00:00:00
i just knew this city needed something better than the classic takeaways that's how i got
00:00:05
the idea for delivery i definitely know what it was like to walk in their shoes i did that job for a
00:00:11
long time i did you know five deliveries last night and that's why you know treating riders with respect and making sure
00:00:17
their voices are heard is so important to me we're running low on money because we
00:00:22
couldn't get money in for whatever 14 months hov it kicks off our users were disappearing because
00:00:27
there are no restaurants left on the platform so we see this plummeting growth i had to do the hardest thing i've ever had to do i had to
00:00:33
lay off you know a significant number of people at the company i'm so proud of what we built and i'm so
00:00:39
excited about the future but it is a hard hard job and anyone that tells you otherwise are not being honest
00:00:45
we're about to get all this money in the company and then suddenly it was just gone right
00:00:52
big number 600 million something like that and i was like holy [ __ ] you know what do we do
00:00:58
[Music]
00:01:07
delivery one of the fastest growing technology companies in europe you probably know the company you've
00:01:13
probably used it but you probably don't know where it came from you probably don't know the founder and
00:01:21
his story his unconventional very very humble journey delivery went from an idea that
00:01:28
one guy had in london while working in the city to becoming a multi-billion
00:01:34
dollar company in record time but the crazy thing about my conversation today with will is
00:01:41
he is not your typical founder he's not your typical ceo he doesn't feel like your typical
00:01:47
entrepreneur this was really his first business and the really
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puzzling thing about my conversation with will is he doesn't fit the typical
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stereotype of what you expect an entrepreneur to be and i think that is amazing because it
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just goes to show that entrepreneurs don't all share the same fundamental characteristics
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they're not all these big braggadocious characters with huge egos and you can achieve great success with
00:02:15
great humility will is an anomaly i think you'll feel that today he is incredibly
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humble he isn't that introspective doesn't analyze himself that much and he feels like a very simple straightforward
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character but what he's achieved wasn't simple it was excruciatingly difficult and as
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he'll tell you today it still is without further ado i'm stephen butler
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and this is the director ceo i hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this to
00:02:48
yourself
00:02:56
well i am sometimes when i have guests on this podcast i don't really know where to start but with you it's slightly different
00:03:02
um as i was reading about your story and i've you know as i said you before we started recording i've been i think actually in 2015 i was
00:03:08
delivered delivery's biggest customer so i'd like you to confirm that and reward me accordingly but i think i was
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um and i've watched the journey over the years and been absolutely blown away by it because of the disruption you caused to such a
00:03:21
big incumbent industry however when i read into your story i kept seeing this phrase that you'd say
00:03:27
and it really boggled my mind because it's so atypical of the guests i have on this podcast and it's that every time you're asked
00:03:33
about your childhood or whatever else you'd always respond with i'm just a normal guy and when i think about what you've
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achieved you built what is now you know at least it was at one point europe's fastest growing company
00:03:46
you couldn't possibly be just a normal guy i i don't know i mean i think i am you
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know when you're a kid i don't think you think anything is abnormal just sort of is what it is um so i grew up in
00:03:58
a place called new haven connecticut uh it's a small city um
00:04:03
about 130 000 people probably 10 square miles so it's pretty small um it's where uh yale
00:04:10
university is oh yeah yeah so we're known for that and we're known for pizza those are probably the two things
00:04:17
we're known for best pizza in the u.s that explains why you went and started delivery companies i mean yeah i was always obsessed with sally's and pepe's
00:04:24
and modern and all that um but yeah look my my parents are immigrants
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um so you know i would say growing up like uh i guess we didn't
00:04:37
probably spend very much money it's probably the best way to put it but when you're a kid you don't you don't think about that it's
00:04:43
just kind of what you your daily existence you know your
00:04:48
parents what do they do professionally my mom my mom's scientist she works at yale
00:04:54
my dad uh was an actuary he retired so they they were you know well-educated
00:05:00
sort of professional people yeah and you and that brought you over here to london
00:05:06
no no so so my story is i i yeah i grew up in new haven um i went to university in in chicago i
00:05:13
went to a college called northwestern um and then my first job out of college i worked on wall street in new york
00:05:19
because this was 2001. and i took this job on i mean i did
00:05:24
really well in in school both in university and in high school um it was just one of these jobs you did
00:05:31
when you kind of didn't know what else you wanted to really do you knew you could make money and you knew that other
00:05:38
you know successful people ambitious people kind of went down that path so how did you end up in london i ended
00:05:44
up in london because i worked for three years in new york uh my third year they said i got another
00:05:50
job at a different place and they asked me hey do you want to you know check out a
00:05:55
different office and i never lived outside the u.s i wanted to do something different i just took a chance literally
00:06:01
on london so i remember really well it came out in april 04. never been europe never been to london
00:06:08
never been been here and so i showed up and i had such a great time i met
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you know the people on the team and i'm like [ __ ] it i'm gonna come i'm gonna come for a year
00:06:19
and then it ended up just basically staying and how old were you when you when you came over here for the first time
00:06:24
was 24 24. yeah i think it's so crazy so many of my american friends they've not left the us
00:06:30
and i i was reading something yesterday about the i was i think it was in i think it's a page in the new york times
00:06:35
it was talking about how important it is to leave the us to understand the world but then also to
00:06:41
appreciate the country that you have i couldn't agree more i mean today is july 5th right yeah exactly yeah july 4th yesterday and you
00:06:47
appreciate the us so much more once once you leave right because everyone in the us is
00:06:54
always like waving flags and stuff they don't i mean they don't know anything else right um but when you leave and you you
00:06:59
understand different societies you can appreciate the good and the bad of the us i'd say
00:07:05
yeah i don't want to go into it but when i i i you know we grew up in the uk and i think europe and pretty much the world
00:07:11
idolizing so much about the us because of films and movies yeah the one thing that upon moving to the us
00:07:16
when i was 24 to run my business to new york i couldn't get my head around was the healthcare system
00:07:22
yeah the idea that i could get sick and be bankrupt yeah because there's nothing you can do about it yeah that's the only well
00:07:28
there's a couple other things with guns which we weren't going to either but that's the bits where i'm like oh my god this isn't the so you were in new york
00:07:34
kind of the same age i moved to london then yes and you moved to you you were the williams sorry then yeah straight to williamsburg our office was
00:07:40
in manhattan so but so you're you're working in canary wolf i'm guessing if you're in finance
00:07:45
yes i was a morgan stanley um and i remember my first day i showed up for work because in new
00:07:52
york you got 25 dinner allowance you can order whatever you want actually funny story my first kind of
00:07:59
day at work in 2001 i was pretty cheap right so i was like 25 i can get
00:08:05
i can do whatever so i actually ordered 25 whoppers because burger king had this dollar whopper special and everyone's
00:08:12
like what are you doing and by like day three the sort of novelty wore off i'm like i gotta work 100 hours a week it's not
00:08:19
you know this isn't that much fun but no the first day i got to london i asked people we're working late i'm
00:08:24
like what are we doing for dinner everyone's like oh just i don't know we go to the tesco and i'm like what's
00:08:29
tesco so we go in the supermarket and everyone's like we're getting these microwave meals and i'm like wait a minute i'm like this
00:08:36
is not you're working like 100 hours a week you try to aspire for something a little bit better so first day that's how i got the idea
00:08:42
for delivery first day i moved here one of those tesco meals just didn't cut it i mean it was all right i mean they're
00:08:48
but but i mean there's just london's like one of the culinary capitals of the world like why wouldn't you want
00:08:54
better food delivered what's that i mean so many people have ideas right so many people have ideas for big grandiose
00:09:01
businesses but it's almost like and i'd hate to say this because it sounds super pessimistic
00:09:06
but the odds are you're gonna fail so how dare you how do you try and
00:09:13
build that you know that massive logistical operation that is delivery you know honestly um
00:09:20
it's a really good point right because you you're aware that there's the possibility of failure i don't know when i went into this when
00:09:26
i started it i just said i'm not hedging myself in any which way i'm not doing side projects
00:09:32
i'm just gonna focus on this because i really really believe it not so much to start a business i believe in it as a consumer
00:09:38
right so i always thought about it as you know i'm building this business for myself as a consumer and hopefully other people
00:09:45
also you know kind of think similarly to me and i was convinced that enough people did and so i'm not one of these people that
00:09:52
was like oh i need to start a business i'm like i need to solve this problem which i think is pretty different
00:09:58
in my mind and i think people should start businesses because they want to solve a problem or they they're in an industry that they
00:10:04
know super well they've identified some inefficiency that's my view at least i i complete you know over the last three years i've
00:10:10
heard this narrative that like it's much easier to start a business solving a problem that you and your best friend
00:10:15
care about yeah right yeah otherwise like you're gonna get bored yeah you know you i i told this story
00:10:22
before it's totally true i had a friend from business school super smart guy and he he was he had
00:10:28
like a thousand ideas he'd write them all down but his ideas were all predicated on
00:10:33
some financial outcome right and he started this thing it was the etsy for pets
00:10:39
pet accessories or whatever and i was like okay this sounds okay sounds okay i read
00:10:46
his deck and i'm like wow this is like like a great idea so he's like i'm gonna go do this and then like nine months later i'm like
00:10:52
okay how's it going he's like you know what i just really don't like dogs and cats very much and so i just
00:10:57
couldn't do it right that's true you can't do something that you're not actually fully invested in so many
00:11:04
entrepreneurs will say that they'll say oh no not even entrepreneurs so many people that are aspiring to start a business will say that phrase they'll
00:11:09
say i really want to be an entrepreneur i just need an idea and then you'll see them kind of like go and write down a
00:11:15
list of things that they could maybe do and whenever i see that and i this i just 100 stand by this i always think
00:11:21
they're going to fail because of the reasons you described there because you know they're going to go through that absolute [ __ ] chaos
00:11:27
yeah and i think it was steve jobs that said the same person would quit it when you go through the absolute
00:11:33
chaos so you have to love it and really understand it it can't be because i think i'll make because you probably won't make money either right
00:11:39
no you won't right or you you can't go in with the assumption you will
00:11:44
quickly quickly as well right yeah and you know and i had this other guy i knew who he was
00:11:49
like you know what i i he worked at a big consulting firm and he was mckenzie or something like that and he's like
00:11:55
in my spare time i've started these three businesses and i'm like i'm like no man you can't do that like
00:12:00
you pick one thing you gotta like really go for it different people have different sort of attitudes towards that my view though is
00:12:07
you you just have to go all in right so speaking of going all in there must have been a day where you
00:12:13
hand in your notice of resignation well so so no not not for delivery because my story is um so
00:12:19
after morgan stanley i worked uh kind of 0406 in london for morgan
00:12:24
sailing and then i ended up working at a hedge fund for about uh four years in london and then i went back to business school
00:12:32
in in philadelphia for two years and it came back in 2012. oh let's start this business fine yeah
00:12:37
fine so you came back so this was the thing i i i wanted to do after business school okay so you finished business school and
00:12:44
you came straight to london to start yeah because what was cool about business school was i saw offline
00:12:49
online happening right because remember i so i tried to start the live room 08
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right and when i was still working in london and when i looked into it it was like all right i'd
00:13:01
have to put a laptop in each restaurant i'd have to build some sort of handheld device for our
00:13:08
rider network and it was just too complicated but you know steve jobs then invented this thing
00:13:14
that completely changed everything right phones tablets all of that and so that was the
00:13:20
prerequisite step of course for any of these well any business today really to operate right
00:13:26
because in oh eight iphone one came out sdk i think the ios sdk came out in 08 so
00:13:34
this app ecosystem hadn't really developed yet and so had to wait for that i didn't
00:13:40
know obviously that the iphone would you know do what it did but in business school i was just super
00:13:45
excited about it it goes to show how critical timing can be in terms of these macro factors with
00:13:51
technology to enable ideas like that because you're right you could never have started this business in 2008. that would have just been impossible and
00:13:57
you think i think the same about things like spotify all of these macro factors of handheld devices and 5g streaming
00:14:04
and 4g streaming whatever all had to come together for you even to have that conversation with the record labels
00:14:09
totally the infrastructure you know i mean you think back to to just laying cables under the atlantic
00:14:15
i mean all of this stuff right to to to the to the iphone to all the software that was being built on i mean
00:14:21
just crazy what had to come before and and those changes are always happening because the of the rate of evolution of technology
00:14:28
so it goes to show that right now because of what's happened over the last x amount of months there are new
00:14:34
opportunities being that have been created for entrepreneurs whether it's blockchain or crypto or so
00:14:40
i think even as an entrepreneur you always think all the good ideas are taken and you know for us we're obsessed about
00:14:48
continual innovation of course because we know competitors come for us right we know that there's going to be someone
00:14:54
sitting around going man this delivery thing kind of sucks we gotta like we can do better than that right and so we're paranoid about that all the time
00:15:01
right that's how we think about it we always think we can get a lot better we have to so so when you first started
00:15:08
out in london so you've moved from business school you've you've got this idea um talk me through
00:15:14
how you know as a ground floor opportunity how that became a a conceptual like a business yeah so um
00:15:20
it was me and my co-founder greg so greg and i grew up in new haven together we've been friends since i think we're like 12. wow right
00:15:26
yeah and so we were into computers like when we were 12. i mean this is before
00:15:32
i'm trying to think here because my mom worked yale so we would go use the um the unix
00:15:38
workstations there and we we actually you know like we were on these use net groups
00:15:44
um you know we were using ftp this is all before there was really a true graphical representation of the internet
00:15:50
and so we got and we got pretty into computer games and stuff like that so we were we were pretty into that stuff
00:15:56
um and and so that's how i that's how i knew my co-founder greg um we then kind of got out of computers
00:16:03
a bit i don't know just discovered different things um but he ended up just you know staying
00:16:09
well he he studied history then worked as a car mechanic just kind of randomly because he liked
00:16:15
cars so he just decided to do that and then he started becoming a software developer again and so him and i we would discuss ideas
00:16:22
like all the time and so in oh wait i talked to him about this idea right deliveroo
00:16:28
and he was like we thought about it he was like this is really complicated for all the reasons we just talked about but we stayed in very close touch so
00:16:35
throughout business school i was always like hey man what do you think about you know this thing again i think it's like possible and so i convinced him to
00:16:42
quit his job and you know kind of start this thing with me
00:16:48
but i moved to london he stayed in the states so it was kind of like this weird thing right but i would say so i moved back
00:16:54
here on october 12th um we were building the prototype uh the restaurant tablet um the rider app um we didn't actually
00:17:01
launch with a consumer app we literally just had a website and so you had to kind of if you had a phone you
00:17:08
had to kind of zoom in to all the buttons it wasn't even mobile optimized we didn't meant them an app right so
00:17:13
and and so yeah because there's two of us right and so um i'd say the first few months before
00:17:18
launch it was like me trying to set up restaurants i signed up restaurants walking up and down the street
00:17:24
in chelsea it was him building all the initial technology me and him making product decisions so
00:17:31
it's just just basically two of us then he came out for the launch january
00:17:36
13 and we launched in feb 13 and um yeah it was just me and him for the
00:17:41
first i guess year yeah so you were
00:17:47
predominantly leading the rider side in the kind of like on the ground operation i mean there's two of us so there's literally
00:17:52
not like i mean greg was building all the technology yeah he did it himself which is like pretty
00:17:57
incredible i was working with them on the product decisions and then i was running the business but
00:18:02
the business was me signing up restaurants me you know getting getting the rider side of the marketplace going
00:18:09
um and obviously you know attracting consumers but the funny thing is you know
00:18:15
initially when we launched in february obviously no one knew who we were so i would actually just ask my friends to
00:18:20
order all the time and you know they just get annoyed at me like why are you like bothering me like
00:18:26
what and um a number of my friends would would order i know for the sole purpose
00:18:31
of watching me deliver the food to them right and i know that for sure and they they just thought it was like
00:18:37
funny they would do the same yeah so i would deliver the food and then they they'd want to chat i'm like sorry guys i gotta go do my next
00:18:43
delivery um but then i realized one thing after a while they kept ordering even if i didn't
00:18:49
deliver the food and so that's when i kind of realized we were onto something do you remember the
00:18:55
first order that wasn't your friend oh um no i i honestly don't but i can
00:19:02
tell you the first order though the first first order ever i mean i told her to order it was it was
00:19:08
my friend anetta and she was living on sydney street in chelsea and the restaurant was rosso pomodoro
00:19:13
and i and you know i was like excited because she ordered so i delivered it but i delivered the pizza upside down
00:19:20
yeah so it was it became a calzone um and then i then i just ate it and she's
00:19:25
like you ruined my meal and you ate the food this is like the worst experience of all time yeah only up from there though so it's
00:19:32
good i mean the writer ate the order yeah yeah not only you delivered it
00:19:37
terribly and then ate the food but but still charged her i'm guessing i might have given her a refund i think
00:19:43
i don't know for any kind of video but no that was that was what happened right it was like my friends were ordering and then it was just word of mouth right and and people
00:19:50
got you know the bunch of people started just showing up never i didn't know their names i had no idea what's going on and i
00:19:56
heard you you didn't do marketing for the first couple years a couple years yeah yeah well i did one thing i had to
00:20:02
i used to wear this kangaroo costume around um yeah yeah um i didn't really enjoy doing
00:20:07
that but um i i would wear a kangaroo costume and hand out these um you know whatever like this is the
00:20:13
living room yeah well why why london and not america i guess america's way more competitive and
00:20:20
the design of the country is slightly different but why london well i mean i'm a londoner right i lived
00:20:26
here for six years before going back to business school i just knew this city needed something
00:20:32
better than than the classic takeaways wow whatever you don't have to say i'll
00:20:37
say it just you it's [ __ ] awful what you know i don't know back in the you don't have to say i'll say it um
00:20:42
when i was a student getting the cold stodgy awful rest not even restaurants awful
00:20:48
corner shop takeaways and styrofoam boxes that was cold was just awful and there was no yeah and so
00:20:56
my first experience with delivery was when i think i said you off camera um a company that i was working with
00:21:03
turned the ceo turned around to me and said you can now order from top class restaurants and it
00:21:08
comes in a nice pack nice packaging and i thought there's no possible [ __ ] way and then i tried it and i never went
00:21:14
back well the reality is look i tried you know um just eat back in 0.7 right i
00:21:20
was really excited about it i was like this is going to be like new york and i tried it i'm like oh wait i can't track
00:21:26
my order i don't know when the food's going to show up and it was all sort of look i like kabobs right i like
00:21:32
fractures nothing wrong with that but if that's the only choice yeah i'm kind of like you know i like kebabs but my intestines don't so
00:21:39
like it's a very there's a battle there's some good places there's something no that's true there is there is there's a couple of
00:21:44
slightly healthier options for kebabs around this around this area um but then so you get to the point where there's i read about there was a
00:21:51
couple of riders so there was you and the three or four others yeah um there was mirza
00:21:56
there there's saeed there's hanif um sayed and hanif and mirza still work with us um doesn't uh there's about four of us
00:22:05
yeah and they're still writers three of them are one of them actually works in our office in dubai
00:22:10
now oh wow he does like rider support in dubai he wanted to move to dubai so amazing yeah
00:22:16
awesome and so you guys were this was when the business was starting to get a little bit of traction within chelsea
00:22:22
i'm guessing exactly yeah yeah so a little bit of traction in one neighborhood yeah we we launched only in one
00:22:28
neighborhood right the first you know a few restaurants were on the fulham road in the kings road and one of the restaurants was was my
00:22:34
landlord's restaurant i used to live above it so he i convinced him to sign up for just because he was like i saw him every
00:22:41
day right it's so funny because when you hear about the lean you know when you read books like the lean startup and you hear about
00:22:46
how entrepreneurs should be starting businesses you seem to have done a lot of things accidentally right
00:22:52
like even your your idea of launching in a small area whether you can establish network effects and not necessarily doing marketing
00:22:58
advertising to your friends stephen we didn't have money yeah this wasn't silicon valley i'm gonna raise a 30 million dollar seat i
00:23:05
was funding the business myself so it wasn't like i had a choice right and so i'm kind of like okay i don't
00:23:11
want to like burn all my cash you know and so that's kind of how i was running the business until we actually raise money
00:23:18
there's something important about that isn't there when teams don't have huge budgets they seem to make better decisions i think so i i think i actually do i
00:23:24
think having too much money can be problematic um and there's a lot of money now but yeah when you're when you're it's
00:23:31
just me and greg four riders like 10 restaurants you know you don't have any money yeah
00:23:38
you gotta like just work on the most important things and try to be as efficient as possible
00:23:43
i resonate with that because i when i started my first business we had six thousand pounds marketing budget and it was it wasn't until we'd blown it
00:23:49
all on all the conventional [ __ ] flyers posters some inflatable balloon which we rolled down a road
00:23:54
and we had no money that we sat there the three of us and and said um if we have no money how do we get a
00:24:00
million people yeah how do we do it and that led us to discover this thing called social media yep and then um we were like well this well this is
00:24:07
facebook page that has 8 000 students on it and the owner says we can buy off him for 50 quid i've got 50 quid let's go
00:24:14
meet him bought it posted about my website on this facebook page more traffic than we've ever had so we were like
00:24:19
let's just build facebook pages for free and so in 2013-12 we started building facebook pages we
00:24:26
got to 100 million followers we're doing seven billion video views a month and the business grew to be worth 300 million and it would never have happened
00:24:32
if we didn't run out of money because we were forced to think in real first principles exactly to ignore convention
00:24:38
and um so i i came up with i i think i i love this idea i i'm like that's
00:24:44
like my proudest idea so um we we were like okay look how do we reach people we could do the flyers
00:24:50
i was sick of walking around with this kangaroo costume right and so i was like hmm and i was staying in a
00:24:56
hotel and i was like oh they have these do not disturb signs that you can hang on the door
00:25:01
right you know when you're in a hotel like do not disturb and i'm like you know what we should just
00:25:06
say deliveroo and then list a number of the restaurants in the local neighborhood because no one knew you could actually get deliveries from there
00:25:13
and we just hung them on people's doors and that worked so no discounts nothing just letting
00:25:18
people know about it it cost you what 20p for one of these things right funny thing is the police got real mad
00:25:25
because they we didn't think about this at the time the police called us and they're like what is this delivery thing we're like
00:25:30
well we're a food delivery company they're like how do we know you're not a burglary ring
00:25:35
and a robbery ring and i'm like what are you talking about they're like well you could just leave those on people's doors and
00:25:41
see who doesn't take them off and if they're if they're still on the houses are vacant so you could burglarize them and
00:25:46
i'm like i didn't really think about it that way but pretty genius idea actually yeah and you're sitting there in your
00:25:52
kangaroo outfit trying to convince the police you're not a burglar basically do you want to come in and
00:25:58
watch this podcast live from behind the scenes if you do all you have to do is hit the subscribe button and now that the world has opened
00:26:04
up you'll be behind the scenes as many of our subscribers have been i can't wait to meet you so i you know you've got four or five of
00:26:11
you um the riders riders yeah and you're i hear that you're hanging out in a starbucks
00:26:16
often and you're just sitting there chilling waiting for someone to yeah we're just talking i mean you know
00:26:22
you know there's like four of us there yeah do you the founder of the company and three others the three riders yeah just waiting for
00:26:29
the phone to ping yeah it was the three of us and it was the same guy would come to us and he'd be like all right you guys got to leave
00:26:36
we're like but we we bought something you know he's like kick us out every every time
00:26:43
you know and why was he kicking you out i don't know to be honest i don't think he liked
00:26:48
the look of us if i'm honest with you um yeah you know like like uh i i think um
00:26:56
you know and one day i went to him and i go what is your problem like you know and he's just like get out
00:27:01
right and it was the way that he looked at us the way he looked at me was almost like we were
00:27:09
not people right we're kind of like anonymous is probably the best word i
00:27:14
could use and then sort of sub human is probably you know the the worst word i could use
00:27:19
but it was like that like we're just taking up space in this thing or making his coffee shop look kind of crappy right
00:27:26
and i remember talking to the three other guys about it they like they're just like whatever
00:27:32
just let it go like like who cares but i realized that that must be how a lot of people look at them
00:27:38
all the time right because they're used to it right and for me i wasn't really used to it so i was like really really
00:27:44
mad about it but you know it i definitely know what it was like to walk in their shoes
00:27:51
you know for a day well for i guess a whole year because i did that job for a long time and that's why you know treating writers
00:27:57
with respect and making sure their voices are heard is so important to me
00:28:02
because of you know that one of those incidents and then those three those three guys were from pakistani
00:28:08
descent yeah so one would one could assume that
00:28:13
the the reason why the gonna definitely assume that yeah yeah i was assuming just to be completely clear
00:28:18
i was assuming and yeah and asserting yeah well they're just like the way you know they're looking at us like uh these these people
00:28:26
are gonna make my store look shitty you know you could tell right and so yeah that that was a kind of seminal moment i think
00:28:32
for me and and just talking to these guys but they were just so sort of like either jaded or
00:28:39
kind of numb to it they're like wow like whatever it seems to happen in them all the time yeah because they
00:28:44
experience that type of prejudice and discrimination all the time i i mean i've i've been there right so
00:28:50
very early and that's why that particular story resonates with me a lot is because i remember very early on when i was launching my
00:28:56
business i have a tendency to to wear snapback caps and hoodies even today
00:29:01
and obviously my net worth is significant now and so when i get into like the first class part of the train
00:29:06
i'll never forget the day whether the train attendant walks right down the aisle past everybody else and goes
00:29:12
this is first class mate you're like yeah didn't didn't mention that to anyone
00:29:18
else yeah just felt they need to come up to me and my snap back because i'm wearing this cap in this hoodie and tell me some assumptively that this
00:29:25
this is this is first classmate i'm just looking at him thinking yes i know yeah you know what i mean and
00:29:32
it's funny because i wrote it in my diary this is how i still remember this incident i wrote in my diary that one day you know i'll you know
00:29:39
i hopefully this wouldn't be the case that people were you kind of like numb to it or were you kind of angry
00:29:45
angry yeah angry but for me it's like this small little heat inside it's not like i'm gonna be
00:29:51
rude to you yeah but it's like you presume something about me and and to be honest
00:29:56
there's a bit of me that actually it's in some ways a compliment that he
00:30:01
couldn't possibly think someone like me could afford to sit there and for me that there's some kind of
00:30:07
compliment in there because of the underestimation that a black kid that's young can't sit in first class
00:30:13
you know not that it's a right thing but it's it is what it is well i guess for me though what it also highlighted to me like was
00:30:19
how lucky i was relative to some of these guys that they they cam they come from backgrounds of you know
00:30:26
extreme poverty growing up in in in in pakistan they came here to
00:30:31
build a better life they're super hard working like super dedicated and someone's just treating them like [ __ ] it's like
00:30:38
it's pretty bad yeah it's an experience you i think few would understand if they hadn't been through it themselves so at some
00:30:45
point in this podcast i usually do a break to talk about huel who are the sponsor of this podcast but me and will spent so long talking
00:30:51
about the product i thought i'd just show you this clip instead you know what i will try this you're going to try it do you like drink this
00:30:57
in lieu of a meal three times a day so you just stopped eating hey deliveroo man do you know what
00:31:02
actually it's crazy because that is that has been a pretty exciting yeah no well i i think i i had delivery
00:31:07
this no i did i had delivery this morning okay in fact the wrap the package is over there so i got at 7 30 this morning
00:31:12
and then when i'm busy throughout the day where i'll and i'm moving this but you enjoy
00:31:18
food you enjoy yes okay but i know we'll never give up hard food try it let me know all
00:31:23
right so let's see here we got the whole bottle is 400 calories 32 carbs
00:31:29
20 grams of protein man let's try it out low fat gluten-free sawyer it's it's not nest quick okay it's
00:31:38
cool this actually tastes pretty good it is listen and it will leave you feeling energized and full
00:31:44
and honestly we get addicted around here so jack um who directs the podcast when we put in a
00:31:49
huel fridge downstairs he hadn't had it before tries one and now he actually lives off it
00:31:54
if i drink this am i gonna want to eat food as well no okay no chance so so it's a good way
00:32:00
to like yes lose weight and all that kind of stuff yes oh no chance i wonder if i can buy this on delivery maybe
00:32:06
um you talk about the very early days of delivery one of the things that founders struggle with a lot and i did as well is
00:32:13
is the name of the company and i heard i was reading about that oh no yeah but i love this story because
00:32:19
i think it highlights how crappy some decisions are at the start i heard
00:32:24
you were going to call delivery something else yeah there were there were a few different um permutations
00:32:31
one was a food pony because i didn't read about that because i was thinking of these
00:32:36
animals and food i think one was um i think it was i'm trying to think
00:32:42
here it was like uh yeah it was food mule was was another one because
00:32:48
you know a mule's uh transports um food not so good right what about booze
00:32:54
food did you forget that one yeah i didn't think you'd mention it um so
00:33:01
the original idea for deliveroo even this is before 08 right
00:33:06
so you know you this so in new york you go out on a big night first of all
00:33:12
everything's open like really late right so you can actually go out past 11. if you get home at like five in the
00:33:17
morning you can still order something to eat like you can do that and what my experience in in london
00:33:23
was you go out late and you just can't actually eat anything and i just like couldn't understand that and so
00:33:29
initially the idea for delivery was something called the zo7 it's called booze food which you
00:33:34
know really allowed you to order food at like 3am when you really wanted it so that is actually true yeah it's funny
00:33:40
because when people look at successful founders there's this like weird assumption that all of the decisions you made were
00:33:46
right and that you're super smart and that you got everything right and it's not until you go back into those early moments and dig through some
00:33:52
of the thinking the marketing ideas you think [ __ ] hell this is someone that's actually
00:33:57
developed their thinking oh it's just iterating right yeah you know um but the boost food idea so there's
00:34:03
there's another funny part of that because when when delivered so boost food was a separate thing but then
00:34:08
when my buddy tried to liver for the first time he was like oh yeah this is great like
00:34:15
you've got busaba you've got rosso pomodoro you've got all these great restaurants in chelsea
00:34:20
but he's like really what you need to do is have a cheat code so when you're really drunk you can put in some cheat code and then it's like
00:34:26
literally like all the bad stuff for you so that maybe we'll implement that at some point i don't know you chose to ignore him
00:34:33
that's pretty funny idea interesting um talking about co-founders another sort of integral part of success in business
00:34:42
how um how did things go with greg i i know that he's no longer in the business but he at some point he
00:34:49
departed yeah yeah no i mean look without greg the business wouldn't exist
00:34:54
right no no question about it i think um you know he's one of the smartest uh
00:35:00
hardest working people i know we grew up together he's one of my best friends we've been friends since we were 12.
00:35:05
um i think um for greg he he wouldn't move to the uk um ever
00:35:12
he just wouldn't do it never yeah i guess he didn't you know he's too american i don't know but no he he his wife was in a um she
00:35:19
was getting a remd degree in the u.s and so it was like hard for him to like come over here and ultimately you know at some point so
00:35:26
he built a um engineering team in chicago where he was living but at some point i was like no this
00:35:32
this business real like we gotta we gotta have the team all together and so you know made a decision and he
00:35:39
he he left a business in late 15 early 16 or so um but i mean i have a great
00:35:45
relationship with him we were just chatting last night but yeah founders go through hell together yeah
00:35:53
yeah i mean my founder co-founder did yeah we went we went through a lot but you know it
00:35:58
was tough when he left right because i didn't have um there's not someone i can talk to on that same level right
00:36:04
yeah you've got your you know your your southern sort of other execs and you've got you know a board of directors
00:36:10
but it's different it's it's really different than having that did that hurt you when he left
00:36:15
did it hurt me yeah a bit right because i was kind of like kind of wanted to build this thing you
00:36:21
know with him but i also wasn't willing to just have half of the company be based in the
00:36:27
states i just didn't think that was the right thing to do for the business right um yeah and i think it was um
00:36:34
yeah you know it was uh yeah it was tough right it was tough do you think that situation
00:36:42
could have been handled differently in hindsight i think i think maybe i
00:36:47
could have convinced him a little bit more to to move out here i just think because he wasn't here
00:36:53
he didn't actually understand the momentum of the business but he didn't see all the stuff on the ground for him it was an abs
00:36:59
it was an abstract idea i mean you can see the metrics you can see all that but that's really different than seeing a bunch of you know delivery
00:37:06
riders the backpack on and sort of people talking about it in the uk right
00:37:11
but i mean look i i think i think would have been great if he if he stuck around but i also think that you know people make
00:37:18
certain decisions and he he decided to prioritize an another thing which is you know totally totally fine i find
00:37:24
that really interesting as well and the reason i asked that question about do you think it could have been resolved differently is because the world is very much changed now because of covid
00:37:31
and we have distributed teams all around the world in startups now yeah and this was pre way pre-coverage 2015
00:37:38
before zoom probably even you know had taken off so just i just wonder if now in the world we live
00:37:43
in now a relationship where the tech team is remote could have i i think i i do think and by the way
00:37:51
much of our tech team today is remote but the difference is we still have a very big core of people
00:37:56
that kind of have seen the journey up front and center and so when you layer on top of that remote people i
00:38:02
think that works really well i think to have a product team and a technology team that literally never uses the product because
00:38:09
they're in the states is a really problematic in my mind because ours is not a just a pure
00:38:15
digital product right we're we're a digital and a physical product a relationships business
00:38:21
that's what it is right and so it's it's different than you know something that's purely your experience in chicago and london is
00:38:27
the same on certain types of businesses for us it's very different true very true talking about going
00:38:33
through hell with founders and co-founders and just generally the hell of starting startups um one of the real reasons i
00:38:38
founded this podcast was because and it's kind of clued in the name is because i didn't feel like the full journey of a founder is ever really told
00:38:46
specifically the hard parts um and i i know that in your journey to build
00:38:51
the business you did you've confronted all kinds of awful challenges yeah right talk to me
00:38:57
about some of those awful challenges especially at the start it doesn't get easier i'll tell you that
00:39:02
right so i mean the business is really you know significantly sized business now but i wouldn't say it gets
00:39:08
easier they're just different right so you're one i would say the big challenge is no money you know me and greg running
00:39:15
around right um i think my biggest challenge was at some point so i think i was lucky
00:39:21
in the sense the business momentum sort of did take it wasn't like super it wasn't like this but
00:39:27
there were new customers and we we knew this thing was working but i didn't know how big it was it
00:39:32
would be and at some point because i was delivering food every single night right and at some point i remember my my
00:39:38
flatmate he went to business school with me faris and he he kind of looks at me and he's a good friend of mine right he
00:39:45
says he's like what are you doing and i'm like what do you mean he's like you just deliver food for five hours every night
00:39:50
that's like what you do and i'm like yeah because i gotta who else is gonna do it and he was just like
00:39:56
he kind of looked at me and just like all right you know and then i kind of like because because i you know
00:40:01
i worked in these jobs that you can you know make a lot of money before i i had this summer internship at wharton
00:40:07
that was like the one everyone wanted and i just decided to do something else and um no
00:40:12
he was kind of like he thought i was like losing my mind right and then i thought of it because i'm not a very
00:40:18
like i don't even think i'm that introspective to be honest so i don't i'm kind of like i got stuff to do i'm
00:40:23
gonna like do it and so he was like hey man you should like think about what you're doing right and i did
00:40:30
and i was kind of like freaking out a bit just like sitting in my in my small room like what am i doing right am i where is this
00:40:37
gonna go and then i just was like you know [ __ ] it like i think this is going great so i'm gonna i'm gonna stick
00:40:43
to it so that was hard um i would say um did you come close to quitting at that stage no i never did
00:40:50
really never greg did though yeah greg did i never did i'm not like i just
00:40:58
i just wouldn't you know i wouldn't let that happen why i don't know man they just i just feel
00:41:06
like i have such responsibility to the people i i work with the restaurants and the
00:41:11
writers and i don't know you just start like i'll tell you what i'm not i'm not one of
00:41:17
these people you know you read about bezos like hey i'm going to start with books books are easy to transport i'm going to move on
00:41:22
and all these other things it's grand plan in their mind not like that at all but what i did see was i saw success
00:41:31
that fuels more ambition you get into the circular path and so i was i was on it like that and i just
00:41:36
also have this just immense sense of responsibility to people right similar to that story you told
00:41:42
about your friend there i read that you one day knocked on a door to deliver some food and it was one of your former colleagues from yeah from a hedge
00:41:50
fund yeah yeah i find this fascinating because people don't often talk about embarrassment
00:41:55
as being one of the real key barrier to entries to start businesses and to pursue your
00:42:00
your dreams yeah but it's such a tough barrier like humiliation and embarrassment and
00:42:06
that look i remember that look fondly of the people i was living with when i was 18 19 and you tell them what you're
00:42:13
doing and that kind of like smirky like oh okay yeah that happened i also i mean that
00:42:21
story yeah so it's john luca and um really nice guy but
00:42:26
so i'd worked with him probably five years before and he hadn't seen me in like five years and so he he ordered something i
00:42:32
didn't know it'd be him and i deliver this pizza to him and i got my my scooter helmet on
00:42:37
and he's like i'll do his accent it's pretty strong he goes will is that you are you okay he's italian
00:42:43
right he's from naples and i'm like i'm like who the [ __ ] is this i'm like oh it's john luke i'm like
00:42:49
hey uh i'm like hey john luca and he's like is that anything okay you know he's like he just thought i like
00:42:55
lost my mind um so because he didn't really understand that i started the business he oh i just i think he thought i was you
00:43:01
know just delivering pizzas right and i'm like well yes i am delivering pizzas but i also that is part of the
00:43:07
job but you know i also started this business and he just thought it was totally nuts yeah
00:43:12
a lot of my friends did in the beginning though that first year a lot of them did i mean they were supportive but you know i knew what they were kind of
00:43:18
saying behind my back a little bit too you know not not in a terrible way just like out
00:43:23
of concern why didn't you care too busy
00:43:29
too busy man i generally don't care i generally don't care what other people think if i'm honest with you my whole
00:43:35
life never really have i don't know why but a bit of a superpower isn't it
00:43:41
i don't know could be a good thing could be a bad thing don't know just don't really care that much it's definitely a good thing it's
00:43:47
definitely a good thing especially as it relates to your personal happiness but also pursuing your your um your goals and ambitions because
00:43:53
as we say embarrassment and and because public scrutiny seems to be one of the biggest barriers to starting and continuing
00:43:59
so when you get past that initial stage what are the next big challenges um so post year one business starts
00:44:06
getting some traction maybe business starts getting traction um that part's real exciting right you
00:44:11
know you raise your first amount of money that's like super exciting it's like wow someone someone gave
00:44:17
i think with us it was index ventures gave us 2.7 million pounds which now you're like that's like the
00:44:23
smallest seed thing that ever do but but i was like wow like we've got you know this these really smart guys that want to
00:44:29
invest in the business um and now it's about like how do we scale this thing and so it was hard but it was a lot of
00:44:36
fun right but i didn't know how to like hire anyone i'd worked in finance and i worked at hedge fund
00:44:42
sat in front of a bloomberg machine right so i'm just on gumtree that's how i hired and
00:44:49
actually the people people that that work at delivery now they don't they always tell me that's not true but it's 100
00:44:54
true i hired the initial people from gumtree and i was just like writing like random
00:44:59
like job descriptions and we ended up um getting an office
00:45:05
by office i mean probably the size of this room i would say no windows no heating it's definitely
00:45:11
illegal it was on cleveland street 121d cleveland street and um
00:45:17
we we found these like tables and chairs in the car park beneath it found a sofa on the street just set it
00:45:22
up it was a thousand pounds a month and we got going right but i loved that part that was so much fun
00:45:29
um so i'd say in the like the first two were super hard i would say years two and three
00:45:36
and four were hard but like exciting because you're expanding the business you don't really know what you're doing you're
00:45:41
kind of figuring it out as you go along right so i love that part your favorite
00:45:46
part yeah i'd say my favorite part is definitely when the company's like 20 to 100 people yeah look i'm the i'm
00:45:54
i'm the ceo of a large publicly traded company now right it's not gonna be as fun let's be honest
00:46:00
like and i'm happy to say that on the record yeah like everyone does everyone talks about the sub hundred
00:46:06
um because you know why because everyone's on the same page yeah you don't need to be deliberate about
00:46:11
communications you don't need to be deliberate about how all the pieces fit together
00:46:17
everyone just kind of knows and obviously to scale a company and do that in a high quality way you need to
00:46:22
figure out the systems to do that so that when you have 3 000 people it's similar to when you have a hundred but
00:46:28
when you have 100 i think it's the best you know everybody's name and oh everyone's name you guys are all
00:46:33
sort of kind of friends you you know you go to the pub together you know that's fun when did you
00:46:39
consider yourself to be an entrepreneur
00:46:45
ah i don't know i don't know if i ever thought about it like that was there
00:46:50
even after you raised that money did you did you think i'm a businessman
00:46:55
i always thought about i wanted to build an online food company that's how i always thought about it so
00:47:02
whether it's business or entrepreneur i don't know i don't know what the title means but you know it's funny because there's i'm not
00:47:08
obsessed with the idea of building a business i'm obsessed with the business i'm building so many people have it the other way
00:47:13
around i think so and it's almost become quite i know sexy
00:47:18
and instagramable to be like be your own boss i'm ceo [ __ ] like do you know all that stuff like and i think
00:47:24
that and again i just bet against those people that are building for the sake of status not for the sake of value right
00:47:29
solving a problem yeah solve a problem so so intriguing that seems to be a really similar pattern with the people that sit here
00:47:36
that have built great businesses they didn't they had no interest in being an entrepreneur they just got sucked into a problem they thought they could solve
00:47:42
yeah to me that's got to be the way now obviously there's going to be a lot of different people
00:47:47
different approaches but for me absolutely that's got to be the way so in that early stage when you just got that office and there's you know
00:47:53
a couple of you in that room things are tough right you're talking about you know you're burning cash
00:47:59
all startups especially tech ones tend to be burning cash yeah um what was your mental health journey
00:48:07
from that point till now look i'd say this um i don't know about other people i i don't think i'm a very
00:48:13
up and down person uh so i guess that's probably a good thing but i'm not
00:48:19
totally sure could mean i'm just suppressing a lot of stuff i don't really know right but um i don't have like these enormous
00:48:27
ups where i'm like going around jumping up and down and i'm not going bananas when things
00:48:32
are you know kind of going back that that being said some of my former colleagues in the early days might disagree with me
00:48:38
i would absolutely go nuts when i thought an order was handled and appropriately or customer service
00:48:44
interaction was um handled inappropriately i think some people probably they can have some memories of that but
00:48:50
i kind of got over that and don't don't really do that anymore but i would say a lot of the journey
00:48:57
is super super super hard i'm happy to talk about any of those stories with you but there's definitely been
00:49:04
long periods of time not just like for hours like long periods of time we're just like
00:49:10
man this is this has to get easier or like you know you're just i forget it was
00:49:16
elon musk or whoever talks about it the standing on the abyss thing you know you know chewing glass i felt
00:49:22
that like many many many times right that's hard
00:49:27
it's really hard if you'd known it would be that hard would you have started
00:49:32
thinking about your toughest moments if you'd known you would have had to go through that that chewing glass
00:49:37
staring into the abyss would you have started delivering um if on the day where you thought i'm
00:49:42
gonna start delivery today i'd come and i'd shown you a tape of those moments yeah but i guess it's a little hard to
00:49:49
say because if you told me hey business would be where it is today would i have started it probably yes
00:49:55
you told me it wouldn't work out and i'd be having chewing glass for like years then probably not right
00:50:00
it all it all depends but it it's like hard to it completely different degree because as
00:50:06
the founder you think about it every single hour you think about it you know when you're in bed
00:50:11
you know when you're when you're talking to a friend you're it's in you can't escape it right you touched your head there when
00:50:18
you said you can't escape it that's where it is right that's where it lives it lives in your head at all times at all times you can't escape talk me
00:50:24
through the specific details of those moments though one example of an issue so so one of
00:50:29
them was we were um so so back in 2017 holy [ __ ] i guess four years ago now
00:50:37
yeah we were um you know we'd raised a bunch of money from our kind of investors so that was index
00:50:43
accel green oaks dst you know businesses sort of flying um
00:50:50
and then um we were going to raise money from you know the world's biggest fund right
00:50:56
i'm not going to name who they are but you can probably guess who they are at some point right um
00:51:03
so anyway so we were we're about to do that um we just term sheets signed doing due
00:51:09
diligence summer of 17 and um you know big round and um
00:51:16
all of a sudden i get a call like oh we three days before we're supposed to close oh we can't do this
00:51:22
no blah blah blah reason i think it was related to wework it was
00:51:28
it was related to uber i think okay or something like that right i don't remember exactly the specifics but it doesn't really matter the point is
00:51:34
we're about to get all this money in the company and then suddenly it was just gone right a big number
00:51:42
big number and i was like holy [ __ ] you know what do we do so how big was
00:51:48
this number it's like 600 million something like that it's a lot of money right
00:51:54
700 maybe i don't even remember it's a bad day but then we um and i was like kind of pissed off
00:52:01
for like 10 minutes but i got the team together i'm like guys we got a lot of work to do over the
00:52:07
next you know month six weeks so we lined up like 25 investor meetings all around the
00:52:14
world and we just went we met with all these other funds
00:52:19
and we got it done but that was that was really really tough right again because if we didn't get we didn't
00:52:25
get the money because we're lost making entity right we were running out of money right so that part was not
00:52:31
fun that was a tough one but it was great we ended up you know working with um you know fidelity and t rowe price so we
00:52:38
got in terrific investors so at the end of the day you look back on it it was like oh that's a
00:52:43
actually a really good outcome but at the time it was really hard but that is so synonymous and typical
00:52:49
with building a business just that unix i mean this year's i mean covert 19 was an example of that just
00:52:55
unexpected unpredictable unanticipated crippling [ __ ]
00:53:01
at any time and this is why i find it almost impossible for founders not to live with some form of anxiety because
00:53:08
you know when you wake up on any day there's a high probability you're going to get a text message or an
00:53:13
email that something you didn't think about has just totally gone well i'll tell you i'll tell you a story
00:53:19
about covet actually it actually predates covet a bit so we raised the next round of capital
00:53:26
um so um from amazon which you you probably know yes the way this happened though was was
00:53:32
really crazy so we had um spent a bunch of time um with
00:53:37
amazon they decided to invest you know we negotiated the deal
00:53:42
all normal and they were great and we the due diligence process i was like wow these guys
00:53:48
really know what they're doing right so it's really it was really great so we announced the deal and again you
00:53:54
know we're loss making so we need the money right and again this is a big round and the um
00:54:00
the cma the antitrust authorities in in the uk they're just like we need
00:54:06
to review this but they wouldn't actually let us take the money in
00:54:12
right and we're like but how are we supposed to compete when we compete against the likes of uber and
00:54:18
justine you know that are well funded they're kind of like it's not really our problem you know we're like well
00:54:24
you know we're a british company trying to build you know big tech business here and so that whole process was
00:54:31
excruciating because it was 18 months long [ __ ] 16 16 months 18 months long where
00:54:40
amazon was a minority shareholder in our company i think a 13 stake 14 stake shareholder same as some
00:54:46
of the other like investors right they had one board seat everything was normal says and
00:54:52
you know these guys just literally kind of went after you know this um in an unprecedented way
00:55:00
but we couldn't get the capital in right so we're just going we're like what do we do and we're at the mercy
00:55:06
of some sort of you know institution right it's not like a free market type
00:55:12
of thing you can go and like find out you know we're at the mercy of this situation and so they took us through what they call
00:55:17
their phase one investigation which lasted like six months and then a phase two investigation lasts another
00:55:23
eight months so that was terrible right utterly terrible because you don't
00:55:29
actually have any idea what's going to happen because it's not it's not a logical process right it's sort of like you know
00:55:37
it's the whim of someone else right it's not it's not a logical process at the same time what started happening
00:55:42
was kovid kicked off in what jan feb of 2020 right so
00:55:49
we're running low on money because we couldn't get money in for whatever 14 months whatever it was
00:55:55
covet kicks off and covid what it did to us initially was our restaurant partners were shutting down for delivery
00:56:02
and dining not just dine in right and so the restaurants on the platform
00:56:07
started plummeting you know in europe and the uk now asia was different they handled it very differently
00:56:13
but we didn't our users were were disappearing because there were no restaurants left on the platform right i don't know what they
00:56:19
were doing i guess they're going to ocado or whatever and so we see this plummeting growth we
00:56:25
have to and we had to do the hardest thing i had to do the hardest thing i've ever had to do i had to lay off you know a significant number of
00:56:32
people at the company which just was the yeah it was the hardest thing i had to do you know like big layoffs because we we
00:56:39
just didn't know what the future was going to be like we were in the middle of an anti-trust process hoping to get a lot of money
00:56:45
in our business is plummeting that was really bad really bad i mean
00:56:51
the worst for people that lost their jobs obviously but really bad sleepless nights
00:56:58
i always sleep um but yeah the days are hard days you cite that moment as being the
00:57:04
toughest in your journey at delivery yeah i do i do just that whole
00:57:10
because it's it's not like a problem you or i could solve right if it's like hey you know we
00:57:16
didn't do this round i can go and raise more capital whatever we can go figure it out or
00:57:22
this feature doesn't work well the way we wanted to we can figure out a way to iterate around that there's an org structure issue well we
00:57:28
can figure that out but when you're at the whim of a government institution that's a very
00:57:36
different feeling that's a you're totally not in control and when it lasts for that long then the issue is
00:57:42
you're a tech company you can't not compete hard for 14 16 months right that's not
00:57:49
the world the way the world works it's not like a two grocery chains battling it out right it's just different
00:57:56
and so yeah i'd say that was hard it was compounded with the fact that we had to lay off all these people right
00:58:02
which is the hardest thing we could do now luckily for us these restaurants reestablish themselves and the business
00:58:09
has been on this amazing trajectory that was tough what goes into your thought process when
00:58:15
you realize you've got to lay off a significant amount of people you know that it has domino's effect
00:58:20
domino effects you know that it's going to be a press story all of these things you know that people are losing their jobs their livelihoods
00:58:26
at a time when they you know when they're going when when in a time when the the future is so uncertain
00:58:31
yeah what's going through my head like i mean just it's [ __ ] terrible right i don't
00:58:38
know what else to say you know but do we have to do it but it's terrible and getting up in front of the company
00:58:44
and explaining to people why this is the right thing to do really hard these are their friends
00:58:51
colleagues you know lost a lot of really great people you know it's definitely the hardest thing we've
00:58:57
ever had to do those are the days when it sucks busy right
00:59:02
look the job is like oh i'm so proud of what we built and i'm so excited about the future but like
00:59:08
it is a hard hard job and anyone that tells you otherwise is
00:59:14
either having an exceptional experience or or they're not being honest right i also think it's different when you're
00:59:20
the founder and the founder ceo right like i built the thing from an idea
00:59:25
right and it's a big thing and then i don't care about the press i care about like our employees right
00:59:33
i care about the restaurant partners the the riders the consumers did you have anxiety at
00:59:39
that point did you ever suffer with anxiety i mean i i certainly think so a must-have yeah
00:59:47
yeah for sure i i definitely had anxiety throughout that point running my business as well because we
00:59:52
face similar decisions and you're right the key word that you've used there which i resonated with
00:59:58
was uncertainty uncertainty because it's sort of like it's not in your control and you don't know how when you
01:00:05
i knew the cma i had to deal with them once in 2015. and it's not as you say no timelines we
01:00:11
when we didn't have a timeline when we were dealing with the cma yeah um we know that it's it's largely a
01:00:16
political yes um setting a presidency you know for us it was we were the biggest in our industry so
01:00:22
they were trying to establish a rule by using us as an example did you go through a phase one or what did you go through well i
01:00:28
was with the advertising standards association around disclosure of advertising and it was at a time when
01:00:33
influencer marketing it wasn't clear whether you had what you had to write on influencer marketing posts whether you
01:00:39
ad sponsored whatever i see right and so there was and the the rules and the guidelines
01:00:44
were as we were told by someone at the cma purposefully vague so that you could kind of you know interpret
01:00:51
and um they ended up using us as an example we had a case uh chundled on i think for nine months
01:00:56
for those nine months we're not sure whether they're going to shut us down find us slap on the wrist what's going
01:01:01
to happen it's tough but it's tough right because you don't know i don't know right so it takes a long time yeah that point
01:01:08
around anxiety i think is um specifically interesting because um it's i think it's definitely increasing in
01:01:14
our generation because of social media and we all have more tabs open than ever before ceos are people that as you've alluded
01:01:21
to walk around with all the tabs open all the time what do you do to relax in moments like
01:01:27
that when you're in the middle of a the story i probably don't do a good job with that you know
01:01:33
i can put a pretty calm face on because i'm just not naturally like an up and down person
01:01:38
but you know i try breathing exercises you know i try to really kind of just
01:01:45
not think about anything sometimes i tried that calm app yeah i got through
01:01:50
day six of the 30 day challenge got got a little bored at day seven but
01:01:56
but um i used to read a lot i used to read a book a week i now at this point it's it's it's been
01:02:04
a while since i read a book which is makes me a little sad this is like my favorite thing to do
01:02:09
that does work or you just kind of go for a walk i go on long walks all the time
01:02:15
that really helps me out a lot i have some super exciting news to share with you all i have an amazing new sponsor for
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could you could you talk to me about what it without going into specifics about people or whatever can you talk to me about the um
01:03:39
challenge of having and sustaining romantic relationships while you're also you've got this baby
01:03:46
and this obsession which is all concerning i think it's like yeah i think the brain is capable of
01:03:54
kind of filling itself up with certain things and then there's just not room for other things
01:04:01
yeah i mean that's how i think about it yeah i don't know if that's fair and you know some people would say that that
01:04:06
that i'm i'm certain that other people can can can can fill their brains up with more but
01:04:11
i'm like a very obsessive person right i don't know if you i'm the exact same that's why i asked the question because
01:04:17
i was hoping you might be able to tell me how to fix it i'm not the right guy to tell you all that so yeah i i've
01:04:23
struggled for that same reason just being very uncompromising with time and i hear compromise is an important
01:04:30
part to sustaining a healthy relationship i heard that too from all of my ex-girlfriends
01:04:36
but i don't know if like um yeah but i don't know if like it's also like
01:04:43
you know we do this because you know i don't know like we're hiding from something else or like you know
01:04:48
i don't know that's something i think about sometimes you think about that a little bit right like why am i so
01:04:53
obsessive but then i think back and i've always been obsessed about everything i don't really think it's changed but
01:04:59
when i started my career in business and i was obsessive looking myself in a room not really seeing my friends either i thought this is the
01:05:05
way to live life it's just about get rich get um successful and then everything
01:05:11
else happiness will arrive at that point like not it would not that i wasn't happy but just my happiness would it scale to
01:05:16
some point like euphoria so this is all it so you get successful you get some money and you realize that your happiness
01:05:23
probably for me i'm speaking for myself here doesn't necessarily scale it doesn't go down but doesn't
01:05:29
really move upwards that much and then i start reading about um the importance of meaningful
01:05:34
connections and relationships and all these things are watching this odd ted talk about how men in relationships over 100 years
01:05:40
study live longer are happier et cetera et cetera are more healthy and i think fact you know what i
01:05:46
actually think i've i've [ __ ] up i actually think maybe i should have attributed more time to relationships
01:05:52
but can you can you just be so intentional about everything i mean i don't know maybe we can i don't know
01:06:00
but you must you must understand the importance right according to like the science anyway of having
01:06:05
yeah yeah yeah but you know we make the decisions we do i
01:06:10
don't know you know it's all it's it there's a difference between an abstraction
01:06:17
and actually what happens right hmm but you because i i f worried that i might
01:06:22
regret it someday that i might have had my priorities wrong this whole [ __ ] time
01:06:27
you're a young man though does that ever cross your mind that you might have miss you might have put your priorities in the wrong place has it never crossed
01:06:34
your mind to be honest no really but i'm not a very retrospective person at all i literally
01:06:40
don't think about the past which may not be a good thing either good for certain things
01:06:46
not good for others what about friendships then through that through that you know chewing glass and staring into
01:06:51
the abyss how good were you at maintaining friendships and social
01:07:00
similar thing right it's like you have a limited amount of time and i'd say okay okay yeah you know
01:07:06
five out of ten probably five out of ten i wouldn't recommend probably it's a lonely job you know and
01:07:13
you're not gonna you don't want to like hang out with your friends and just talk about how tough your day is all
01:07:19
all the time either right so i don't know if you were the same way 100 awful friend my friends became the
01:07:26
people i worked with pretty much i had that i heard that but i think it's really important to separate that
01:07:32
yeah yeah but it's a solitary thing right you're a founder you know you just kind of especially
01:07:37
when greg kind of you know left the left and so you're just on your own and you got to figure stuff out
01:07:43
we make this sound kind of like terrible though i'm just like listen thing this is this is part of the reason why i wanted to do this podcast because
01:07:49
i think there isn't uh there isn't this warning about the sacrifice it's all
01:07:54
oh my god look he's [ __ ] rich and he's got oh i'd love to and i think the balance is important
01:08:01
let me take you up until the the ipo so you do um company goes public um our company went
01:08:07
public via reverse merger things change it's tough um because you
01:08:13
now have the scrutiny of the public markets talk to me about that whole journey and how you found that
01:08:19
um yeah so i think the whole ipo process you know was it was a lot of work for
01:08:26
about kind of three four months before the ipo i think we were all kind
01:08:32
of looking forward to you know something you know really exciting um and it was
01:08:37
really exciting to take a company public you know um you know you know at a big market cap um
01:08:44
you know something coming from an idea obviously sort of the the day one you know trading was was
01:08:50
hard right because i'm not like i don't really like i said i don't really care that much about what
01:08:56
people think and i don't really read the media that much or anything like that but when it's that pervasive
01:09:02
you know it's like front page of every you know single newspaper you know telling you you know you guys
01:09:09
[ __ ] up or you did this yeah it was tough for a few weeks i'll be honest with you it was tough for a few weeks
01:09:14
you know because the market cap fell yeah and just like you know there's a lot of you know you you
01:09:20
people in the company oh look what's going on and you're on investor calls like what's going on
01:09:25
and ultimately the way i sort of think about it is you know so proud of the fact we got
01:09:31
here right i'm actually just focused on the business how do we grow the business how do we move the business in the right
01:09:38
strategic direction right and i'm super super super optimistic
01:09:43
about the future for all the stuff we've been doing for the past few years i'm going to come to fruition you know in the future and all
01:09:49
the future facing stuff we're working on now so if i'm very honest with you i don't think about the stock price i
01:09:55
actually think about the business but for a few weeks it was like
01:10:01
difficult right it's very hard and then there's all these stories we're
01:10:06
in which we talked about a little bit but all these stories written about drivers are they employees are they contractors
01:10:12
um the unique position you've got is you've actually been a rider and in fact you still are yeah i did i did you know five
01:10:19
deliveries last night you know notting hill and i talk to riders all the time i know
01:10:25
what they want we're building a business for our riders for our restaurant grocery partners for our consumers
01:10:32
that's their custom they're all customers at the end of the day that's how we think about it right so a model that actually works for
01:10:37
them has got to be the most important thing and we know our model can it improve
01:10:43
absolutely it can improve we can improve everything but do we think it's the best model for them yeah
01:10:49
100 your company's worth you know billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and
01:10:55
you're out last night doing delivery riders yeah delivery deliveries around
01:11:02
nottingham why a few reasons one um i want i always test our rider app right so it's a good
01:11:08
way to do it secondly decent way to get some exercise and you're just on the road and you're
01:11:13
not thinking about anything else i actually find it very relaxing right and then thirdly i can actually
01:11:20
kind of see the restaurants in action too because the interaction is usually not with the consumer the consumer doesn't want to talk to you
01:11:27
but they just want their food i get it the restaurants you can learn a lot just by spending time there
01:11:32
when you shop at the restaurant to collect the pizza or whatever it is with chicken chow mein do they recognize you no no
01:11:40
one recognizes the writers recognize me sometimes but no one recognizes i'm not like a celebrity so have you ever had an experience where
01:11:45
like a restaurant was rude to you or like uh yeah last night really yeah i was pretty
01:11:50
pissed off about did you [ __ ] you're [ __ ] off the sidewalk no no no i don't say a word
01:11:55
but i i i make sure to log log into my notes really yeah how rude just like
01:12:02
well i was like hey i'm like hey i've been waiting for a while they're like they do this and i was like
01:12:08
shake behind you yeah i'm like come on and then then i got the food and it was like kind of cold i'm like hey like
01:12:13
you know just you know this food's kind of cold and they were like yeah just deliver it buddy and i'm like
01:12:19
at no point you told them you're this no i would never you're different from me no no
01:12:25
but i want the true experience right i want to understand what the writers go through it was
01:12:30
really funny as they were being rude to me there's other writers walked up to me he didn't know
01:12:35
where i was he was just like oh man you see these guys are at it again really yeah yeah and you take those learnings back
01:12:41
to 100 hq and you go we need to fix this yeah while we talk to those restaurants right are you going to speak to that
01:12:48
exact restaurant hundred percent i will and what would you say well
01:12:54
i waited around for a long time you clearly had made the food was just sitting around like we need better processes
01:12:59
we need to figure out a way to get this to work and please tell your staff to not you know be retweeted you know and i get it they're busy too
01:13:06
like but you know it's uh just just smile say hey how you doing
01:13:11
it makes a big difference in people's days right what have you what's your thinking around competition you're in an incredibly competitive
01:13:17
field where you've got these absolute heavyweights yeah and you've had competition emerge and
01:13:23
disappear throughout your whole course of building this business and they've and all your competition seems to have had
01:13:29
10 times 100 times the capital that you've had oh i don't know we've had a lot of capital to be fair but i mean uber
01:13:34
yeah well they're there they always have a lot and rocket internet in the early days they launched in the uk yeah yeah what was that thing
01:13:41
they launched i forget the name but everyone else yeah food i don't know something yeah i think it was look i think competition exists because
01:13:49
this is such a big market right the it's 1.3 trillion
01:13:54
pounds in the 12 markets we operate in online penetration is you know call it three to five percent
01:14:00
it's early it's big market that's why there's a lot of competition i think look the way we think about the
01:14:05
competition is um you know of course we pay attention to
01:14:11
it i mean very closely but it's really about what is our consumer value proposition and is it
01:14:17
better than the competition is it growing on an absolute basis as well and we fanatically sort of measure that
01:14:25
um and we always think about you know what is the consumer the riot or the restaurant the grosser
01:14:30
of the future want before they even know right what is the answer to that question what is the future
01:14:37
well i think the future is i can't give away all my secrets the future is um look this this this
01:14:43
business is super underpenetrated on you look look at travel it's 50 right food is that low why is food
01:14:50
difficult well food's difficult because a it's perishable and b it's emotional
01:14:56
which means to express food online is hard you you go to a restaurant right
01:15:02
restaurant's a 75 gross margin business why low net margin but high growth what
01:15:07
because it's an experience right right it's an emotional experience but it's not just about the food it's
01:15:13
what was your relationship with the maitre d what was what did the core look like all these things right i know they're
01:15:19
amorphous how do you take that same feeling and put it online a really hard
01:15:25
thing to do so i think the future is going to be more and more food occasions online
01:15:31
they don't just have to be delivery though they could be dine in they could be a whole host of other things private chefs could could be that could
01:15:38
be you know cool recipe kits could you know a lot of different things right but how do you marry that
01:15:46
with the emotional aspect of this brilliant food industry right
01:15:51
and no one does it we don't do it well today you look on our app it's pretty transactional you look at ubers you look at you know any of these other
01:15:57
guys pretty transactional and i think the winner in this space
01:16:02
it's a winner i don't know that's that's maybe a poor word but but whoever does really really well in the space is going to
01:16:09
nail that emotional side right the restaurant generated content the fmcg generated content the grocery
01:16:16
generated content we collect millions and millions of reviews each week on our platform
01:16:21
we don't do anything with that great today in my view so how do you marry all that together
01:16:26
how do you migrate the experience from a transactional one to more of an emotional one right hmm
01:16:32
interesting this is emotional right here sorry okay oh you're gonna drink four of
01:16:39
these that's great for this one so we're gonna put that all over facebook ads
01:16:47
that's really interesting and so you're talking about creating greater depth from what i heard creating greater depth with that social and
01:16:53
emotional interaction with food within the food is social food is emotional right yeah at the core so delivery is becoming a
01:17:00
social network for food but i think having aspects of that yeah
01:17:06
right we want to be an app you go to not just when you're hungry but when you want to learn about food as well
01:17:11
right i hear you because like a chef tells his story in a physical space how do you let that chef tell his
01:17:19
or her story online and how does that help you make decisions as to what you want to
01:17:24
purchase right i think that's amazing and it's really different than buying like toilet paper on amazon right or
01:17:29
buying like which is transactional right it's more transactional now the reason you use amazon is the best most reliable service in the
01:17:35
world but i think with food i think it's a little bit different you need that reliability but you also need that emotional connection
01:17:42
wow yeah so that's what we're we're spending a lot of time on trying to figure out so as you look so i guess no i've got
01:17:48
two questions so my next one is about money a lot is written when founders go public about how much money they've made
01:17:56
bonuses blah blah um i mean elon musk is a great example the amount they've written about him i
01:18:01
think it caused him to sell all of his properties and his house in pretty much all of his possessions and he now lives a lot of the time when
01:18:08
he's on a spacex in this little small shed but he said in the interviews he did that because the money is so secondary to him he just
01:18:14
wanted to disarm people from thinking about that and then obviously when he became the richest man in the world
01:18:19
again he is hitting with all the billionaires or evil stuff what relationship do you have with money
01:18:25
and what does it mean to you in your life oh man um
01:18:30
i don't know i never really thought about it uh [Music] i mean i don't really live very
01:18:36
differently than i did you know seven or eight years ago so kind of live in the same place
01:18:43
i mean i'd rather more money than less money probably agree to be honest um but uh did it make you
01:18:49
happier i don't know i don't haven't really thought about it i i
01:18:54
i'm sure there's some i'm sure having more at some point will make you a bit happier mm-hmm right i'm sure as you said
01:19:00
there's probably a limit to that though right yeah but i'm not like i don't buy a lot
01:19:05
of stuff so i don't know like yeah i just don't buy a lot of stuff so
01:19:11
when you look forward into your future then what is it that you're aiming for and and why does that matter
01:19:18
[Music] look uh you know um
01:19:24
i think part of me would love to figure out myself um uh may sound kind of weird but
01:19:31
just when you start this thing you're on this journey and the journey sort of propels
01:19:39
it has a life of its own basically it's probably the best way to put it you start getting a lot of customers you
01:19:45
start getting a lot of riders start getting restaurants you get investors and and the things moving and you're moving
01:19:50
along with it in many cases in a very deliberate way in many cases
01:19:55
you're along for a journey and so this thing has a life of its own and
01:20:03
it it it it is pretty interesting to take a step back and think okay
01:20:08
is this journey completely everything that i had in mind and i wanted to do or were
01:20:14
there just a lot of parts of it that were it's like a wave kind of taking you along
01:20:20
and i'd love to figure that out a bit to be honest right i don't that makes
01:20:26
any sense yeah so what i heard was you're trying to understand if your own personal journey
01:20:31
is completely aligned with the journey of the company as as it grows because
01:20:37
the two entities you know especially i'm guessing at the very start they're so interlinked it's your life it's your everything but
01:20:43
at some point you have to kind of separate i think not necessarily i'm not saying resign anything but separate
01:20:49
your life and your ambitions from that because they're so intertwined and it becomes difficult i'm not even saying
01:20:55
separate necessarily but just like having a better understanding of what your role and what will wants
01:21:02
from his life and what he's interested in and yeah and i think i i wonder if other people feel that way i don't know
01:21:07
maybe you've asked that question i know how you feel everyone's that sits here that's a founder of a big business feels that way
01:21:12
because it's just all consuming yeah yeah tom sat there last week he said the same thing did he yeah he's
01:21:18
like he was he was he had a red phone in his bedroom he was he had from what he described he had very little life he mean he said his
01:21:24
relationships broke down french he said i think his friendships were okay um but he had this red phone
01:21:30
in his bed or bedroom that would ring when there was emergencies he was consumed by it he had a crushing weight every time he woke
01:21:35
up in the morning and so now that he's he's left he's now discovering
01:21:40
pottery and all of these other sort of personal things that he's doing just for
01:21:46
his own personal reasons which were probably impossibly hard to do when he was being dragged well i think yeah yeah i
01:21:54
think that's interesting yeah when you start something and it really becomes something it has a gravitational pull of its own
01:21:59
and the question is you know are you this thing or you in the orbit right yeah it's a little hard sometimes
01:22:04
to to to separate those two things so that's something i'd love to kind of understand how do you go about
01:22:10
understanding that i was going to ask you man you're the one that talks oh god a therapist probably and really
01:22:16
trying to i think you're just talking about it i think because even as far as i don't think we get much time to talk about these things no we're just being dragged by the
01:22:24
emails and the urgent that's what i mean so you have to create space right to i
01:22:30
think you have to i think and i think it will help with business as well right to take a step back to to remove
01:22:36
yourself and just like think about other stuff and when you step back in that's why i do think going on holiday
01:22:42
is really you know you know it's funny it's like i didn't take one for seven eight years
01:22:47
just didn't um which is like kind of stupid honestly but maybe in the first few years i could maybe that was fine
01:22:54
but just having the ability to step away for a week and do something totally different i
01:23:00
think is incredibly important you got any holidays planned for to to
01:23:06
do exactly that this whole travel thing is a bit problematic and if you were to go on holiday do you think you could you
01:23:11
could relax um it's hard it'll pre it takes me about three days
01:23:16
so i need to go on a holiday longer than four days yeah i think that's what i need to do yeah well listen um when you do figure
01:23:24
out those existential uh answers and you've you've had time to meditate
01:23:29
and go to the beach and uh figure out that's that point of separation that you describe
01:23:35
do come back on the podcast and we'll talk about that then because i'd love to know the answers um but i want to thank you for coming here today and having this conversation
01:23:41
with me thanks steven super fascinating thank you um and it's so it's so inspiring
01:23:46
and interesting how there's so many similarities with with founders that have gone on that journey doesn't seem like there's
01:23:52
many differences however the character that's gone on that journey always seems to be really really different and you are you
01:23:58
know remarkably unique so you hear the same things a oh yeah the like fundamentals of
01:24:04
the journey and what it does to you and how it feels is always the same but then the the differences and the
01:24:09
nuances are in the like the pilot yeah and how he addresses the and how he or she
01:24:14
feels about or addresses those that experience and that usually relates to
01:24:19
the younger years and where you developed your resilience or your perspective on the world um but yeah super fascinating super
01:24:26
inspiring thank you so much for coming today thank you now you're a very very busy guy thank you for the huel
01:24:31
it was delicious i'm not even gonna have to plug it you've done it all for me you've done my job thank you just trying to make it easier you're
01:24:37
right you've made it really easy thanks thank you appreciate it appreciate you thank you
01:24:55
[Music]
01:25:09
you
