The Ledger
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Richter: Launching a HelloFresh competitor today would be absolute insanity
“Now, if I look at that from the outside, it would be absolute insanity to launch a competitor to us as of today, given that for 10 years we worked through a lot of these complex problems.”
Early HelloFresh employees were expected to work until 10 PM
“I think back in those days Was very much expected of everybody to stay in the office till 10 PM.”
HelloFresh came within days of bankruptcy twice during its first two years
“So I think in the early days, there were one or two occasions where we were literally like three to five days before kind of like thinking about filing for chapter 11, which I guess is the right term, at least in, in US terms, but very, very close because in t…”
Richter: Ignoring competitors as inspiration is extremely arrogant for founders
“So in my view, competition is, is a constant source of innovation and inspiration. I think it's extremely arrogant to not pay super close attention to competition. And I'm not only talking about your direct competitors. I'm also talking about in our case, all …”
Richter: HelloFresh could not have IPO'd at any other time
“I think the way that our category traded would have not allowed us to IPO the business at any other point in time.”
Richter calls acquiring ready-meal startup Factor HelloFresh's best capital allocation
“But the best capital allocation decision nonetheless was probably one of the M&A deals that we did. We bought a company called Factor. That's a ready meal company in the US, which has been growing very nicely since we actually applied a lot of the muscles that…”
Harley Miller fought to invest in HelloFresh when meal kits were dismissed
“I remember pounding my fist to invest in HelloFresh and still not too shabby at a ten billion dollar market cap, right? It was a lot more six months ago, but nonetheless, it's company and it was space that was still nascent.”
HelloFresh would never have started if founders knew the operational complexities
“And I think if you had talked to industry experts, whether that's industry experts in a CPG company, In a direct to consumer company, even though that concept didn't really exist back then, or at a supermarket, at a, at another food company, they all would hav…”
Richter: HelloFresh is one of the largest DTC companies outside China
“I think we're today one of the largest direct to consumer companies outside of China. I don't really know any direct to consumer company that is Much larger than we are”
HelloFresh CEO admits past share buyback yielded poor IRR
“In the rear view mirror, one of our share buybacks was at much higher levels than where the share price is trading today. So if I'm looking at the IRR of that investment, that was probably not a great investment.”
HelloFresh owns two of North America's three largest cooking facilities
“At the moment with Factor, we have two of the three biggest cooking facilities in North America. Guess what the other one is? The one that we're not owning of the top three cooking facilities in the U.S. Disney World Orlando.”
HelloFresh's first ready-meal venture hit $15M run rate before failing
“Six months after launch, we were at 10, fifteen million dollar run rate with a small brand that we launched, but the meals were terrible. Like we got really bad recipe ratings. Customers didn't stick around. It was basically a leaky bucket because the meals we…”
HelloFresh generated $1.5B in operating cash flow over four years
“Over the last four years, we've generated about 1.5 billion in cash flow from operations. Of those 1.5 billion that we generated, we allocated roughly nine hundred million Into making our own operations better. So in our fulfillment network, in our last mile l…”
Richter was required to provide 5-year plans for early HelloFresh rounds
“I believe for my seed round and for my series A round, I've been asked about providing business plans for the next five years, which were obviously all made up, et cetera.”
HelloFresh directly integrated 1,500 US suppliers to boost per-order margins
“That at certain points in time, we felt that really going from five wholesale suppliers to integrating with 1500 suppliers all over the US directly to capture that margin upside, to get much better freshness and quality, that this is something that drives a lo…”
HelloFresh raised $300M total up to IPO, matching cumulative burn
“Up to IPO, we raised around about three hundred million. And that was the sort of like we had a cumulative cash burn of about three hundred million before we actually started generating cash flow.”
HelloFresh never outsourced performance marketing to maintain full control of CAC
“We also never said we want to outsource anything that has to do with performance marketing, for example, because as a direct to consumer company, right? That's one of the biggest sensitivity on your LTV to CACs is your CAC. So I really want to understand that …”
HelloFresh achieved cash flow break-even three years post-IPO
“And since we have started generating cash flow, I think about three years post IPO, we had our cash flow break even.”
Richter: Recessions cause consumers to cut restaurant spending first
“One of the first buckets where people start saving is they're going less to restaurants. That's definitely what you have seen in previous recessions is That the share of out of home food has actually declined, whereas the share of food that you consume inside …”
Richter: HelloFresh never had structure or ratchets in private rounds
“We never had any structure. We never had any ratchets.”
HelloFresh operates 42 heavily automated fulfillment centers globally
“We're running 42 different fulfillment centers with heavy automation in those fulfillment centers around the world.”
Early HelloFresh truck collapse shut down highway with 10,000 spilled potatoes
“I remember one very vividly, which was, I think we had a new record week. We had to source, I don't know the number any longer, but something like 10,000 potatoes. And you actually source 10,000 potatoes, which is like two big truckloads. And then the trucks a…”
HelloFresh operates two separate $1B business lines
“Not only two billion dollar business lines like we have today with our meal kits and our ready meals”
Lacher: Visionaries Club's LPs are exclusively unicorn founders and family business owners
“Look, I think the main difference, if you look at visionaries, is that on, on our investor side, we only have successful entrepreneurs. On the one hand side, we have 30 unicorn founders that have built great digital companies, like the founders of Miro, UiPath…”