Paris last week when I was there.”
Will Shu: Deliveroo will continue investing heavily in dark kitchens
“Today, some markets, it's a really big part of our business, and we're going to continue to invest a lot in these kitchens.”
Destin: Deliveroo Received Seven Term Sheets At 20 Employees
“Well, when I spoke to Will Shue at Deliveroo, there were 20 people in the company. It wasn't as early as what we usually do, but, you know, he had seven term sheets on the table.”
Hoxton Ventures' early portfolio includes Deliveroo, Darktrace, and Campana
“Despite Hoxton's age, their portfolio is immense, with the likes of Deliveroo, Darktrace by the famous Mike Lynch from Autonomy, and Campania, recently acquired by a twenty-four-seven customer.”