i just knew this city needed something

better than

the classic takeaways that's how i got

the idea for delivery

i definitely know what it was like to

walk in their shoes i did that job for a

long time

i did you know five deliveries last

night and that's why you know treating

riders with respect and making sure

their voices are heard is so important

to me

we're running low on money because we

couldn't get money in for

whatever 14 months hov it kicks off our

users were disappearing because

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

lay off you know a significant number of

people at the company

i'm so proud of what we built and i'm so

excited about the future but

it is a hard hard job and anyone that

tells you otherwise are not being honest

we're about to get all this money in the

company and then suddenly

it was just gone right

big number 600 million something like

that and i was like

holy [ __ ] you know what do we do

[Music]

delivery one of the fastest growing

technology companies in europe

you probably know the company you've

probably used it

but you probably don't know where it

came from

you probably don't know the founder and

his story

his unconventional very very humble

journey delivery went from an idea that

one guy had in london

while working in the city to becoming a

multi-billion

dollar company in record time

but the crazy thing about my

conversation today with will is

he is not your typical founder he's not

your typical ceo

he doesn't feel like your typical

entrepreneur this was really

his first business and the really

puzzling thing about my conversation

with will is he doesn't fit the typical

stereotype of what you expect an

entrepreneur to be

and i think that is amazing because it

just goes to show that

entrepreneurs don't all share the same

fundamental characteristics

they're not all these big braggadocious

characters with huge egos

and you can achieve great success with

great humility

will is an anomaly i think

you'll feel that today he is incredibly

humble

he isn't that introspective doesn't

analyze himself that much and he feels

like a very simple straightforward

character

but what he's achieved wasn't simple

it was excruciatingly difficult and as

he'll tell you today

it still is without further ado i'm

stephen butler

and this is the director ceo i hope

nobody's listening

but if you are then please keep this to

yourself

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

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

delivered delivery's biggest customer

so i'd like you to confirm that and

reward me accordingly but i think i was

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

big incumbent industry

however when i read into your story i

kept seeing this phrase that you'd say

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

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

achieved you built what is

now you know at least it was at one

point europe's fastest growing company

you couldn't possibly be just a normal

guy

i i don't know i mean i think i am you

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

a place called new haven connecticut

uh it's a small city um

about 130 000 people probably 10 square

miles so it's

pretty small um it's where uh yale

university is

oh yeah yeah so we're known for that and

we're known for

pizza those are probably the two things

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

and modern and all that

um but yeah look my my parents are

immigrants

um so you know i would say growing up

like

uh i guess we didn't

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

just kind of what you

your daily existence you know your

parents what do they do

professionally my mom my mom's scientist

she works at yale

my dad uh was an actuary he retired

so they they were you know well-educated

sort of professional people

yeah and you and that brought you over

here to london

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

went to a college called northwestern

um and then my first job out of college

i worked on wall street in new york

because this was 2001.

and i took this job on i mean i did

really well in

in school both in university and in high

school

um it was just one of these jobs you did

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

you know successful people ambitious

people kind of went down that path

so how did you end up in london i ended

up in london because i worked for three

years in new york

uh my third year they said i got another

job at a different place and they asked

me hey

do you want to you know check out a

different office and i never lived

outside the u.s

i wanted to do something different i

just took a chance literally

on london so i remember really well it

came out in april 04.

never been europe never been to london

never been

been here and so i showed up and i had

such a great time i met

you know the people on the team and i'm

like [ __ ] it i'm gonna come i'm gonna

come for a year

and then it ended up just basically

staying and how old were you when you

when you came over here for the first

time

was 24 24. yeah i think it's so crazy so

many of my american friends they've not

left the us

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

it was talking about how important it is

to leave the us

to understand the world but then also to

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

appreciate the us

so much more once once you leave

right because everyone in the us is

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

understand different societies you can

appreciate

the good and the bad of the us i'd say

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

idolizing so much about the us because

of films and movies yeah

the one thing that upon moving to the us

when i was 24 to run my business

to new york i couldn't get my head

around was the healthcare system

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

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

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

in manhattan

so but so you're you're working in

canary wolf i'm guessing if you're in

finance

yes i was a morgan stanley um and i

remember my first

day i showed up for work because in new

york you got 25

dinner allowance you can order whatever

you want

actually funny story my first kind of

day at work in 2001

i was pretty cheap right so i was like

25 i can get

i can do whatever so i actually ordered

25 whoppers because burger king had this

dollar whopper special and everyone's

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

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

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

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

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

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

but but i mean there's just london's

like

one of the culinary capitals of the

world like why wouldn't you want

better food delivered what's that i mean

so many people have ideas right so many

people have ideas for big grandiose

businesses

but it's almost like and i'd hate to say

this because it sounds super pessimistic

but the odds are you're gonna fail

so how dare you how do you try and

build that you know that massive

logistical operation that is

delivery you know honestly um

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

i started it i just said

i'm not hedging myself in any which way

i'm not doing side projects

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

right so i always thought about it as

you know i'm building this business for

myself

as a consumer and hopefully other people

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

was like oh i need to start a business

i'm like

i need to solve this problem which i

think is pretty different

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

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

heard this narrative that like

it's much easier to start a business

solving a problem that you and your best

friend

care about yeah right yeah otherwise

like you're gonna get bored

yeah you know you i i told this story

before it's totally true i had a friend

from business school

super smart guy and he he was he had

like a thousand ideas he'd write them

all down

but his ideas were all predicated on

some financial outcome right

and he started this thing it was the

etsy for pets

pet accessories or whatever and i was

like

okay this sounds okay sounds okay i read

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

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

couldn't do it

right that's true you can't do something

that you're not

actually fully invested in so many

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

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

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

they're going to fail

because of the reasons you described

there because you know they're going to

go through that absolute [ __ ] chaos

yeah and i think it was steve jobs that

said the same person would quit

it when you go through the absolute

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

no you won't right or

you you can't go in with the assumption

you will

quickly quickly as well right yeah and

you know and i

had this other guy i knew who he was

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

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

you pick one thing you gotta like really

go for it

different people have different sort of

attitudes towards that my view though is

you you just have to go all in right so

speaking of going all in there must have

been a day where you

hand in your notice of resignation well

so so no not not for delivery because my

story is um so

after morgan stanley i worked uh

kind of 0406 in london for morgan

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

in in philadelphia for two years and it

came back in 2012.

oh let's start this business fine yeah

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

you came straight to london to start

yeah because

what was cool about business school was

i saw offline

online happening right because remember

i so i tried to start the live room 08

right and when i was still working in

london and when i

looked into it it was like all right i'd

have to put

a laptop in each restaurant i'd have to

build

some sort of handheld device for our

rider network

and it was just too complicated but you

know steve jobs then invented this thing

that completely changed everything right

phones tablets

all of that and so that was the

prerequisite step of course for any of

these

well any business today really to

operate right

because in oh eight iphone one came out

sdk

i think the ios sdk came out in 08 so

this app ecosystem hadn't really

developed yet

and so had to wait for that i didn't

know obviously that

the iphone would you know do what it did

but in business school i was just super

excited about it

it goes to show how critical timing can

be in terms of these macro factors with

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

you think i think the same about things

like spotify

all of these macro factors of handheld

devices and 5g streaming

and 4g streaming whatever all had to

come together for you even to have that

conversation with the record labels

totally

the infrastructure you know i mean you

think back to

to just laying cables under the atlantic

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

just crazy

what had to come before and and those

changes are always happening because the

of the rate of evolution of technology

so it goes to show

that right now because of what's

happened over the last

x amount of months there are new

opportunities being that have been

created for entrepreneurs

whether it's blockchain or crypto or so

i think even as an entrepreneur you

always think all the good ideas are

taken

and you know for us we're obsessed about

continual

innovation of course because we know

competitors come for us right

we know that there's going to be someone

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

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

out in london so you've moved from

business school you've

you've got this idea um talk me through

how

you know as a ground floor opportunity

how that became a

a conceptual like a business yeah so um

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

yeah and so we were into computers like

when we were 12. i mean this is before

i'm trying to think here because my mom

worked yale so

we would go use the um the unix

workstations there and

we we actually you know like we were on

these use net groups

um you know we were using ftp this is

all before there was really a true

graphical representation of the internet

and so we got and we got pretty into

computer games and stuff like that so we

were we were pretty into that stuff

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

a bit i don't know just discovered

different things

um but he ended up just you know staying

well he he studied history then worked

as a car mechanic

just kind of randomly because he liked

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

like all the time and so

in oh wait i talked to him about this

idea right deliveroo

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

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

quit his job

and you know kind of start this thing

with me

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

here on october 12th

um we were building the prototype uh the

restaurant tablet

um the rider app um we didn't actually

launch with a consumer app we

literally just had a website and so you

had to kind of if you had a phone you

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

and and so yeah because there's two of

us right and so um

i'd say the first few months before

launch it was like me trying to set up

restaurants i signed up restaurants

walking up and down the street

in chelsea it was him building all the

initial technology

me and him making product decisions so

it's just just

basically two of us then he came out for

the launch january

13 and we launched in feb 13 and

um yeah it was just me and him for the

first

i guess year yeah so you were

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

not like i mean greg was building all

the technology yeah

he did it himself which is like pretty

incredible i was working with them on

the product decisions

and then i was running the business but

the business was me signing up

restaurants

me you know getting getting the rider

side of the marketplace going

um and obviously you know attracting

consumers

but the funny thing is you know

initially when we launched in february

obviously no one knew who we were so

i would actually just ask my friends to

order all the time

and you know they just get annoyed at me

like why are you like bothering me like

what

and um a number of my friends would

would order i know for the sole purpose

of

watching me deliver the food to them

right and i know that for sure

and they they just thought it was like

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

delivery

um but then i realized one thing after a

while

they kept ordering even if i didn't

deliver the food and so that's when i

kind of

realized we were onto something do you

remember the

first order that wasn't your friend

oh um no i i honestly don't but i can

tell you

the first order though the first first

order ever

i mean i told her to order it was it was

my friend anetta

and she was living on sydney street in

chelsea and the restaurant was rosso

pomodoro

and i and you know i was like excited

because she ordered so i delivered it

but i delivered the pizza upside down

yeah so it was it became a calzone um

and then i then i just ate it and she's

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

good i mean the writer ate the order

yeah yeah not only you delivered it

terribly and then ate the food

but but still charged her i'm guessing i

might have given her a refund i think

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

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

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

i used to wear this kangaroo costume

around um

yeah yeah um i didn't really enjoy doing

that but um i

i would wear a kangaroo costume and hand

out these um

you know whatever like this is the

living room yeah

well why why london and not america i

guess america's way more competitive and

the design of the country is slightly

different but why london

well i mean i'm a londoner right i lived

here for six years before going back to

business school

i just knew this city needed something

better than than the classic takeaways

wow whatever you don't have to say i'll

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

when i was a student getting the cold

stodgy

awful rest not even restaurants awful

corner shop takeaways and styrofoam

boxes that was cold was just

awful and there was no yeah and so

my first experience with delivery was

when i think i said you off camera

um a company that i was working with

turned the ceo turned around to me and

said you can now

order from top class restaurants and it

comes in a nice pack

nice packaging and i thought there's no

possible [ __ ] way

and then i tried it and i never went

back well the reality is look i tried

you know um just eat back in 0.7 right i

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

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

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

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

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

couple of riders so there was you and

the three

or four others yeah um there was mirza

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

yeah and they're still writers three of

them are one of them

actually works in our office in dubai

now oh wow he does like rider

support in dubai he wanted to move to

dubai so amazing yeah

awesome and so you guys were this was

when the business was starting to get a

little bit of traction within chelsea

i'm guessing exactly yeah yeah so a

little bit of traction in one

neighborhood

yeah we we launched only in one

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

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

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

how entrepreneurs should be starting

businesses

you seem to have done a lot of things

accidentally right

like even your your idea of launching in

a small area whether you can establish

network effects and

not necessarily doing marketing

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

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

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

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

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

just me and greg

four riders like 10 restaurants

you know you don't have any money yeah

you gotta like just

work on the most important things and

try to be as efficient as possible

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

all on all the conventional [ __ ]

flyers posters some inflatable balloon

which we rolled down a road

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

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

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

meet him

bought it posted about my website on

this facebook page more traffic than

we've ever had so we were like

let's just build facebook pages for free

and so in 2013-12

we started building facebook pages we

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

if we didn't run out of money because we

were forced

to think in real first principles

exactly to ignore convention

and um so i i came up with i i think

i i love this idea i i'm like that's

like my proudest idea

so um we we were like okay look how do

we reach people we could do the flyers

i was sick of walking around with this

kangaroo costume right and so

i was like hmm and i was staying in a

hotel and

i was like oh they have these do not

disturb signs that you can hang on the

door

right you know when you're in a hotel

like do not disturb and i'm like you

know what we should just

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

and we just hung them on people's doors

and that worked

so no discounts nothing just letting

people know about it it cost you what

20p for one of these things right

funny thing is the police got real mad

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

well we're a food delivery company

they're like

how do we know you're not a burglary

ring

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

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

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

kangaroo outfit trying to convince the

police you're not a burglar

basically do you want to come in and

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

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

you um the riders riders yeah

and you're i hear that you're hanging

out in a starbucks

often and you're just sitting there

chilling waiting for someone to

yeah we're just talking i mean you know

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

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

we're like but we we bought something

you know

he's like kick us out every every time

you know

and why was he kicking you out i don't

know to be honest i don't think he liked

the look of us

if i'm honest with you um

yeah you know like like uh i i think um

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

right and it was the way

that he looked at us the way he looked

at me was almost like we were

not people right we're kind of like

anonymous is probably the best word i

could use and then sort of sub human is

probably

you know the the worst word i could use

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

and i remember talking to the three

other guys about it

they like they're just like whatever

just let it go like

like who cares but i realized that that

must be how a lot of people look at them

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

mad about it

but you know it i definitely know what

it was like to walk in their shoes

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

with respect and making sure

their voices are heard is so important

to me

because of you know that one of those

incidents and then those three

those three guys were from pakistani

descent yeah

so one would one could assume that

the the reason why the gonna definitely

assume that yeah yeah i

was assuming just to be completely clear

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

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

for me and and just talking to these

guys but they were just so

sort of like either jaded or

kind of numb to it they're like wow like

whatever it seems to happen in them

all the time yeah because they

experience that type of prejudice

and discrimination all the time i i mean

i've i've been there right so

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

business i have a tendency to to

wear snapback caps and hoodies even

today

and obviously my net worth is

significant now and so when i get into

like the first class part of the train

i'll never forget the day whether the

train attendant walks right down the

aisle past everybody else and goes

this is first class mate you're like

yeah

didn't didn't mention that to anyone

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

this is this is first classmate i'm just

looking at him thinking

yes i know yeah you know what i mean and

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

i hopefully this wouldn't be the case

that people were you kind of like

numb to it or were you kind of angry

angry yeah

angry but for me it's like this small

little

heat inside it's not like i'm gonna be

rude to you yeah but

it's like you presume something about me

and and to be honest

there's a bit of me that actually

it's in some ways a compliment that he

couldn't possibly think someone like me

could

afford to sit there and for me that

there's some kind of

compliment in there because of the

underestimation that a black kid

that's young can't sit in first class

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

how lucky i was

relative to some of these guys that they

they cam

they come from backgrounds of you know

extreme poverty growing up in

in in in pakistan they came here to

build a better life they're super hard

working

like super dedicated and someone's just

treating them like [ __ ] it's like

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

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

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

in lieu of a meal three times a day so

you just stopped eating

hey deliveroo man do you know what

actually it's crazy because that is that

has been a pretty exciting

yeah no well i i think i i had delivery

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

and then when i'm busy throughout the

day where i'll and i'm moving this but

you enjoy

food you enjoy yes okay but i know we'll

never

give up hard food try it let me know all

right so let's see here we got

the whole bottle is 400 calories 32

carbs

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

cool this actually tastes pretty good it

is listen and it will

leave you feeling energized and full

and honestly we get addicted around here

so jack um

who directs the podcast when we put in a

huel fridge downstairs he hadn't had it

before tries one and now he actually

lives off it

if i drink this am i gonna want to eat

food as well

no okay no chance so so it's a good way

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

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

is the name of the company and i heard i

was reading about that

oh no yeah but i love this story because

i think it highlights how crappy

some decisions are at the start i heard

you were going to call delivery

something else

yeah there were there were a few

different um permutations

one was a food pony because i didn't

read about that because i was thinking

of these

animals and food i think one was

um i think it was i'm trying to think

here it was like uh

yeah it was food mule was was another

one because

you know a mule's uh transports um

food not so good right what about booze

food did you forget that one yeah

i didn't think you'd mention it um so

the original idea for deliveroo even

this is before 08 right

so you know you this so in new york

you go out on a big night first of all

everything's open like really late

right so you can actually go out past

11. if you get home at like five in the

morning you can still

order something to eat like you can do

that and what my experience in in london

was you

go out late and you just can't actually

eat anything and i just like

couldn't understand that and so

initially the idea for delivery was

something called

the zo7 it's called booze food which you

know really allowed you to order food at

like 3am when you really wanted it

so that is actually true yeah it's funny

because when

people look at successful founders

there's this like weird assumption

that all of the decisions you made were

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

of the thinking the marketing ideas

you think [ __ ] hell this is someone

that's actually

developed their thinking oh it's just

iterating right yeah you know

um but the boost food idea so there's

there's another funny part of that

because when when delivered so

boost food was a separate thing but then

when my buddy tried to liver for the

first time

he was like oh yeah this is great like

you've got

busaba you've got rosso pomodoro you've

got all these great restaurants in

chelsea

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

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

that's pretty funny idea

interesting um talking about co-founders

another sort of

integral part of success in business

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

departed

yeah yeah no i mean look without greg

the business wouldn't exist

right no no question about it i think um

you know he's one of the smartest uh

hardest working people i know

we grew up together he's one of my best

friends we've been friends since we were

12.

um i think um for greg he

he wouldn't move to the uk um ever

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

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

he built a

um engineering team in chicago where he

was living

but at some point i was like no this

this business real like we gotta

we gotta have the team all together and

so you know made a decision and he

he he left a business in late 15 early

16 or so um but i mean i have a great

relationship

with him we were just chatting last

night but yeah

founders go through hell together yeah

yeah i mean my founder co-founder did

yeah we went

we went through a lot but you know it

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

yeah you've got your you know your your

southern sort of other execs and

you've got you know a board of directors

but it's different

it's it's really different than having

that did that hurt you when he left

did it hurt me yeah a bit right because

i was kind of like

kind of wanted to build this thing you

know with him

but i also wasn't willing to just have

half of the company be based in the

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

yeah you know it was uh yeah it was

tough right

it was tough do you think that situation

could have been handled differently

in hindsight i think i think maybe i

could have convinced him a little bit

more to

to move out here i just think because he

wasn't here

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

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

riders the backpack on and

sort of people talking about it in the

uk right

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

certain decisions and

he he decided to prioritize an another

thing which is

you know totally totally fine i find

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

and we have distributed teams all around

the world in startups now yeah

and this was pre way pre-coverage 2015

before zoom probably

even you know had taken off so just i

just wonder if now in the world we live

in now

a relationship where the tech team is

remote could have

i i think i i do think and by the way

much of our tech team today is remote

but the difference is

we still have a very big core of people

that kind of have seen the journey

up front and center and so when you

layer on top of that remote people i

think that works really well

i think to have a product team and a

technology team that

literally never uses the product because

they're in the states is a really

problematic in my mind

because ours is not a just a pure

digital product right we're

we're a digital and a physical product a

relationships business

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

the same on certain types of businesses

for us it's very different

true very true talking about going

through hell with founders and

co-founders and just generally the hell

of starting

startups um one of the real reasons i

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

specifically the hard parts um and

i i know that in your journey to build

the business you did you've confronted

all kinds of

awful challenges yeah right talk to me

about some of those awful challenges

especially at the start

it doesn't get easier i'll tell you that

right so i mean the business is

really you know significantly sized

business now but i wouldn't say it gets

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

around

right um i think my biggest challenge

was at some point so i think i was lucky

in the sense the business momentum

sort of did take it wasn't like super it

wasn't like this but

there were new customers and we we knew

this thing was working

but i didn't know how big it was it

would be and at some point because i was

delivering food every single night right

and at some point i remember my my

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

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

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

he kind of looked at me and just like

all right you know and then i

kind of like because because i you know

i worked in these

jobs that you can you know make a lot of

money before i i

had this summer internship at wharton

that was like the one everyone wanted

and i just

decided to do something else and um no

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

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

gonna like do it and so he was like hey

man you should like think about

what you're doing right and i did

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

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

to it

so that was hard um i would say um did

you come close to

quitting at that stage no i never did

really

never greg did though yeah

greg did i never did i'm not like i just

i just wouldn't you know i wouldn't let

that happen why

i don't know man they just i just feel

like

i have such responsibility to the people

i i work with the restaurants and the

writers and

i don't know you just start like i'll

tell you what i'm not i'm not one of

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

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

that fuels more ambition

you get into the circular path and so i

was i was on it like that and i just

also have this just immense sense of

responsibility to people

right similar to that story you told

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

fund yeah

yeah i find this fascinating because

people don't often talk about

embarrassment

as being one of the real key barrier to

entries to start businesses and to

pursue your

your dreams yeah but it's such a tough

barrier

like humiliation and embarrassment and

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

doing

and that kind of like smirky like oh

okay

yeah that happened i also i mean that

story yeah so

it's john luca and um really nice guy

but

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

didn't know it'd be him

and i deliver this pizza to him and i

got my my scooter helmet on

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

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

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

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

know just delivering pizzas right

and i'm like well yes i am delivering

pizzas but i also that is part of the

job but you know i also started this

business and he just

thought it was totally nuts yeah

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

saying behind my back a little bit too

you know

not not in a terrible way just like out

of concern

why didn't you care too busy

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

life never really have

i don't know why but a bit of a

superpower isn't it

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

definitely a good thing especially as it

relates to your personal happiness but

also pursuing your

your um your goals and ambitions because

as we say embarrassment and

and because public scrutiny seems to be

one of the biggest barriers to starting

and continuing

so when you get past that initial stage

what are the next big challenges

um so post year one business starts

getting some traction

maybe business starts getting traction

um that part's real exciting right you

know you raise your first amount of

money that's like

super exciting it's like wow someone

someone gave

i think with us it was index ventures

gave us 2.7 million pounds

which now you're like that's like the

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

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

fun right

but i didn't know how to like hire

anyone i'd worked in finance and i

worked at hedge fund

sat in front of a bloomberg machine

right so i'm just

on gumtree that's how i hired and

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

true i hired the initial people from

gumtree

and i was just like writing like random

like job descriptions

and we ended up um getting an office

by office i mean probably the size of

this room i would say

no windows no heating it's definitely

illegal it was on cleveland street

121d cleveland street and um

we we found these like tables and chairs

in the car park beneath it

found a sofa on the street just set it

up it was a thousand pounds a month

and we got going right but i loved that

part that was so much fun

um so i'd say in the like the first two

were super hard

i would say years two and three

and four were hard but like exciting

because you're expanding the business

you don't

really know what you're doing you're

kind of figuring it out as you go along

right so i love that part your favorite

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

i'm the ceo of a large publicly traded

company now right it's not gonna be as

fun let's be honest

like and i'm happy to say that on the

record yeah like

everyone does everyone talks about the

sub hundred

um because you know why because

everyone's on the same page yeah

you don't need to be deliberate about

communications you don't need to be

deliberate

about how all the pieces fit together

everyone just kind of knows

and obviously to scale a company and do

that in a high quality way you need to

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

when you have 100

i think it's the best you know

everybody's name and oh everyone's name

you guys are all

sort of kind of friends you you know you

go to the pub together

you know that's fun when did you

consider yourself to be an entrepreneur

ah i don't know i don't know if i ever

thought about it like that was there

even after you raised that money did you

did you think i'm a businessman

i always thought about i wanted to build

an online food company

that's how i always thought about it so

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

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

around i think so

and it's almost become quite i know sexy

and instagramable to be like

be your own boss i'm ceo [ __ ] like do

you know all that stuff like and i think

that

and again i just bet against those

people that are building for the sake of

status not for the sake of value right

solving a problem

yeah solve a problem so so intriguing

that seems to be a really similar

pattern with the people that sit here

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

yeah to me that's got to be the way now

obviously there's

going to be a lot of different people

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

a couple of you in that room things are

tough right you're talking about you

know you're burning cash

all startups especially tech ones tend

to be burning cash yeah

um what was your mental health journey

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

up and down person uh so i guess that's

probably a good thing but i'm not

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

ups where i'm like going around jumping

up and down

and i'm not going bananas when things

are you know kind of going

back that that being said some of my

former colleagues in the early days

might disagree with me

i would absolutely go nuts when

i thought an order was handled and

appropriately or customer service

interaction was um handled

inappropriately

i think some people probably they can

have some memories of that but

i kind of got over that and don't don't

really do that anymore but

i would say a lot of the journey

is super super super hard i'm happy to

talk about

any of those stories with you but

there's definitely been

long periods of time not just like for

hours like long periods of time we're

just like

man this is this has to get easier or

like

you know you're just i forget it was

elon musk or whoever talks about it the

standing on the abyss thing

you know you know chewing glass i felt

that like

many many many times right that's hard

it's really hard if you'd known it would

be that hard would you have started

thinking about your toughest moments if

you'd known you would have had to

go through that that chewing glass

staring into the abyss would you have

started delivering

um if on the day where you thought i'm

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

say because if you told me hey

business would be where it is today

would i have started it probably yes

you told me it wouldn't work out and i'd

be having chewing glass for like years

then probably not right

it all it all depends but it it's like

hard to it

completely different degree because as

the founder you think about it

every single hour you think about it you

know when you're in bed

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

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

through the specific details of those

moments though

one example of an issue so so one of

them was

we were um so so back in 2017

holy [ __ ] i guess four years ago now

yeah

we were um you know we'd raised a bunch

of money from our

kind of investors so that was index

accel green oaks dst

you know businesses sort of flying um

and then um we were going to raise money

from

you know the world's biggest fund right

i'm not going to name who they are but

you can probably guess who they are at

some point

right um

so anyway so we were we're about to do

that

um we just term sheets signed doing due

diligence summer of 17

and um you know big round and um

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

no blah blah blah reason

i think it was related to wework it was

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

we're about to get all this money in the

company and then suddenly

it was just gone right a big number

big number and i was like holy [ __ ]

you know what do we do so how big was

this number it's like

600 million something like that it's a

lot of money right

700 maybe i don't even remember it's a

bad day but then

we um and i was like kind of pissed off

for like 10 minutes

but i got the team together i'm like

guys we got a lot of work to do over the

next

you know month six weeks so we lined up

like

25 investor meetings all around the

world

and we just went we met with all these

other funds

and we got it done but that was that was

really really tough right

again because if we didn't get we didn't

get the money because we're lost making

entity right

we were running out of money right so

that part was not

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

got in terrific investors so at the end

of the day you look back on it it was

like oh that's a

actually a really good outcome but at

the time it was really hard

but that is so synonymous and typical

with

building a business just that unix i

mean this year's i mean

covert 19 was an example of that just

unexpected

unpredictable unanticipated crippling

[ __ ]

at any time and this is why i find it

almost impossible for founders not to

live with some form of anxiety because

you know when you wake up

on any day there's a high probability

you're going to get a text message or an

email

that something you didn't think about

has just totally gone

well i'll tell you i'll tell you a story

about covet actually it actually

predates covet a bit so

we raised the next round of capital

um so um from amazon which you you

probably know yes

the way this happened though was was

really crazy so

we had um spent a bunch of time um with

amazon

they decided to invest you know we

negotiated the deal

all normal and they were great and we

the due diligence process i was like wow

these guys

really know what they're doing right so

it's really it was really great

so we announced the deal and again you

know we're loss making so we need the

money right

and again this is a big round and the um

the cma the antitrust authorities

in in the uk they're just like we need

to review this

but they wouldn't actually let us take

the money in

right and we're like but how are we

supposed to compete when

we compete against the likes of uber and

justine you know that are well funded

they're kind of like it's not really our

problem you know we're like well

you know we're a british company trying

to build you know big tech business here

and so that whole process was

excruciating

because it was 18 months long

[ __ ] 16 16 months 18 months long where

amazon was a minority shareholder in our

company i think a 13

stake 14 stake shareholder same as some

of the other like investors right

they had one board seat everything was

normal says and

you know these guys just literally kind

of went after

you know this um in an unprecedented way

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

of some sort of you know institution

right it's not like a free market type

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

their phase one investigation

which lasted like six months and then a

phase two investigation lasts another

eight months

so that was terrible right utterly

terrible because you don't

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

it's the whim of someone else right it's

not it's not a logical process

at the same time what started happening

was kovid kicked off in

what jan feb of 2020 right so

we're running low on money because we

couldn't get money in for

whatever 14 months whatever it was

covet kicks off and covid what it did to

us initially was

our restaurant partners were shutting

down for delivery

and dining not just dine in right

and so the restaurants on the platform

started plummeting

you know in europe and the uk now asia

was different they handled it very

differently

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

were doing i guess they're going to

ocado or whatever

and so we see this plummeting growth we

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

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

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

in our business is plummeting

that was really bad really bad i mean

the worst for people that lost their

jobs obviously

but really bad sleepless nights

i always sleep um but yeah the days are

hard

days you cite that moment as being the

toughest in your journey at delivery

yeah i do i do just that whole

because it's it's not like a problem you

or i could solve

right if it's like hey you know we

didn't do this round

i can go and raise more capital whatever

we can go figure it out or

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

can figure that out

but when you're at the whim of a

government institution that's a very

different feeling that's a

you're totally not in control and when

it lasts for that long then the issue is

you're a tech company you can't not

compete

hard for 14 16 months right that's not

the world the way the world works it's

not like a

two grocery chains battling it out right

it's just different

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

which is the hardest thing we could do

now luckily for us these restaurants

reestablish themselves and the business

has been on this

amazing trajectory that was tough

what goes into your thought process when

you realize you've got to lay off a

significant amount of people

you know that it has domino's effect

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

at a time when they

you know when they're going when when in

a time when the the future is so

uncertain

yeah what's going through my head like i

mean

just it's [ __ ] terrible right i don't

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

and explaining to people why this is the

right thing to do

really hard these are their friends

colleagues

you know lost a lot of really great

people you know

it's definitely the hardest thing we've

ever had to do

those are the days when it sucks busy

right

look the job is like oh i'm so proud of

what we built and i'm so excited about

the future but like

it is a hard hard job and anyone that

tells you otherwise is

either having an exceptional experience

or or they're not being honest right

i also think it's different when you're

the founder and the founder ceo

right like i built the thing from an

idea

right and it's a big thing and then i

don't care about the press

i care about like our employees right

i care about the restaurant partners the

the riders

the consumers did you have anxiety at

that point

did you ever suffer with anxiety i mean

i i

certainly think so a must-have yeah

yeah for sure i i definitely had anxiety

throughout that point

running my business as well because we

face similar decisions

and you're right the key word that

you've used there which i resonated with

was uncertainty

uncertainty because it's sort of like

it's not in your

control and you don't know how when you

i knew the cma i had to deal with them

once in 2015.

and it's not as you say no timelines we

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

political

yes um setting a presidency you know for

us it was we were the biggest in our

industry so

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

was with the advertising

standards association around disclosure

of advertising and it was at a time when

influencer marketing it wasn't clear

whether you had what you had to write on

influencer marketing posts whether you

ad sponsored whatever i see right and so

there was

and the the rules and the guidelines

were as we were told by someone at the

cma

purposefully vague so that you could

kind of you know interpret

and um they ended up using us as an

example we had a case

uh chundled on i think for nine months