Deliveroo Founder - From £0 to £5 Billion: Will Shu

Deliveroo, wow this company is HUGE! I’m sure most of you would have used it but do you know anything about the guy behind it? My guest this week is Will Shu, founder and CEO of Deliveroo. Born in 1979, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, Shu grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. His mother, a scientist, and father, who worked in insurance. He founded Deliveroo in 2013 with childhood friend and software engineer Greg Orlowski. Deliveroo operated in London for the first two years, growing via word of mouth. It now operates in 12 countries and more than 200 cities. Deliveroo is worth £5 billion, becoming Europes fastest growing company with 2,000+ employees. In mid-June 2016, Will and Greg received an award for the Best Startup Founders as part of The Europas Startup Conference and Awards, mainly given to technology companies. The company also received Fastest Rising Startup of the Year and the Europas Grand Prix award. In December 2017, a study by macroeconomic consultancy Capital Economics revealed that Deliveroo had helped create 7,200 jobs across the restaurant sector since it launched in 2013. It also boosted the industry's revenue by £460 million in the year to June 2017. The report also found that Deliveroo had helped add £372 million in value to the UK economy in the same 12-month period, a figure which Capital Economics projects to rise to £1.5 billion in the year to June 2019. By mid 2020, Deliveroo had not benefited from the COVID-19 pandemic, when demand for food delivery from restaurants and takeaways surged. Deliveroo reported to be cutting 367 jobs (and furloughing 50 more) from its workforce of 2,500. Will talks about how hard this decision was at the time in today's podcast. Will is an incredible entrepreneur, one thats a far cry from the usual braggadocios CEO of a multi billion dollar company. He’s a humble person and lives a very modest lifestyle saying his life hasn’t change much at all since the early days of Deliveroo. This is conversation proved to me that you don’t have to be born an entrepreneur. Follow Will: Twitter - https://twitter.com/willshuroo Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  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. Covid 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.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  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? A big number, 600 million, something like that. And I was like, holy shit, you know, what do we do?

• 1:07Steven Bartlett?

  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. Doesn't feel like your typical entrepreneur. This was really his first business.

• 1:52Steven Bartlett?

  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 and I think you'll feel that today. He is incredibly humble. He isn't that introspective, doesn't analyse himself that much, and he feels like a very simple, straightforward character. But what he's achieved wasn't

• 2:33Steven Bartlett?

  simple. It was excruciatingly difficult. And as he'll tell you today, it still is. Without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening. But if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 2:56Steven Bartlett?

  Will, 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. As I was reading about your story, and I've, as I said to you before we started recording, I've been, I think actually in 2015, I was delivery's biggest customer. So I'd like you to confirm that and reward me accordingly. But I think I was. 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

• 3:41Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 3:50Speaker 00

  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. It just sort of is what it is. So I grew up in a place called New Haven, Connecticut. It's a small city, about 130,000 people, probably 10 square miles. So it's pretty small. It's where Yale University is.

• 4:11Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:11Speaker 00

  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 US.

• 4:19Steven Bartlett?

  That explains why you went and started a delivery company.

• 4:21Speaker 00

  I mean, yeah, I was always obsessed with Sally's and Pepe's and Modern and all that. But yeah, look, my, my parents are immigrants. So, you know, I would say, growing up, like, I guess we didn't, probably didn't spend very much money is 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?

• 4:48Steven Bartlett?

  Your parents, what did they do professionally?

• 4:51Speaker 00

  My mom, my mom's scientist. She worked at Yale. My dad was an actuary. He retired. So they were, you know, well educated, sort of professional people.

• 5:03Steven Bartlett?

  And you and that brought you over here to London?

• 5:06Speaker 00

  No, no. So, so my story is I, yeah, I grew up in New Haven. I went to university in Chicago. I went to a college called Northwestern. 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. 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.

• 5:42Steven Bartlett?

  So, so how did you end up in London?

• 5:44Speaker 00

  I ended up in London because I worked for three years in New York. 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'd never lived outside the US. I wanted to do something different. I just took a chance, literally, on London. So I remember it really well. I 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, fuck it, I'm gonna come. I'm gonna come for a year. And then I ended up just basically staying.

• 6:21Steven Bartlett?

  And how old were you when you came over here for the first time?

• 6:24Speaker 00

  Twenty four.

• 6:25Steven Bartlett?

  Twenty four. 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 think it was in, I think it's a page in the New York Times. And 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.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  I couldn't agree more. I mean, today's July 5th, right?

• 6:45Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

• 6:46Speaker 00

  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? But when you leave and you you understand different societies, you can appreciate the good and the bad of the US, I'd say.

• 7:05Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 7:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:15Steven Bartlett?

  The one thing that upon moving to the US when I was twenty four to run my business to New York, I couldn't get my head around was the healthcare system.

• 7:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:22Steven Bartlett?

  The idea that I could get sick and be bankrupt.

• 7:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's nothing you can do about it. Yeah.

• 7:27Steven Bartlett?

  That's the only, well, but there's a couple of the 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.

• 7:33Speaker 00

  So you were in New York, kind of the same age I moved to London then.

• 7:36Steven Bartlett?

  Yes.

• 7:36Speaker 00

  And you moved to, you moved to Williamsburg then.

• 7:39Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, straight to Williamsburg. Our office was in Manhattan. So, but so you're, you're working in Canary Wharf, I'm guessing, if you're in finance?

• 7:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I was at Morgan Stanley. And I remember my first day I showed up for work. Cause in New York, you got twenty five dollars dinner allowance. You can order whatever you want. Actually, funny story, my first kind of day at work in two thousand and one. I, I was pretty cheap, right? So I was like twenty five dollars I can get, I can do whatever. So I actually ordered twenty five Whoppers. Because Burger King had this dollar Whopper special. And everyone's like, what are you doing? And by like day three, the, the sort of novelty wore off. I'm like, oh, I gotta work a hundred hours a week. It's not, you know, this isn't that much fun. But no, the, 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?

• 8:30Speaker 00

  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 a hundred hours a week. You should try to aspire for something a little bit better. So first day, that's how I got the idea for Deliveroo. First day I moved here.

• 8:45Steven Bartlett?

  One of those Tesco meals just didn't cut it.

• 8:47Speaker 00

  I mean, it was all right. I mean, there, 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?

• 8:56Steven Bartlett?

  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 dare you try and build that, you know, that massive logistical operation that is delivery?

• 9:18Speaker 00

  You know, honestly, um, it's a really good point, right? Cause 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.

• 10:02Speaker 00

  Or they they're in an industry that they know super well and they've identified some inefficiency. That's my view at least.

• 10:08Steven Bartlett?

  I can, I, you know, I've, 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.

• 10:15Speaker 00

  Care about, right?

• 10:17Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 10:18Speaker 00

  Otherwise, like, you're gonna get bored.

• 10:20Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 10:20Speaker 00

  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, that's true. You can't do something that you're not actually fully invested in.

• 11:03Steven Bartlett?

  So many entrepreneurs will say that. They'll say, oh, 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 just, I just a hundred percent stand by this, I always think they're gonna fail. Because of the reasons you described there, because you know they're gonna go through that absolute bullshit chaos.

• 11:27Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 11:27Steven Bartlett?

  And I think it was Steve Jobs that said, a same person would quit. It, when you go through that 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?

• 11:39Speaker 00

  No, you won't, right? Or you you you can't go in with the assumption you will quickly as well, right?

• 11:46Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 11:46Speaker 00

  And, you know, and I had this other guy I knew who, he was like, you know what? I I I, he worked at a big consulting firm, I think it was McKinsey 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, and you gotta like, really go for it. Different people have different sort of attitudes towards that. My my view, though, is you you you just have to go all in, right?

• 12:10Steven Bartlett?

  So, speaking of going all in, there must have been a day where you had in your notice of resignation.

• 12:15Speaker 00

  Well, so so no, not not for Deliveroo, because my story is, um, so after Morgan Stanley, I I worked, uh, kind of oh, four to oh, six in London for Morgan Stanley. 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 I came back in twenty twelve to start this business.

• 12:37Steven Bartlett?

  Fine. Yeah, fine. So you came back.

• 12:39Speaker 00

  This so this was the thing I I I I wanted to do after business school.

• 12:42Steven Bartlett?

  Okay. So you finished business school and you came straight to London to start.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, because what what was cool about business school was I saw offline to online happening, right? Because remember, I I so I tried to start Deliveroo in oh, eight, right? And when I was still working in London. And when I looked into it, it was like, all right, I 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?

• 13:26Speaker 00

  Because in oh, eight, iPhone one came out, SDK, I think the I I O S SDK came out in oh, eight. So this app ecosystem hadn't really developed yet. And so.

• 13:39Speaker 00

  Had to wait for that. I didn't know, obviously, that the iPhone would be, you know, do what it did. But in business school, I was just super excited about it.

• 13:46Steven Bartlett?

  It goes to show how critical timing can be in terms of these macro factors with technology to enable ideas like that. Cause you're right, you could never have started this business in 2008. Never. It 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.

• 14:09Speaker 00

  Totally. The infrastructure, you know, I mean, you think back to, to, to just laying cables under the Atlantic. I mean, all of this stuff, right? To, to, to, to the iPhone, to, to all the software that was being built on. I mean, just crazy what had to come before.

• 14:24Steven Bartlett?

  And, and those changes are always happening because 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 whatever. So I think we're, even as an entrepreneur, you always think all the good ideas are taken.

• 14:44Speaker 00

  Never. 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 Deliveroo 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.

• 15:06Steven Bartlett?

  So, so when you first started out in London, so you've moved from business school, you've, um, you've got this idea. Talk me through how, you know, as a ground floor opportunity, how that became a conceptual, like a business.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  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 were like 12.

• 15:25Steven Bartlett?

  Wow.

• 15:26Speaker 00

  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 at Yale, so we would go use the Unix workstations there and we actually, you know, like we were on these use net groups. 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. And, and so that's how I, that's how I knew my co-founder Greg. We then kind of got out of computers a bit. I don't know, just discovered different things. But he ended up just, you know, staying, well, he, he studied history, then worked

• 16:11Speaker 00

  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 08, 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

• 16:54Speaker 00

  in October 12. We were building the, the prototype, the restaurant tablet, the rider app. 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 into all the buttons. It wasn't even mobile optimized. We didn't even have an app, right? So, and, and so, yeah, because there's two of us, right? And so I'd say the first few months before launch, it was like me trying to set up restaurants, assign 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 was just, just basically two of us. Then he came

• 17:33Speaker 00

  out for the launch, January 13, and we launched in Feb 13. And yeah, it was just me and him for the first. I guess year. Yeah.

• 17:46Steven Bartlett?

  So you were predominantly leading the rider side and the kind of like on the ground operations?

• 17:50Speaker 00

  I mean, there's two of us. So there's literally not like, I mean, Greg was building all the technology.

• 17:55Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 17:56Speaker 00

  He did it himself.

• 17:57Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 17:57Speaker 00

  Which is like, pretty incredible. I was working with him 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, of the marketplace going. 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'd just get annoyed at me. They're like, why are you like bothering me? Like what? And 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.

• 18:38Steven Bartlett?

  We do the same.

• 18:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I would deliver the food and then they, they'd want to chat. And I'm like, sorry, guys, I gotta do my next delivery. 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 on to something.

• 18:54Steven Bartlett?

  Do you remember the first order that wasn't your friend?

• 18:58Speaker 00

  Oh, no, 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 Annetta. 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, the pizza upside down. Yeah. So it was, it became a calzone. And then I, then I just ate it. And she's, she's like, you ruined my meal and you ate the food. This is like the worst experience of all time.

• 19:30Steven Bartlett?

  Only up from there, though. So it's good.

• 19:32Speaker 00

  I mean.

• 19:33Steven Bartlett?

  The rider ate the order.

• 19:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Not only, you delivered it terribly and then ate the food, but.

• 19:39Steven Bartlett?

  But still charged her, I'm guessing.

• 19:42Speaker 00

  I might have given her a refund, I think. I don't know.

• 19:44Steven Bartlett?

  Very kind of you.

• 19:44Speaker 00

  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, and people got, you know, the bunch of people started just showing up. I didn't know their names. I had no idea what was going on.

• 19:56Steven Bartlett?

  I, I heard you, you didn't do marketing for the first.

• 19:58Speaker 00

  Couple of years.

• 19:59Steven Bartlett?

  Couple of years, yeah.

• 20:00Speaker 00

  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 Deliveroo.

• 20:14Steven Bartlett?

  Flyers, whatever.

• 20:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:15Steven Bartlett?

  Well, why, why, why London and not America? I guess America's way more competitive and the, the design of the country is slightly different, but why London?

• 20:23Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, I'm a Londoner, right? I, I lived here for six years before going back to business school. I just knew this city needed something better than, than the, the classic takeaways, right? Wow, whatever.

• 20:36Steven Bartlett?

  You don't have to say it. I'll say it. Just Eat was fucking awful.

• 20:39Speaker 00

  Well, you know, I don't.

• 20:40Steven Bartlett?

  Back in the, you don't have to say it. I'll say it. Um, when I was a student, getting the cold, stodgy, awful rest, not even restaurants, awful corner shop takeaways in styrofoam boxes, that was cold, was just awful. And there was no, the, yeah. And so my first experience with delivery was when I, I think I said to you off camera, um, a, a company that I was working with turned, the CEO turned around to me and said, you, you can now order from top class restaurants and it comes in a nice pack, nice packaging. And I thought, there's no possible fucking way. And then I tried it and I never went back.

• 21:16Speaker 00

  Well, the reality is, look, I tried, you know, um, Just Eat back in oh seven, right? I was really excited about it. I was like, this is gonna 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 gonna show up. And it was all sort of, look, I like kebabs, right? I like fried chicken, nothing wrong with that. But if that's the only choice, I'm kinda like, you know.

• 21:36Steven Bartlett?

  I like kebabs, but my intestines don't. So like, it's very, there's a battle.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  There's some good places. There's some.

• 21:42Steven Bartlett?

  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, you get to the point where there's, I, you know, I read about there was a couple of riders. So there was you and, and the three or four others.

• 21:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, there was Mirza, there was Said, there was Hanif. Said and Hanif and Mirza still work with us. Matlub doesn't. There's about four of us. Yeah.

• 22:06Steven Bartlett?

  And they're still riders?

• 22:07Speaker 00

  Three of them are. One of them actually works in our office in Dubai now.

• 22:10Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, wow.

• 22:11Speaker 00

  He does like rider support in Dubai. He wanted to move to Dubai, so.

• 22:15Steven Bartlett?

  Amazing.

• 22:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:16Steven Bartlett?

  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?

• 22:23Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 22:23Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah?

• 22:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:24Steven Bartlett?

  So a little bit of traction in one neighborhood?

• 22:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, we launched only in one neighborhood, right? The first, you know, few restaurants were all on the Fulham Road and the King's Road. And one of the restaurants was my landlord's restaurant. I used to live above it. So he, I convinced him to sign up for it just because he was, I saw him every day, right?

• 22:42Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 22:59Speaker 00

  But Stephen, we didn't have money. This wasn't Silicon Valley. I'm going to raise a $30 million seed. 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 raised money.

• 23:18Steven Bartlett?

  There's something important about that, isn't there? When teams don't have huge budgets, they seem to make better decisions.

• 23:22Speaker 00

  I think so. I think, I actually do. I think having too much money can be problematic. And there's a lot of money now. But yeah, when you're, when you're, it was 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.

• 23:43Steven Bartlett?

  I resonate with that because I, when I started my first business, we had £6,000 marketing budget. And it was, it wasn't until we'd blown it all on all the conventional shit, 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 said, If we have no money, how do we get millions of people?

• 24:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, how do we do it?

• 24:02Steven Bartlett?

  And that led us to discover this thing called social media.

• 24:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:05Steven Bartlett?

  And then we were like, well, this, well, this is Facebook page that has eight thousand students on it. And the owner says we can buy it off him for fifty quid. I've got fifty 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 two thousand thirteen, twelve, we started building Facebook pages. We got to a hundred million followers, we're doing seven billion video views a month. And the business grew to be worth three hundred 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.

• 24:36Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 24:37Steven Bartlett?

  To ignore convention and.

• 24:39Speaker 00

  So I, I came up with, I, I think, I, I love this idea. I, I'm like, this is like my proudest idea. So um, we, we, we were like, okay, like, how do we reach people? We could do the flyer signs. I was sick of walking around with this kangaroo costume, right? And so I was like, hmm. And I stayed in a hotel and I, 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. Cause no one knew you could actually get deliveries from there. And we just hung them on people's doors.

• 25:15Steven Bartlett?

  Nice.

• 25:16Speaker 00

  And that worked. So no discounts, nothing, just letting people know about it. It cost you what twenty p 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 Deliveroo 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.

• 25:51Steven Bartlett?

  Smart.

• 25:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:52Steven Bartlett?

  And you're stood there in your kangaroo outfit trying to convince the police you're not a burglar.

• 25:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, basically.

• 25:56Steven Bartlett?

  So I, you know, you've got four or five of you.

• 25:59Speaker 00

  The riders.

• 26:00Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 26:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, we're just talking, I mean, you know, you know, there's like four of us there, yeah.

• 26:12Steven Bartlett?

  So you've got the founder of the company and three others.

• 26:15Speaker 00

  The three riders, yeah.

• 26:16Steven Bartlett?

  Just waiting for the phone to ping.

• 26:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was the three of us and it was same guy would come to us and he'd be like, all right, you guys gotta leave. Or like, but we, we bought something, you know, he's like, kick us out every, every time, you know?

• 26:31Steven Bartlett?

  And why was he kicking you out?

• 26:33Speaker 00

  I don't know. To be honest, I don't think he liked the look of us, if I'm honest with you.

• 26:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, like, like, uh, I, I, I think, um, you know, and, 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? Or we're kind of like,

• 27:00Speaker 00

  anonymous is probably the best word I could use. And then sort of subhuman is probably, you know, the, 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? Cause 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.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  And that's why, you know, treating writers with respect and making sure their voices are heard is so important to me. Cause of, you know, that one of those incidents.

• 27:52Steven Bartlett?

  And that those three, those three guys were from Pakistani descent.

• 27:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:57Steven Bartlett?

  So one would, one could assume that the, the reason why the.

• 28:02Speaker 00

  Oh, I'm gonna definitely assume.

• 28:03Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I was assuming, just to be completely clear, I was assuming and, and yeah, and asserting.

• 28:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, they're just like, the way, you know, they're looking at us like, uh, these, 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. Seems to happen to them all the time.

• 28:31Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, because they experience that type of prejudice and discrimination all the time. I mean, I've I've been there, right? So very, and that's why that particular story resonates with me a lot. It's 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 where the the train attendant walks right down the aisle, past everybody else and goes, this is first class, mate.

• 29:01Speaker 00

  And you're like, yeah.

• 29:03Steven Bartlett?

  Didn't didn't mention that to anyone else.

• 29:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:06Steven Bartlett?

  Just felt the need to come up to me in my snapback because I'm wearing this cap and this hoodie and tell me assum- assumptively that this this is this is first class, mate. I'm just looking at him thinking, yes, I know.

• 29:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:19Steven Bartlett?

  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, hopefully this wouldn't be the case that.

• 29:29Speaker 00

  But were you kind of like numb to it or were you kind of angry?

• 29:32Steven Bartlett?

  Angry.

• 29:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:33Steven Bartlett?

  Angry, but for me, it's like this small little heat inside. It's not like I'm going to be rude to you.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:39Steven Bartlett?

  But it's like, you presume something about me. And and to be honest, there's a bit of me that actually it 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 the right thing, but it's it is what it is.

• 30:03Speaker 00

  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 can't, 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 hardworking, like super dedicated. And someone's just treating them like shit. It's like, it's pretty bad.

• 30:27Steven Bartlett?

  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 Huell, 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.

• 30:41Speaker 00

  You know what? I will try this.

• 30:42Steven Bartlett?

  You're gonna try it?

• 30:43Speaker 00

  Do you like drink this in lieu of a meal?

• 30:45Steven Bartlett?

  Three times a day.

• 30:46Speaker 00

  So you just stopped eating? Hey, Deliveroo, man.

• 30:48Steven Bartlett?

  No, no, no. Do you know what? Actually, it's crazy because that is, that has been a pretty.

• 30:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, caught him out.

• 30:53Steven Bartlett?

  No, but I think I had delivery this. No, I did. I had delivery this morning.

• 30:56Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 30:57Steven Bartlett?

  In fact, the wrap, the package is over there. So I've got it at 7:30 this morning. And then when I'm busy throughout the day, where I'll, and I'm moving this.

• 31:04Speaker 00

  But you enjoy food. You enjoy?

• 31:06Steven Bartlett?

  Yes.

• 31:07Speaker 00

  Okay, but.

• 31:07Steven Bartlett?

  I know. We'll never give up hard food. Try it. Let me know what you think.

• 31:10Speaker 00

  All right. So let's see here. We got the whole bottle is 400 calories, 32 carbs, 20 grams of protein. Let's try it out.

• 31:19Steven Bartlett?

  Low fat, gluten free, soya. It's, it's not Nesquik, okay?

• 31:25Speaker 00

  This actually tastes pretty good.

• 31:26Steven Bartlett?

  It is. Listen, and it will, it will leave you feeling energized and full. And honestly, we get addicted around here. So Jack, who directs the podcast, when we put in a Huell fridge downstairs, he hadn't had it before, tries one, and now he actually lives off it.

• 31:42Speaker 00

  If I drink this, am I gonna want to eat food as well?

• 31:45Steven Bartlett?

  No.

• 31:46Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 31:46Steven Bartlett?

  No chance.

• 31:47Speaker 00

  So it's a good way to like.

• 31:48Steven Bartlett?

  Yes.

• 31:49Speaker 00

  Lose weight and all that kind of stuff?

• 31:50Steven Bartlett?

  Yes. No chance.

• 31:51Speaker 00

  I wonder if I can buy this on Deliveroo, maybe.

• 31:55Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 32:04Speaker 00

  Oh, no.

• 32:05Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. But I love this story because I think it highlights how crappy some decisions are at the start. I heard you were gonna call Delivery something else.

• 32:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, there were, there were a few different permutations. One was Food Pony.

• 32:21Steven Bartlett?

  I didn't read about that.

• 32:23Speaker 00

  Because I was thinking of these animals and food. I think one was.

• 32:27Steven Bartlett?

  But.

• 32:28Speaker 00

  I think it was, I'm trying to think here. It was like.

• 32:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was food mule was was another one because you know a mule is a kind of transports. Food not not so good, right?

• 32:40Steven Bartlett?

  What about booze food?

• 32:43Steven Bartlett?

  Did you forget that one?

• 32:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, I didn't think you'd mention it.

• 32:47Speaker 00

  So the original idea for Deliveroo, even this is before oh eight, 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. 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 this oh seven. It's called booze food, which, you know, really allowed you to order food at like 3M when you really wanted it. So that is actually true. Yeah.

• 33:27Steven Bartlett?

  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've 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, fucking hell, this is someone that's actually developed their thinking.

• 33:46Speaker 00

  Oh, it's just iterating, right?

• 33:47Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 33:47Speaker 00

  You know, but the booze food idea, so there's there's another funny part of that because when when so booze food was a separate thing, but then when my buddy tried Deliveroo for the first time, he was like, oh, yeah, this is great. Like you've got Busaba, you've got Rosa 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.

• 34:19Steven Bartlett?

  You chose to ignore him.

• 34:21Speaker 00

  It's a pretty funny idea.

• 34:22Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting. I'm talking about co-founders, another sort of integral part of success in business.

• 34:29Steven Bartlett?

  How um, how did things go with Greg? I know that he's no longer in the business, but he, at some point he departed.

• 34:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, look, without Greg, the business wouldn't exist, right? No, no question about it. I think, you know, he's one of the smartest, 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 for Greg, he, he wouldn't move to the UK.

• 34:58Steven Bartlett?

  Ever?

• 34:59Speaker 00

  He just wouldn't do it.

• 35:00Steven Bartlett?

  Never.

• 35:00Speaker 00

  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, she was getting her MD degree in the US. And so it was like hard for him to like come over here and ultimately, you know, at some point. So he built a engineering team in Chicago where he was living. But at some point I was like, no, this is, 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 the business in late 15, early 16 or so. But I, I mean, I have a great relationship with him. We were just chatting last night, but yeah.

• 35:37Steven Bartlett?

  Founders go through hell together.

• 35:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 35:41Steven Bartlett?

  Me and my founder, co-founder did.

• 35:43Speaker 00

  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 sort of other execs and you've got, you know, a board of directors, but it's different. It's, it's, it's really different than having that.

• 36:01Steven Bartlett?

  Did that hurt you when he left?

• 36:03Speaker 00

  Did it hurt me? Yeah, a bit, right? Cause 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? Yeah. And I think it was, um, Yeah, you know, it was, uh, yeah, it was tough, right? It was tough.

• 36:28Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think that situation could have been handled differently?

• 36:33Steven Bartlett?

  In hindsight?

• 36:33Speaker 00

  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. He didn't see all the stuff on the ground. For him, it was an abs, it was an abstract idea. I mean, you could see the metrics, you can see all that, but that's really different than seeing a bunch of, you know, Deliveroo riders with a backpack on and sort of people talking about it in the UK, right? But I mean, look, I, I, I think, I think it 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 another thing, which is totally, totally fun.

• 37:11Steven Bartlett?

  I found 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 has very much changed now because of COVID. And we have distributed teams all around the world in startups now.

• 37:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:22Steven Bartlett?

  And this was pre, way pre-COVID.

• 37:25Speaker 00

  Twenty fifteen.

• 37:26Steven Bartlett?

  Before Zoom probably even, you know, had taken off. So I just, I just wonder if now in the world we live in now, a relationship where the tech team is remote could have.

• 37:35Speaker 00

  I, 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 had 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 we, ours is not a, just a pure digital product, right? We're, we're, we're a digital and a physical product.

• 38:07Steven Bartlett?

  A relationships business.

• 38:08Speaker 00

  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.

• 38:18Steven Bartlett?

  True, very true. Talking about going through hell with founders and co-founders and just generally the hell of starting startups. 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. And I, I know that in your journey to build a business you did, you've confronted all kinds of awful challenges.

• 38:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:43Steven Bartlett?

  Right? Talk to me about some of those awful challenges, especially at the start.

• 38:48Speaker 00

  Doesn't get easier. I'll tell you that, right? So I mean, the business is really, you know, six significantly sized business now, but I wouldn't say it gets easier. They're just different, right? So year one, I would say the big challenge is no money. You know, me and Greg running around, right? I think my biggest challenge was at some point, so I think I was lucky in the sense the business momentum sure 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, Forrest, and he, he kind of looks at me.

• 39:30Speaker 00

  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, cause I gotta, who else is gonna do it? And he was just like, he kind of looked at me and he's just like, all right, you know? And then I kind of like, cause, cause 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, cause I'm not a very like,

• 40:07Speaker 00

  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, fuck 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,

• 40:34Steven Bartlett?

  Did you come close to quitting at that stage?

• 40:36Speaker 00

  No, I never did. Never.

• 40:40Speaker 00

  Greg did though.

• 40:41Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 40:41Speaker 00

  Greg did. I never did. I'm not like, I just, I just wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't let that happen.

• 40:48Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 40:49Speaker 00

  I don't know, man. I just,

• 40:53Speaker 00

  I just feel like I have such responsibility to the people I, I work with, the, the restaurants and the writers and.

• 41:01Speaker 00

  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 gonna start with books. Books are easy to transport. I'm gonna move on to all these other things. It's grand plan in their mind. I'm 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?

• 41:29Steven Bartlett?

  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?

• 41:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, from a hedge fund. Yeah, yeah.

• 41:38Steven Bartlett?

  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. 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, okay.

• 42:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, that happened. I also, I mean, that story. Yeah. So it's John Luca and 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 delivered 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, like, who the fuck is this? I'm like, oh, it's John Luca. I'm like, hey, uh, I'm like, hey, John Luca. And he's like, is everything 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, he just, I think he thought I was, you know, just delivering

• 42:49Speaker 00

  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 I 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.

• 43:12Steven Bartlett?

  Why didn't you care?

• 43:14Speaker 00

  Too busy.

• 43:16Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 43:17Speaker 00

  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.

• 43:27Steven Bartlett?

  Bit of a superpower, isn't it?

• 43:28Speaker 00

  I don't know. Could be a good thing, could be a bad thing, don't know. Just don't really care that much.

• 43:33Steven Bartlett?

  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, your goals and ambitions. Cause as we say, embarrassment and, and 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?

• 43:51Speaker 00

  Um.

• 43:51Steven Bartlett?

  So post year one, business starts getting some traction.

• 43:54Speaker 00

  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, uh, 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? 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.

• 44:36Speaker 00

  And actually the people, people that, that work at Deliveroo now, they don't, they always tell me that's not true, but it's a hundred percent 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 was 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.

• 45:16Speaker 00

  Um, so I, I'd say in the, like, the first year was 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 loved that part.

• 45:33Steven Bartlett?

  Your favorite part?

• 45:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'd say my favorite part's definitely when the company's like twenty to a hundred people.

• 45:40Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 45:41Speaker 00

  Look, 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.

• 45:49Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, everyone does. Everyone talks about the sub hundred.

• 45:54Speaker 00

  Cause you know why? Cause everyone's on the same page.

• 45:56Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 45:57Speaker 00

  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 three thousand people, it's similar to when you have a hundred. But when you have a hundred, I think it's the best.

• 46:18Steven Bartlett?

  You know everybody's name and?

• 46:19Speaker 00

  Oh, everyone's name. You guys are all sort of kind of friends. You know, you go to the pub together, you know, that's fun.

• 46:26Steven Bartlett?

  When did you consider yourself to be an entrepreneur?

• 46:32Speaker 00

  Ah, I don't know. I don't know if I ever thought about it like that.

• 46:37Steven Bartlett?

  Was there, even when, after you raised that money, did you, did you think, I'm a businessman?

• 46:42Speaker 00

  No, 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.

• 46:53Steven Bartlett?

  It's funny because there's.

• 46:54Speaker 00

  I'm not obsessed with the idea of building a business. I'm obsessed with the business I'm building.

• 46:59Steven Bartlett?

  So many people have it the other way around.

• 47:01Speaker 00

  I think so.

• 47:02Steven Bartlett?

  And it's almost become quite, I know, sexy and Instagrammable to be like, be your own boss. I'm a CEO bitch, like, do you know any of 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.

• 47:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, solve a problem.

• 47:19Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 47:29Speaker 00

  I, to me, that's gotta be the way. Now, obviously there's gonna be a lot of different people, different approaches. But for me, absolutely, that's gotta be the way.

• 47:37Steven Bartlett?

  So in that early stage, when you just got that office and there's, you know, a couple of you in that room.

• 47:44Steven Bartlett?

  Things are tough, right? You're talking about, you know, you're burning cash. All startups, especially tech ones, tend to be burning cash.

• 47:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:52Steven Bartlett?

  What was your mental health journey from that point till now?

• 47:56Speaker 00

  Look, I'd say this, I don't know about other people. I don't think I'm a very up and down person. 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 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 bad. 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 inappropriately or customer service interaction was handled inappropriately. I think some people probably they can have some memories of that, but I kind of got over that and don't really do that anymore.

• 48:41Speaker 00

  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 where just like, man, this is, this has to get easier or like, you know, you're just, I forget if it was Elon Musk or whoever talks about it, the standing on the abyss thing.

• 49:06Steven Bartlett?

  You know.

• 49:07Speaker 00

  You know, chewing glass, I felt that like many, many, many times. Right? That's hard. It's really hard.

• 49:16Steven Bartlett?

  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 delivery?

• 49:28Speaker 00

  Um.

• 49:28Steven Bartlett?

  If on the day where you thought, I'm going to start delivery today, I'd come and I'd shown you a tape of those moments.

• 49:35Speaker 00

  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. If you told me it wouldn't work out and I'd be having to chew in glass for like years, then probably not, right? It all, it all depends, but it, it's like hard to a 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?

• 50:04Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 50:10Speaker 00

  All times. You can't escape it.

• 50:11Steven Bartlett?

  Talk me through the specific details of those moments, though, that when, one example of an issue.

• 50:16Speaker 00

  So, so one of them was we were, so, so back in 2017, holy shit, 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. 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?

• 50:48Steven Bartlett?

  So fine.

• 50:50Speaker 00

  So, so anyway, so we were, we were about to do that. We just term sheet 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

• 51:14Steven Bartlett?

  WeWork.

• 51:15Speaker 00

  It was, it was related to Uber, I think.

• 51:16Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 51:17Speaker 00

  Something like that.

• 51:18Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 51:18Speaker 00

  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?

• 51:28Steven Bartlett?

  A big number.

• 51:30Speaker 00

  Big number. And I was like, holy shit, you know, what do we do? So.

• 51:34Steven Bartlett?

  How big was this number?

• 51:36Speaker 00

  It's like 600 million, something like that. It's a lot of money, right? 700 maybe? I don't even remember.

• 51:43Steven Bartlett?

  It's a bad day.

• 51:44Speaker 00

  But then we, um, and I was like, kind of pissed off for like 10 minutes.

• 51:51Speaker 00

  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 loss 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-Ro 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.

• 52:34Steven Bartlett?

  But that is so synonymous and typical with building a business, just that, I mean, this year's COVID-19 was an example of that. Just unexpected, unpredictable, unanticipated, crippling bullshit 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's something you didn't think about has just totally gone.

• 53:05Speaker 00

  Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you a story about COVID. Actually, it actually predates COVID a bit. So we raised the next round of capital, um, so from Amazon, which you probably know.

• 53:16Steven Bartlett?

  Yes.

• 53:17Speaker 00

  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 was 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 was a big round. And the CMA, the antitrust authorities in the UK, they're just like, we need to review this. But they wouldn't actually let us take the money in, right?

• 54:00Speaker 00

  And we're like, but how are we supposed to compete when we compete against the likes of Uber and Just Eat 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, a big tech business here. And so that whole process was excruciating because it was 18 months long. Fuck, no. 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.

• 54:39Speaker 00

  And, you know, these guys just literally kind of went after, you know, this in an unprecedented way, but we couldn't get the capital in, right? So we're just, 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 lasted 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?

• 55:21Speaker 00

  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 COVID 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.

• 55:43Speaker 00

  Covid kicks off and Covid, what it did to us initially was our restaurant partners were shutting down for delivery and dine in, 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 disappearing because there were no restaurants left on the platform, right? And I don't know what they were doing, I guess they were going to Akado 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 ever had to do, I had to lay off, you know, a significant number of people at the company, which just was, yeah, it was the hardest thing I had to do, you know?

• 56:25Speaker 00

  Like, big layoffs because we just didn't know what the future was going to be like. We were in the middle of an antitrust process, hoping to get a lot of money in, our business is plummeting, it was really bad, really bad. I mean, worse for people that lost their jobs, obviously, but really bad.

• 56:42Steven Bartlett?

  Sleepless nights.

• 56:46Speaker 00

  I always sleep, but yeah, the days are hard.

• 56:49Steven Bartlett?

  You cite that moment as being the toughest in your journey at delivery?

• 56:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, I do. I do, just that whole, because 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 want it 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.

• 57:27Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, man.

• 57:28Speaker 00

  And when it lasts for that long, and 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, you know, two grocery chains battling it out, right? It's just different. And so, yeah, I'd say that was hard, and it was compounded with the fact that we had to lay off all these people, right? Which was the hardest thing we had to do. Now, luckily for us, these restaurants reestablished themselves and the business has been on this amazing trajectory, that was tough.

• 58:01Steven Bartlett?

  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 dominoes, 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 through.

• 58:16Speaker 00

  When, when, in a time when the, the future is so uncertain.

• 58:18Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 58:20Speaker 00

  What's going through my head, my, I mean, just, it's fucking terrible. Right? I don't know what else to say, you know? But 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.

• 58:47Steven Bartlett?

  Those are the days when it sucks to be CEO, right?

• 58:50Speaker 00

  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, when 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, I care about like our employees, right? I care about the restaurant partners, the, the writers, the consumers.

• 59:25Steven Bartlett?

  Did you have anxiety at that point? Did you ever suffer with anxiety?

• 59:29Speaker 00

  I mean, I certainly think so. I must have. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

• 59:36Steven Bartlett?

  I, I definitely had anxiety throughout that point, running my business as well, because we faced similar decisions. And, and you're right, the key word that you've used there, which I resonate with was uncertainty.

• 59:46Speaker 00

  Uncertainty, because it's sort of like, it's not in your control.

• 59:50Steven Bartlett?

  And you don't know how a lot, 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, we didn't have a timeline when we were dealing with the CMA.

• 1:00:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:01Steven Bartlett?

  We know that it's, it's largely a political.

• 1:00:04Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:00:05Steven Bartlett?

  Setting a precedence to sit.

• 1:00:06Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:00:07Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 1:00:13Speaker 00

  Did you go through a phase one or what did you go through?

• 1:00:15Steven Bartlett?

  Ours was with the advertising standards association around disclosure of advertising. And it was at a time when influence marketing, it wasn't clear whether you had, what you had to write on influence marketing posts, whether. Ad sponsored hat, whatever.

• 1:00:28Speaker 00

  I see.

• 1:00:28Steven Bartlett?

  Right. And so there was, and the, 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 they ended up using us as an example. We had a case chundled on, I think for nine months. For those nine months, we're not sure whether they're going to shut us down, fine us slap on the wrist. What's going to happen?

• 1:00:50Speaker 00

  But it's tough, right? Cause you don't know.

• 1:00:52Steven Bartlett?

  You don't know, right?

• 1:00:53Speaker 00

  And it takes a long time.

• 1:00:54Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. That point around anxiety, I think is specifically interesting because it's, I think it's definitely increasing in our generation because of social media. And we all have more tabs open than ever before. CEOs are people that, as you've alluded to, walk around with all the tabs open all the time. What do you do to relax in moments like that? When you're in the middle of a

• 1:01:17Speaker 00

  I probably don't do a good job with that. You know, I can put a pretty calm face on. Cause I'm not, I'm just not naturally like an up and down person, but

• 1:01:28Speaker 00

  you know, I try breathing exercises, you know, I try to really kind of just not think about anything sometimes. I tried that calm app. I got through day six of the 30 day challenge.

• 1:01:41Speaker 00

  Got, got, got a little bored at day seven, but, 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 a while since I read a book, which is, makes me a little sad. This is like my favorite thing to do. That does work, or you just kind of go for a walk. I, I go on long walks all the time. That really helps me out a lot.

• 1:02:04Steven Bartlett?

  Could you, could you talk to me about what, without going into specifics about people or whatever? Can you talk to me about the challenge of having and sustaining romantic relationships while you're also, you've got this baby and this obsession, which is all consuming.

• 1:02:18Speaker 00

  I think it's like. Yeah, I think the brain is capable of kind of filling itself up with certain things. And then there's just not room for other things. I mean, that's how I think about it. I don't know if that's fair. And, you know, some people would say that, that, that I'm certain that other people can, can, can, can fill their brains up with more, but I'm like a very obsessive person, right? I don't know if you had the same.

• 1:02:46Steven Bartlett?

  I'm the exact same. That's why I asked the question because I was hoping you might be able to tell me how to fix it.

• 1:02:50Speaker 00

  I'm not the right guy to tell you on that, so.

• 1:02:53Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I, I've struggled for that same reason, just being very uncompromising with time. And I hear compromise is an important part to sustaining a healthy relationship.

• 1:03:03Speaker 00

  I heard that too.

• 1:03:04Steven Bartlett?

  From all of my ex girlfriends.

• 1:03:07Speaker 00

  But I don't know if like, um, yeah, but I don't know if like, it's also like, you know, we do this because, you know, I don't know, like we're hiding from something else or like, you know? I don't know. That's something I think about sometimes.

• 1:03:21Steven Bartlett?

  You think about that?

• 1:03:22Speaker 00

  A little bit, right? Like, why am I so obsessive? But then I think back and I've always been obsessive about everything. So I don't really think it's changed, but.

• 1:03:30Steven Bartlett?

  When I started my career in business and I was obsessive, locking myself in a room, not really seeing my friends either. I thought this is the way to live life. It's just about get rich, get successful. And then everything else happiness will arrive at that point. Like not, not that I wasn't happy, but just my happiness would scale to some point like euphoria. So this is all it. So you get successful, you get some money and you realize that your happiness probably for me, I'm speaking for myself here, doesn't necessarily scale, doesn't go down, but doesn't really move upwards that much. And then I start reading about the importance of meaningful connections and relationships and all these things. Watching this odd TED talk about how men in relationships over a hundred year study,

• 1:04:12Steven Bartlett?

  live longer, are happier, et cetera, et cetera, are more healthy. And I think, fuck, do you know what? I actually think I've, I fucked up. I actually think maybe I should have attributed more time to relationships.

• 1:04:23Speaker 00

  But can you? Can you just be so intentional about everything? I mean, I don't know. Maybe you can. I don't know.

• 1:04:31Steven Bartlett?

  But you must, you must understand the importance, right? According to like the science anyway of having.

• 1:04:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, we make decisions, we do, I don't, you know? It's all, it's, it, there's a difference between an abstraction and actually what happens, right?

• 1:04:49Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm. But you, uh, cause I, I've, I've worried that I might regret it someday. That I might have had my priorities wrong this whole fucking time.

• 1:04:58Speaker 00

  You're a young man, though.

• 1:04:59Steven Bartlett?

  Has that ever crossed your mind that you might have missed, you might have put your priorities in the wrong place? Has it never crossed your mind?

• 1:05:06Speaker 00

  To be honest, no.

• 1:05:07Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 1:05:07Speaker 00

  But I'm not a very retrospective person at all. I literally don't think about the past, which may not be a good thing either.

• 1:05:15Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 1:05:15Speaker 00

  Good for certain things, not good for others.

• 1:05:18Steven Bartlett?

  What about friendships then? Through that, through that, you know, chewing glass and staring into the abyss? How good were you at maintaining friendships?

• 1:05:27Speaker 00

  You know?

• 1:05:30Speaker 00

  A similar thing, right? It's like you have a limited amount of time and I'd say, okay.

• 1:05:36Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:05:36Speaker 00

  You know?

• 1:05:37Steven Bartlett?

  Five out of 10.

• 1:05:38Speaker 00

  Probably five out of 10.

• 1:05:40Steven Bartlett?

  Wouldn't recommend.

• 1:05:42Speaker 00

  Probably five out of, it's a lonely job, you know? And you're not gonna, you don't wanna like hang out with your friends and just talk about how tough your day is all, all the time either, right?

• 1:05:51Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 1:05:52Speaker 00

  So I don't know if you were the same way.

• 1:05:53Steven Bartlett?

  Hundred percent. Awful friend. My friends became the people I worked with, pretty much.

• 1:05:59Speaker 00

  I had that, I had that, but I think it's really important to separate that.

• 1:06:03Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:04Speaker 00

  But it's a solitary thing, right? Your founder, you know, it's just kind of, especially when Greg kinda, you know?

• 1:06:10Steven Bartlett?

  Left.

• 1:06:11Speaker 00

  You know, left and so you're just on your own and you gotta figure stuff out. We make this sound kinda like terrible, but I'm just like listening to this thing.

• 1:06:17Steven Bartlett?

  This is, this is part of the reason why I wanted to do this podcast because I think there isn't a, there isn't the, the, this warning about the sacrifice. It's all, oh my God, look, he's fucking rich and he's got, oh, I'd love to. And I think the balance is important. Let me take you up until the, the, the IPO. So you do, um, company goes public, um, our company went public via reverse merger.

• 1:06:39Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:06:40Steven Bartlett?

  Um, things change, it's tough. Um, because you now have the scrutiny for public markets.

• 1:06:46Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:06:47Steven Bartlett?

  Talk to me about that whole journey and how you found that.

• 1:06:51Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, so I think the whole IPO process, you know, was it was a lot of work for about kind of three, four months before the IPO. I think we were all kind of looking forward to, you know, something, you know, really exciting. And it and it was really exciting to take a company public, you know, you know, you know, at a, at a, at a big market cap, um, you know, something coming from an idea. Obviously, sort of the, the day one, you know, trading was, was hard, right? Cause I'm not like, I don't really, like I said, I don't really care that much about what people think and I don't really read the media that much or anything like that. But when it's that pervasive, you know, it's like front page of every, you know, single

• 1:07:36Speaker 00

  newspaper, you know, telling you, you know, you guys fucked 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, you know?

• 1:07:46Steven Bartlett?

  Because the market cap fell.

• 1:07:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, and just like, you know, there's a lot of, you know, you, you, people in the company, ah, like what's going on and you're on investor calls, like what's going on? And ultimately, the way I sort of think about it is, you know, so proud of the fact we got 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 strategic direction, right?

• 1:08:12Speaker 00

  And I'm super, super, super optimistic about the future. For all the stuff we've been doing for the past few years and it come to fruition, you know, in the future, and all 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 actually think about the business. But for a few weeks, it was like, difficult, right? It's very hard.

• 1:08:36Steven Bartlett?

  And then there's all these stories written, which we, we talked about a little bit, but all these stories written about drivers, are they employees, are they contractors? The unique position you've got is you've actually been a rider and in fact, you still are.

• 1:08:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, I did, I did, you know, five deliveries last night, you know, Notting Hill. And I talk to riders all the time. I know what they want. We're building a business for our riders, for our restaurant grocer partners, for our consumers.

• 1:09:03Speaker 00

  That's their customers. 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 them. It's gotta be the most important thing. And we know our model, can it improve? Absolutely, it can improve. We can improve everything. But do we think it's the best model for them? Yeah, hundred percent.

• 1:09:22Steven Bartlett?

  Your company's worth, you know, billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions. And you're out last night doing delivery riders.

• 1:09:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:31Steven Bartlett?

  Delivery deliveries around Nottingham, Hawaii.

• 1:09:34Speaker 00

  Few reasons. One, um, I want, I always test our rider app, right? So it's a good way to do it. Secondly, decent way to get some exercise and you're just on the road and you're not thinking about anything else. I actually find it very relaxing, right? And then thirdly, I can actually kind of see the restaurants in action too. Cause the interaction is usually not with the consumer. The consumer doesn't want to talk to you, but they just want their food. I get it. The restaurants, you can learn a lot just by spending time there.

• 1:10:04Steven Bartlett?

  When you show up at the restaurant to collect the pizza or whatever it is with chicken charme, do they recognize you?

• 1:10:08Speaker 00

  Nah. No, no one recognize, the riders recognize me sometimes, but no one recognizes, I'm not like a celebrity. So.

• 1:10:15Steven Bartlett?

  Have you ever had an experience where like a restaurant was rude to you or like a?

• 1:10:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, last night.

• 1:10:19Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 1:10:21Speaker 00

  I was pretty pissed off about it.

• 1:10:22Steven Bartlett?

  Did you fucking, you're fucking off the surface?

• 1:10:24Speaker 00

  No, no, no, I don't say a word.

• 1:10:27Speaker 00

  But I, I, I, I make sure to log, log into my notes.

• 1:10:30Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 1:10:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:31Steven Bartlett?

  How rude, just like?

• 1:10:33Speaker 00

  Well, I was like, hey, I'm like, hey, I've been waiting for a while. They're like, yeah, they do this. And I was like.

• 1:10:39Steven Bartlett?

  Shake the hand at you, yeah?

• 1:10:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I'm like, come on. And then, then I got the food and it was like kind of cold. I'm like, hey, like, you know, just, you know, this food's kind of cold. And they were like, yeah, just deliver it, buddy. And I'm like.

• 1:10:50Steven Bartlett?

  At no point you told them you're this.

• 1:10:52Speaker 00

  No, I would never do that.

• 1:10:53Steven Bartlett?

  Man, you're different from me.

• 1:10:54Speaker 00

  No, no, I would never do that. But I want the true experience, right? I want to understand what the riders go through. It was really funny as they were being rude to me, this other riders walked up to me. He, he didn't know who I was. He was just like, oh man, you see? These guys are at it again.

• 1:11:10Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 1:11:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:11Steven Bartlett?

  And you take those learnings back to?

• 1:11:13Speaker 00

  A hundred percent.

• 1:11:13Steven Bartlett?

  HQ and you go, we need to fix this.

• 1:11:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, we talked to those restaurants, right?

• 1:11:19Steven Bartlett?

  Are you going to speak to that exact restaurant?

• 1:11:20Speaker 00

  A hundred percent I will.

• 1:11:21Steven Bartlett?

  And what, what would you say?

• 1:11:23Speaker 00

  Well. I waited around for a long time. You clearly had made the food is just sitting around like we need better processes, right? We need to figure out a way to get this to work. And please tell your staff to not, you know, and I get it. They're busy too, like, but, you know, it's a just, just smile. Say, hey, how you doing? Makes a big difference in people's days, right?

• 1:11:45Steven Bartlett?

  What have you, what's your thinking around competition? You're in an incredibly competitive field where you've got these absolute heavyweights and you've had competition emerge and disappear throughout your whole course of building this business. And they've all, and all your competition seems to have had 10 times, 100 times the capital that you've had.

• 1:12:02Speaker 00

  Oh, I don't know. We've had a lot of capital, to be fair, but

• 1:12:04Steven Bartlett?

  But I mean Uber.

• 1:12:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, they're, they're, they always have a lot.

• 1:12:07Steven Bartlett?

  And Rocket Internet in the early days, they launched in the UK.

• 1:12:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. What was that thing they launched? I forget the name, but

• 1:12:13Steven Bartlett?

  Everyone has food, I don't know.

• 1:12:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it was. Look, I think competition exists because this is such a big market, right? The, it's 1.3 trillion pounds in the 12 markets we operate in. Online penetration is, you know, call it three to 5%. 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 competition is, um, you know, of course, we pay attention to it. I mean, very closely, but it's really about what is our consumer value proposition? And is it better than the competition? Is it growing on an absolute basis as well? And we fanatically sort of measure that. And we always think about, you know, what is the consumer, the rider, the

• 1:13:00Speaker 00

  restaurant, the grocer of the future want before they even know?

• 1:13:04Steven Bartlett?

  What is the answer to that question? What is the future?

• 1:13:08Speaker 00

  Well, I think the future is, I can't give away all my secrets. The future is, um, look, this, this, this business is super underpenetrated online. You look, look at travel, it's 50%, right? Food is that low. Why is food difficult? Well, food's difficult because A, it's perishable. And B, it's emotional, which means to express food online is hard. You, you, you go to a restaurant, right? Restaurants are 75% gross margin business. Why? Low net margin, but high gross. Why? Because it's an experience, right? Right? It's an emotional experience, but it's not just about the food. It's what was your relationship with the mater D? What was, what did the decor look like? All these things, right? I don't know. They're amorphous.

• 1:13:51Speaker 00

  How do you take that same feeling and put it online? A really hard thing to do. So I think the future is going to be more and more food occasions online. They don't just have to be delivery, though. They could be dine-in. They could be a whole host of other things.

• 1:14:07Steven Bartlett?

  Private chefs.

• 1:14:08Speaker 00

  Could be, could be that, could be, you know, cool recipe kits. Could, you know, a lot of different things, right? But how do you marry that with the emotional aspect of this brilliant food industry, right? And no one does it. Well, you don't do it well today. You look at our app, it's pretty transactional. You look at Ubers, you, you look at, you know, any of these other guys. Pretty transactional. And I think the winner in this space, winner, I don't, that's, that's maybe a poor word. But, but whoever does really, really well in the space is going to nail that emotional side, right? The restaurant-generated content, the FMCG-generated content, the grocer-generated content. We collect millions and millions of reviews each week on our platform.

• 1:14:53Speaker 00

  We don't do anything with that great today, in my view. So how do you marry all that together? How do you migrate the experience from a transactional one to more of an emotional one, right?

• 1:15:02Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm, interesting.

• 1:15:05Speaker 00

  This is emotional, right here. Sorry, okay.

• 1:15:09Steven Bartlett?

  You're gonna be.

• 1:15:10Speaker 00

  Four of these.

• 1:15:11Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. That's great for this one, so we're gonna put that all over Facebook ads. I'm joking. That's really interesting. And so you're talking about creating greater depth. From what I heard, creating greater depth with that social and emotional interaction with food within.

• 1:15:26Speaker 00

  Food is social. Food is emotional, right?

• 1:15:28Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:29Speaker 00

  At the core.

• 1:15:30Steven Bartlett?

  So delivery is becoming a social network for food.

• 1:15:32Speaker 00

  No, I don't know about social network food, but I think having aspects of that.

• 1:15:37Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:37Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:15:42Steven Bartlett?

  Right? I hear you.

• 1:15:43Speaker 00

  Cause like a chef tells his story in a physical space. How do you let that chef tell his or her story online? And how does that help you make decisions as to what you want to purchase? Right?

• 1:15:56Steven Bartlett?

  I think that's amazing.

• 1:15:57Speaker 00

  And it's really different than buying like toilet paper on Amazon, right? Or buying like.

• 1:16:01Steven Bartlett?

  Which is transactional, right?

• 1:16:02Speaker 00

  It's more transactional. Now, the reason you use Amazon is the best, most reliable service in the 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.

• 1:16:13Steven Bartlett?

  Wow.

• 1:16:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. So that's what we're, we're spending a lot of time on, trying to figure out.

• 1:16:17Steven Bartlett?

  So as you, so I guess, no, I've got two questions. So my, my next one is about money. A lot is written when founders go public about how much money they've made about da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. Bonuses, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, I mean, Elon Musk is a great example. The amount they've written about him, I think it caused him to sell all of his properties and his house and pretty much all of his possessions. And he now lives a lot of the time when he's on SpaceX in this little small shed. But then he said in interviews, he did that because the money is so secondary to him. He just wanted to disarm people from thinking about that. And then obviously when he became the richest man in the world, again, he is hitting with all the billionaires are evil stuff. What relationship do you have with money? And what does it mean to you in your life?

• 1:16:59Speaker 00

  Oh, man. Um, I don't know. I never really thought about it. Uh, I mean, I don't really live very differently than I did. You know, seven or eight years ago. So kind of live in the same place. I mean, I'd rather have more money than less money, probably.

• 1:17:17Steven Bartlett?

  I agree.

• 1:17:17Speaker 00

  To be honest. Um, but, uh.

• 1:17:20Steven Bartlett?

  Did it make you happier?

• 1:17:22Speaker 00

  I don't know. I don't have really thought about it. I I'm sure there's some, I'm sure having more at some point will make you a bit happier. Right. I'm sure there, as you said, there's probably a limit to that, though, right?

• 1:17:33Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:34Speaker 00

  But I'm not like, I don't buy a lot of stuff, so.

• 1:17:39Speaker 00

  I don't know. Yeah, I just don't buy a lot of stuff, so.

• 1:17:42Steven Bartlett?

  When you look forward into your future, then, what is it that you're aiming for? And and why does that matter?

• 1:17:50Speaker 00

  Look, ah, you know, um, I think part of me would love to figure out myself. Um, it may sound kind of weird, but just when you start this thing, you're on this journey and the journey sort of propels. 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 start getting a lot of writers, start getting restaurants, you get investors and and the thing's moving and you're moving along with it. In many cases, in a very deliberate way, in many cases, you're along for a journey. And so this thing has a life of its own.

• 1:18:33Speaker 00

  And it it it it is pretty interesting to take a step back and think, okay, is this journey completely everything that I had in mind and I wanted to do, or whether there's a lot of parts of it that were, it's like a wave kind of taking you along. And I'd love to figure that out a bit, to be honest, right? I don't, that makes any sense.

• 1:18:57Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. So what I heard was you're trying to understand if your own personal journey is completely aligned with the journey of the company as it's as it grows, because the two entities, you know, especially, I'm guessing at the very start, they're so interlinked.

• 1:19:12Speaker 00

  They're really.

• 1:19:12Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, it's your life, it's your everything. But at some point, you have to kind of separate. I think, not necessarily, I'm not saying resign or anything, but separate your life and your ambitions from that.

• 1:19:23Speaker 00

  Cause they're so intertwined and it becomes difficult. I'm not even saying separate necessarily, but just like having a better understanding.

• 1:19:30Steven Bartlett?

  Of what your role and what Will wants from his life and what he's interested in and.

• 1:19:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I think I I wonder if other people feel that way. I don't know. Maybe you've asked that question. I don't know how you feel about.

• 1:19:39Steven Bartlett?

  Everyone that sits here, that's a founder of a big business feels that way.

• 1:19:43Speaker 00

  Cause it's just all consuming.

• 1:19:45Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, Tom sat there last week. He said the same thing.

• 1:19:48Speaker 00

  Did he?

• 1:19:48Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, he's 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. I mean, he said, relationships broke down, friends, he said a thing, his friendships are okay. But he had this red phone in his bedroom that would ring when there was emergencies. He was consumed by it. He had a crushing weight every time he woke up in the morning. And so now that he's, he's left, he's now discovering pottery and all of these other sort of personal things that he's doing just for his own personal reasons, which were probably impossibly hard to do when he was being dragged.

• 1:20:23Speaker 00

  Well, I think, yeah, yeah, I, I think that's interesting. Yeah. When you start something and it really becomes something, it has a gravitational pull of its own. And the question is, you know, are you this thing? Are you in the orbit? Right? And it's a little hard sometimes to, to, to, to separate those two things. So that's something I'd love to kind of understand.

• 1:20:40Steven Bartlett?

  How do you go about understanding that?

• 1:20:43Speaker 00

  I was gonna ask you, man. You're the one that talks.

• 1:20:45Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, God, a therapist, probably. And really trying to, I think, just to talking about it, I think, because even as far as, I don't think we get much time to talk about these things.

• 1:20:52Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:20:53Steven Bartlett?

  We're just being dragged by the emails and the, and the urgent.

• 1:20:57Speaker 00

  That's what I mean, this gravitational.

• 1:20:59Steven Bartlett?

  So you have to create space, right?

• 1:21:01Speaker 00

  I 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 yourself and just like think about other stuff. And when you step back in, that's why I do think going on holidays really, you know, you know, it's funny. It's like, I didn't take one for seven, eight years. Just didn't, um, which is like, kind of stupid, honestly, but maybe in the first few years I could, maybe that was fine. But just having the ability to step away for a week and do something totally different, I think is incredibly important.

• 1:21:34Steven Bartlett?

  You got any holidays planned for to do to do exactly that?

• 1:21:37Speaker 00

  This whole travel thing is a bit problematic.

• 1:21:40Steven Bartlett?

  And if you were to go on holiday, do you think you could you could relax?

• 1:21:44Speaker 00

  It's hard. It'll it takes me about three days. So I need to go on a holiday longer than four days. Yeah, I think that's what I need to do.

• 1:21:52Steven Bartlett?

  Well, listen, when you do figure out those existential

• 1:21:58Steven Bartlett?

  answers and you've you've had time to meditate and go to the beach and figure out that that that point of separation that you describe, do come back on the podcast and we'll talk about that then because I'd love to know the answers. But I want to thank you for coming here today and having this conversation with me.

• 1:22:13Speaker 00

  Thanks, Stephen.

• 1:22:13Steven Bartlett?

  Super fascinating.

• 1:22:14Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:22:15Steven Bartlett?

  And it's so it's so inspiring and interesting how there's so many similarities with with founders that have gone on that journey. Doesn't seem like there's many differences. However, the character that's gone on that journey always seems to be really, really different. And you are, you know, remarkably unique.

• 1:22:30Speaker 00

  So you hear the same things a lot?

• 1:22:32Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, yeah. The like fundamentals of the journey and what it does to you and how it feels is always the same. But then the the differences and the nuances are in the like the pilot. And how he addresses the and how he or she feels about or addresses those that experience. And that usually relates to the younger years and where you developed your resilience or your perspective on the world.

• 1:22:56Steven Bartlett?

  But yeah, super fascinating, super inspiring. Thank you so much for coming today.

• 1:22:59Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:22:59Steven Bartlett?

  I know you're a very, very busy guy.

• 1:23:01Speaker 00

  Thank you for the huul.

• 1:23:03Speaker 00

  It was delicious.

• 1:23:04Steven Bartlett?

  I'm not even gonna have to plug it. You've done it all for me. You've done my job. Thank you.

• 1:23:07Speaker 00

  I'm just trying to make it easier.

• 1:23:08Steven Bartlett?

  You are. You've made it really easy.

• 1:23:09Speaker 00

  Hey, thanks, man. Appreciate it.

• 1:23:10Steven Bartlett?

  Appreciate you. Thank you.