20VC: The Insane Story of Glovo: Selling 30% of the Company for €100K | The McDonalds Deal That Saved Them | Running out of Money Three Times | Burning $1M Per Day | Being Acquired for $2.2BN with Oscar Pierre, Founder @ Glovo

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) – Episode Featuring Oscar Pierre, Founder & CEO of Glovo

Release Date: February 26, 2025

In this compelling episode of The Twenty Minute VC, host Harry Stebbings sits down with Oscar Pierre, the visionary founder and CEO of Glovo, a revolutionary food delivery platform that has expanded its services to deliver virtually anything to customers' doorsteps. The conversation delves deep into Oscar's entrepreneurial journey, highlighting the challenges, strategic decisions, and pivotal moments that shaped Glovo's ascent to being acquired by Delivery Hero for a staggering $2.2 billion.

---

1. Early Funding and Initial Challenges

Oscar Pierre opens up about Glovo's precarious beginnings, illustrating the uphill battle of securing initial funding.

[00:00] Oscar Pierre: "The first round was valued at 280k free money and we raised 100k."

Despite the promising start, Oscar recounts how European VCs largely overlooked Glovo, doubting the potential of a young team from Barcelona aiming to compete against giants like Deliveroo and Uber Eats.

[00:06] Oscar Pierre: "I would say all the European VCs or most of them passed on us. Nobody believed in our story."

This early skepticism set the stage for a tumultuous path ahead, especially during the Series B round, where Glovo teetered on the brink of collapse with a massive €25 million raise at stake.

---

2. From Errands to Food Delivery: Finding Product-Market Fit

Originally conceived as an "Uber for errands," Glovo's pivot to food delivery was serendipitous. Oscar describes the aha moment when customers began ordering McDonald's, signaling a vast untapped market despite existing players like Just Eat.

[06:48] Oscar Pierre: "But when we launched it, the first aha moment... people ordering McDonald's. That was the big aha moment."

This realization underscored the potential for disrupting the first generation of food delivery services by not only aggregating restaurants but also offering dedicated delivery solutions, thereby unlocking greater supply chain efficiencies.

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3. Scaling the Business Amidst Financial Struggles

Oscar emphasizes the critical role of scale in optimizing unit economics. As Glovo expanded, network effects began to materialize, allowing the fleet of couriers to grow and operational efficiencies to improve.

[12:37] Harry Stebbings: "You said about scale being so important there. Can you just help me understand specifically how scale impacts unit economics most significantly?"

[12:46] Oscar Pierre: "I mean, it helps everywhere in the marketplace... the cheaper cost to move something from point A to point B."

Despite achieving initial traction, Glovo grappled with negative unit economics for an extended period, making profitability elusive until strategic shifts were implemented, such as moving the revenue stream to merchants.

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4. Strategic Partnerships: The McDonald's Deal

A turning point in Glovo's trajectory was securing an exclusive partnership with McDonald's. Oscar narrates the intense negotiations and relentless efforts to break McDonald's existing exclusivity with Uber Eats.

[15:23] Oscar Pierre: "We went to Madrid... we convinced her to break the global exclusivity and give us a test. And that was a huge inflection point."

This deal not only bolstered Glovo's brand credibility but also significantly increased customer acquisition, fueling further growth and enabling expansion into other markets.

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5. International Expansion: Successes and Setbacks

Glovo's expansion strategy hinged on replicating its success in Spain across various international markets, particularly in Latin America. Oscar shares insights into the differences in market dynamics, emphasizing the importance of understanding local labor costs and consumer behavior.

[28:14] Oscar Pierre: "We sent Arnau... to lead Latam for the first two years... expanded to 10 or 12 countries."

However, not all expansions were successful. Brazil emerged as a significant setback, where Glovo failed to compete with the entrenched iFood platform, leading to substantial financial losses and eventual withdrawal.

[29:33] Oscar Pierre: "The biggest failure was Brazil. We lost like 30, 40 million euros... we had to shut down Brazil."

This experience underscored the challenges of entering markets with strong incumbents and highlighted the critical need for accurate market assessments.

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6. Navigating Funding Challenges and Resilience

Throughout its growth, Glovo faced immense funding challenges, often operating on minimal cash reserves and enduring the constant pressure of raising successive funding rounds.

[18:38] Oscar Pierre: "We were going to die... I had visited, I still have the list. 120 VCs that passed."

The breakthrough came unexpectedly when Oscar connected with Mickey Tanney, founder of Rakuten, at an FC Barcelona event, securing a pivotal €15 million investment that salvaged the company's future.

[22:58] Harry Stebbings: "Be like, oh, we've heard about the round."

Despite securing substantial funds later on, Glovo's journey was marked by near-constant financial strain, emphasizing the precarious nature of startup financing.

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7. Managing Company Culture and Talent Amidst Growth

As Glovo scaled to a thousand employees, Oscar confronted the inevitable dilution of its original high-intensity culture. He candidly discusses the mistakes made in maintaining cultural alignment and the subsequent efforts to realign the team.

[35:19] Oscar Pierre: "When you're hyperscaling... it's easy to have a very aligned culture... I started being a bit of a politician."

The realization came painfully during a company Christmas party when Oscar overheard team members expressing discontent with the softened work ethic, prompting a rigorous cultural overhaul.

[37:07] Oscar Pierre: "Start aligning the top leaders, firing those that were not aligned... We have reconducted it."

This episode underscores the delicate balance between scaling operations and preserving the foundational culture that drives a startup's success.

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8. The Exit: Acquisition by Delivery Hero

After enduring multiple funding rounds and operational hurdles, Glovo's acquisition by Delivery Hero emerged as the culmination of years of relentless effort. Operating at nearly a $3 billion top line but still in the red, IPO was deemed unfeasible, leading Oscar and his team to pursue a strategic sale.

[46:34] Oscar Pierre: "We were not profitable. We were already at 3 billion top line and then we started looking for a sale."

The $2.3 billion all-stock acquisition was strategically aligned with Delivery Hero's model of empowering local brands, ensuring Glovo's continued operation and integration within a larger ecosystem.

[48:25] Oscar Pierre: "It was good. I felt like part of the mission was completed."

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9. Insights on European VC Landscape and Founder Resilience

Oscar offers a critical perspective on the European VC ecosystem, highlighting its challenges in supporting young, aggressive startups. He reflects on the cultural differences in fundraising approaches and the inherent struggles European founders face compared to their American counterparts.

[20:33] Oscar Pierre: "Most of the people that I found had never built things... building a company is such a roller coaster."

He emphasizes the importance of perseverance and building a hardworking culture to overcome initial funding rejections, reinforcing the notion that European founders can indeed compete on a global scale with the right determination and execution.

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10. Lessons Learned and Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Throughout the discussion, Oscar imparts valuable lessons for budding entrepreneurs:

• Adapt and Pivot: Recognize when to shift strategies, as Glovo did from errands to food delivery.

• Cultural Alignment: Maintain and diligently nurture company culture, especially during rapid scaling.

• Fundraising Strategy: Understand the interconnected nature of the VC community and approach fundraising with caution and strategy.

• Strategic Partnerships: Leverage major partnerships to gain market credibility and customer base.

• Market Assessment: Conduct thorough market analyses to avoid costly expansion failures.

[62:33] Oscar Pierre: "What I would tell the Oscar of the beginning is keep speaking with full transparency all the time."

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11. Final Thoughts and Quick Fire Segment

In the concluding segment, Oscar shares his optimistic outlook on the future of online commerce and the transformative potential of technology in automating undesirable jobs. He also reflects on his transition into venture capital, expressing a desire to continue building and operating businesses rather than solely investing in them.

[63:03] Oscar Pierre: "What feels really exciting is how terrible jobs will disappear very soon... nobody has to do shitty jobs."

In the quick fire round, Oscar highlights his admiration for platforms like Vinted and emphasizes the importance of maintaining transparency and hard work in leadership.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Oscar Pierre: "[00:00] The first round was valued at 280k free money and we raised 100k."
• Oscar Pierre: "[15:23] We convinced her to break the global exclusivity and give us a test. And that was a huge inflection point."
• Oscar Pierre: "[29:33] The biggest failure was Brazil. We lost like 30, 40 million euros."
• Oscar Pierre: "[35:19] When you're hyperscaling... it's easy to have a very aligned culture... I started being a bit of a politician."
• Oscar Pierre: "[62:33] What I would tell the Oscar of the beginning is keep speaking with full transparency all the time."

---

Conclusion

Oscar Pierre's journey with Glovo epitomizes the essence of entrepreneurial grit and strategic foresight. From navigating funding droughts and cultural shifts to making tough decisions on international expansions and acquisitions, his experiences offer invaluable lessons for founders and venture capitalists alike. This episode not only chronicles the rise of a disruptive startup but also provides a candid look into the complexities of scaling a business in a competitive, fast-evolving market landscape.

For those keen to delve deeper into Oscar Pierre's insights and Glovo's remarkable story, the full episode is available on www.20vc.com and YouTube by searching "20VC."

Transcript

[Oscar Pierre]

The first round was valued at 280k free money and we raised 100k.

[Harry Stebbings]

Wow.

[Oscar Pierre]

I would say all the European VCs or most of them passed on us. Nobody believed in our story. You know, a bunch of kids from Barcelona beating the Deliveroos and the uber eats of the world. I remember the series B, it was like 25 million. We were going to die. So we unlocked the biggest deal of all history of food delivery which was and that was a huge inflection point.

[Unknown]

This is 20 VC with me, Harry Stebbings and the show today is the most incredible founding journey. Oscar Pierre is the founder and CEO at Glovo, the food delivery site that will get you anything you want to your doorstep. Now this story is insane. The company started by Oscar 11 years ago in their pre seed round sold a third of the company for just.

[Harry Stebbings]

A hundred thousand euros.

[Unknown]

The company was later saved by a.

[Harry Stebbings]

Deal they made with McDonald's.

[Unknown]

The company nearly ran out of money on several occasions. One time the funding round even from the CEO of Rakuten who Oscar met in FC Barcelona drinks party. Today they are part of Delivery Hero who acquired them for $2.2 billion. They've delivered 1 billion orders and have almost 60 million customers. This was such an incredible story to tell. But before we dive in Today, here are two fun facts about our newest brand sponsor, Kajabi. First, their customers just crossed a collective $8 billion in total revenue. Wow. Second, Kajabi's users keep 100% of their ear earnings with the average Kajabi creator bringing in over $30,000 per year. In case you didn't know, Kajabi is the leading creator commerce platform with an all in one suite of tools including websites, email marketing, digital products, payment processing and analytics for as low as $69 per month. Whether you are looking to build a private community, write a paid newsletter or launch a course, Kajabi is the only platform that will enable you to build and grow your online business without taking a cut of your revenue. 20VC listeners can try Kajabi for free for 30 days by going to kajabi.com 20VC that's kajabi.com K A J-A-B-I.com 20VC once you've built your creator empire with Kajabi, take your insights and decision making to the next level with AlphaSense, the ultimate platform for uncovering trusted research and expert perspectives. As an investor, I'm always on the lookout for tools that really transform how I work. Tools that don't just save time, but fundamentally change how I uncover insights. That's exactly what AlphaSense does. With the acquisition of Tegus, AlphaSense is now the ultimate research platform built for professionals who need insights they can trust fast. I've used Teagus before for company deep dives right here on the podcast. It's been an incredible resource for expert insights, but now with AlphaSense leading the way, it combines those insights with premium content, top broker research and cutting edge generative AI. The result? A platform that works like a supercharged junior analyst, delivering trusted insights and analysis on demand. Alphasance has completely reimagined fundamental research, helping you uncover opportunities from perspectives you didn't even know how they existed. It's faster, it's smarter, and it's built to give you the edge in every decision you make. To any VC listeners, don't miss your chance to try AlphaSense for free. Visit AlphaSense.com 20 to unlock your trial. That's AlphaSense.com 20. And speaking of incredible products, when you're building a business, you're going to encounter obstacles. Your banking doesn't have to be one of them though. Just talk to a founder who uses Mercury like meet Sanpay Omichi, the founder of Ellis.com, a modern immigration law firm helping startups and their employees immigrate to the US and they're a 20 VC portfolio company. And Sampay says using Mercury was a no brainer for me. When I started my company I was able to get an account open immediately and using treasury and the checking account has been a breeze. So you need to visit mercury.com to see why. Founders like Sanpay use Mercury to help them hit the ground running, make the most of their money and see all their business moves in one place. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column N A and Evolve bank and Trust, members of the fdic. The provider of this testimonial was not compensated and is a client of Mercury Advisory llc.

[Oscar Pierre]

You have now arrived at your destination.

[Unknown]

Oscar. Dude, I am so excited for this.

[Harry Stebbings]

It is such an incredible journey. So I'm very, very excited to unpack it with you. Thank you for joining me today man.

[Oscar Pierre]

Thank you man. I've been a big fan of turnABC. Actually we started the same year.

[Harry Stebbings]

2015.

[Oscar Pierre]

Exactly.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yeah. Challenged Paul on our team one he was like you literally same year. You were 22 when you started.

[Oscar Pierre]

Yeah.

[Harry Stebbings]

How did you get the idea for Glovo? What was that? Origin. Aha.

[Oscar Pierre]

So the Origins weren't, were in huge. There wasn't a huge ambition at the beginning. I was in school, I was studying for aerospace engineering and I graduated immediately. I went to my, my dream company, which was Airbus in France. And there I realized really fast that that was a very big corporate company that I didn't want to be in. And that's when I started basically building a deck. I got some inspiration because I finished my studies in Atlanta and I saw how Uber launched in Atlanta. So I said, why don't we build the Uber for errands? That was the first original idea. I was thinking about my mom. My mom was always very busy doing errands for, for my father, for my, for my brothers, for me. Like, I was like, why don't we digitize this now? And why just build an app where anyone can just ask for any errands, just go to this store, pick up this buy and bring it to me. And that was the first idea, of course. It was a very niche and very high end service. And then when we launched it, the first aha moment that really made our ambitions a lot bigger was that we started seeing people ordering McDonald's. They order big Macs. And I was like, holy shit, why Big Macs? There's already a website called Just Eat where people ordered food. And that was the big aha moment. And that's when I understood that food delivery was still to be massively disrupted. There was the generation one of food delivery. In the case of Spain, Barcelona, where we started the business, it was Just Eat that basically had a marketplace where they aggregated restaurants that did the delivery themselves. But there wasn't a marketplace that also offered the delivery and therefore unlocked all the supply of the city.

[Harry Stebbings]

Okay, so going back, how long did it take from idea to launch? I think a lot of people don't execute fast enough and they kind of just let ideas meander. How long was it from hey, I'm going to do this to launching first?

[Oscar Pierre]

It was pretty fast. Again, I was at Airbus, I had a lot of free time and I had 10k, €10,000 to spend in the first app. I was not a computer science, so I couldn't code.

[Harry Stebbings]

How did you get it made?

[Oscar Pierre]

I googled, built an X for Uber app and I found a developing company in Russia, in eastern Russia, that was the cheapest provider I found and they promised me that they would deliver a first version of the app for, for like €8,000.

[Harry Stebbings]

How was the first version of the app?

[Oscar Pierre]

And I was shitty. It didn't work. But I had something to start showing to investors. I had some mockups.

[Harry Stebbings]

Okay, so you have something to show. Sorry, fuck the schedule. You have something to start showing to investors and then what happens? You go and raise like a pre. Seed. Seed round.

[Oscar Pierre]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was so young, I had. I knew nothing about, of course, vc. And you will find this very funny, but the first round was valued at 280k free money and we raised 100k.

[Harry Stebbings]

Wow.

[Oscar Pierre]

And with that, the first business plan and the first deck that we had took us to profitability and to a sustainable company.

[Harry Stebbings]

So 100k at 380 post?

[Oscar Pierre]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

Wow.

[Harry Stebbings]

Okay, so you raised the 100k. What happens then? We build out the app again, but it's much more fully fledged. I mean, 100k is not much, but.

[Oscar Pierre]

Yeah, with that we could hire the first cto, start the app from zero. But we were already serving. No, we were already getting some orders somehow. We also had a website. People just send us like text messages, like, go to this store, pick up this. Now again, we started seeing some orders from McDonald's. So now we launched and then we started seeing some traction. It took a while, took a year. And that took us to the next round, which was like a million and a half.

[Harry Stebbings]

When do you think you have product market fit? You said a year there. When do you think you have product market fit?

[Oscar Pierre]

For a very long time, I could see we were delivering a service that people liked, but we had very negative unit economics and there was a very. Most of the investor community didn't believe that this nail industry would turn into profitability. Right. So that's not really product market fit because you're delivering a service that people like, but at the price that people don't want to pay. So it took a while until you started seeing the power of network effects. The fleet of couriers growing, gaining all the efficiencies. And then at some point, which is the key of this business, of course, is you start moving the revenue stream to what we call the merchant, not the partner, the restaurants, the stores, the groceries. You can start making the service cheaper and cheaper for the customer.

[Harry Stebbings]

You have so many lessons in terms of marketplace dynamics that you said about network effects and kind of the maturation of markets and what it does to the efficiency of the model. What have been your biggest lessons when it comes to marketplace dynamics?

[Oscar Pierre]

I mean, it's all about scale. So in our industry, marketplace dynamics work on a city or on a national level. Right. So we invest a lot in building the brand and the business on A national level. And why the country is important is because most of the big partnerships are also countrywide. So you negotiate with McDonald's, with, I don't know, with Walmart, with big brands that operate on our country, in all the country. And then you also build a brand. We use a lot of channels that apply to all the country. Like, for example, we have invested a lot in tv. So you have to win in every country, right? And the network effects happen inside the country when you cross the border. It doesn't matter how big and how well known your brand is. In Spain, you go to Portugal and you start from zero. And that's another battle that you have to win. And I think what we learned really fast because as an entrepreneur from Barcelona, our natural expansion was first we launched in Barcelona, then in Madrid, then Valencia, then we said, okay, let's try, let's go international. And we picked Paris and Milan. Milan worked really well. Paris didn't work well. And the main reason was because in Paris we were late. Now we were launching maybe like two or three years after Deliveroo and Uber Eats launched. So we never gained the scale and the leadership. To be a sustainable business, right, in our industry, you really need a lot of market share. You need to become.

[Harry Stebbings]

Does it work?

[Oscar Pierre]

If you're number two, it can work. And we have. Out of the 23 markets we have, we have very few where we are number two and are profitable. It's tough. You need to be a very relevant number too.

[Harry Stebbings]

When you think about launching a market, how long do you give it in terms of maturing into a profitable market or a unit, economically sustainable market?

[Oscar Pierre]

It depends, right? Because we've been launching markets since day one. Now. Like, for example, the most recent market we launched, I think, was Tunisia. And Tunisia has taken maybe like two, between two and three years to turn it into profit. Now, it all depends on how fast you want to go. You can turn it into profit in six months, but you're going to move it slower, right? So if you want to reach a big scale and you want to invest, you only have to invest big in service and marketing in the first two years and then you turn it into profit.

[Harry Stebbings]

Two to three years. Yeah, that's a long time. How much does it cost to launch a market?

[Oscar Pierre]

So in the case of Tunisia, maybe I'd say between 5 and 10 million. But then these businesses get a lot of scale. Like, the beautiful thing about this industry is the scale. We're in some markets where our GMV, our gross merchandise value is getting to close to 1% of the GDP of the country. It's a service that people use so frequently and for so many things, right? It's not only restaurants, it's groceries, it's pharmacy, it's shops that it gets to a lot of scale. That's why there was so much money poured into it, right? Because I think all VCs understood at some point that this model was here to stay and would become this massive scale platforms in every country. But you had to win, right? And that's why the 2018-2022, I think it was probably the bloodiest VC battle maybe of all consumer history.

[Harry Stebbings]

You said about scale being so important there. Can you just help me understand specifically how scale impacts unit economics most significantly?

[Oscar Pierre]

I mean, it helps everywhere in the marketplace, right? On one end it's logistics, right? Very fast we become the largest logistics fleet in any city where we operate. That means that we have the cheapest cost to move something from point A to point B. It's like Uber, right? You generate an order now in Glovo in Barcelona, you will probably find a courier available a few meters away from the pickup point. Then there's all the data, right? So all the data you generate with the restaurants delivering food is so complex, right? Because you can, it's a business where every single second matters a lot, right? You cannot send the courier late to pick up the order because the food is going to get cold. You cannot send it very early because that's seconds that you're going to have to be paying the courier, right? So it's a business about seconds. And the more data you have about, okay, how long is this restaurant going to take to prepare a pizza? Or how long is it going to take that same restaurant if instead of preparing a pizza, it's preparing a paella, right, which is going to take. So this is all data that you keep training the models. And then I would say that the.

[Harry Stebbings]

Last one is, can you train models on ambiguous externalities? And what I mean by that is yes, traditionally Speaking, it takes 15 minutes to cook a pizza at Pronto Pizza, but they've got a new person this week and they're 10 minutes late because they're new. That's the challenge of real world, right? Or it's raining and so it takes longer for the driver to get there because it's raining and so they're going to be five minutes late to pick up. Does data actually help in a highly ambiguous world?

[Oscar Pierre]

I mean, on the rain, yes. You can train on weather and we have a lot of Data, live data on the weather of every single city where we operate. You also build a lot of products so that the restaurant can tell you if there's any externality. My store is busy. I need some rest. Right. I need 20 minutes off or this order is really big. I need to edit. So all of those inputs, you have to build a lot of product that is very easy to use for the restaurant in saturation times. Right. It's very high tension moments for the restaurant, usually because they have people to serve in the restaurant and also the couriers to serve.

[Harry Stebbings]

One area for me that's so optimized is when you can actually stack orders with a driver and one can take six. How do you think about increasing unit economic. Unit efficiency, or whatever you want to call it, unit economics. Improving them, whatever. But actually a slight deterioration in customer experience. They're going to wait a little bit longer because the driver's doing five orders.

[Oscar Pierre]

Yeah, it's an optimization game. It's all about lifetime value and understanding very well how every minute of delay is going to impact the lifetime value or the retention of that customer for the next order. We try to measure this all the time. It's the nature of our business.

[Harry Stebbings]

When we were chatting before, you said about speeding up market expansion to capture time, what did you mean by that?

[Oscar Pierre]

Look, going back to our history, right? So we cracked Spain and I can tell the story. We unlocked the biggest deal of all history of food delivery, which was McDonald's. So this is back in 2018. The CEO of McDonald's in Chicago sends a message to all the countries and says, hey, we have to go into delivery and we have one exclusive partner, which is Uber Eats. That was in 2018. Back then, we were competing against three players in Spain, Uber, Delibero and Justit. And when we read the news, we were like, you know, we're screwed. Like, if Uber gets this deal and can start delivering McDonald's for one or two euro delivery, we like, we shut down the company for sure. So we found who the decision maker was. It was a lady called Suzette. And we went to Madrid, at least I traveled there like 40 times to see her. And we convinced her to break the global exclusivity and give us a test. For some reason, she trusted us more than above UberEats. And she gave us that test and that was a huge inflection point.

[Harry Stebbings]

What was the test?

[Oscar Pierre]

A test is. Well, you know, we're going to launch with you. We're going to launch in Madrid. You guys look like a bunch of kids. Because we were.

[Harry Stebbings]

Because you were a bunch of kids.

[Oscar Pierre]

We were in a garage. Maybe the team was only 20 people, but everybody knew in the team that that was a life or death. So we were all in. Like, we had all the engineers building things that McDonald's wanted, putting the McDonald's logo everywhere. Any request that they asked us, we said it was all yes. And that Uber from San Francisco couldn't compete the local team in Spain. So we won that deal. And it was massive, the power of that brand, how many new customers it brings. It was huge. And that started the spinning, the wheel effect of us growing a lot. And then we replicated the same strategy in Italy.

[Harry Stebbings]

With McDonald's.

[Oscar Pierre]

Yeah, with McDonald's. Because the CEO of Italy, McDonald's was like, wow, you're doing pretty well. Who are you doing this with? Global. And they also gave us the exclusivity for two years.

[Harry Stebbings]

So a lot of founders are told early on when they meet a big customer, like a McDonald's, say, actually, don't let it influence your product strategy. Don't be too concentrated in your customer dominance, whatever you want to call it, Would you say that's wrong advice in.

[Oscar Pierre]

Our case, Scale is fundamental. Right? You have to win in every market to make it a sustainable business. And these mega large brands like McDonald's, it's what brings all the new customers. At some point, it was very scary because 70% of our volume in Spain was McDonald's. But I was okay because I knew it was just part of the customer flow. So customers went there, they ordered McDonald's. But then you could see in the cohorts how they started ordering more and more things. So it was just a matter of time that that 70% decreased to, I don't know, the today levels, which is between 10 and 20 in most countries.

[Harry Stebbings]

Okay, so we get this big contract from McDonald's in Spain, and then it expands to Italy. Where are we in our funding then? We've got 20 people or so at that point. When did we actually raise our first multiple millions?

[Oscar Pierre]

So our fundraising story is really tough. So we've been at the edge of dying at least three times. And you look at the cap table we had when we sold, and it looked like a Frankenstein table. There was.

[Harry Stebbings]

Why it was just so many. It was so fragmented. What was it?

[Oscar Pierre]

It was so many, and there were so many names that you would not know. So all the typical VCs, or I would say all the European VCs, or most of them passed on us, nobody believed in our Story, you know, a bunch of kids from Barcelona beating the Deliveroos and the Uber eats of the world who were always like one step ahead in fundraising. Right. So I remember the Series B, which was the first large round. It was like 25 million. We were going to die. I had visited, I still have the list. 120 VCs that passed. Not an email but an actual call or a meeting. And I just had no more VCs to pitch. I googled and there were no more in Europe to go to. And that round, it was.

[Harry Stebbings]

So just go back to that. Respectfully, what did they miss or what did you do wrong?

[Oscar Pierre]

I think I wasn't the best at fundraising. Maybe I was too transparent, too humble. Yeah, maybe I lacked more big ambition or aggressiveness. And I think what they missed is the power of working really hard with less money. Where can you go, how far you can go with less money but really, really good execution, even if you are really inexperienced and very young? I think what no other competitor can beat us at is the culture of working really hard. What allows us to, for example, win the deal of McDonald's or to beat big competitors in any single market. I don't think any large competitor is now bigger than us in any of the markets where we operate. And there is just daily local execution and a mega obsession on details.

[Harry Stebbings]

What do you think of the European VC product at the early stage?

[Oscar Pierre]

Yeah, no, I struggled. I struggled a lot. Most of the people that I found had never built things right, so it was really hard to connect even the ones that invested in us. Building a company is such a roller coaster that if you don't have people that are used to this roller coaster, they add so much pressure. You get a lot of pressure from the business because there's always bad news coming. But if you also get pressure from the VCs, it's like it's too much.

[Harry Stebbings]

I always say to founders, actually it's one of the benefits of another benefit of working with the owner of a firm or the principal of a firm is that no one's going to fire me if I do a bad deal in another firm. You do feel the pressure if you have not done great deals and people do get let go and so they bring that animosity and concern to you, the founder, because Glovo is not doing well. And now my other partners are looking at me going, glovo is not doing well and we put in 10 million and that is not helpful to you.

[Oscar Pierre]

Exactly. I felt that a lot.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yeah, yeah. Do you think that European founders are aggressive enough, you know, you are wonderfully talented. Okay. But you're also very humble. And you are not a sales guy, no offense. And aggressively sales guy. Do you think Europeans lack that in a way that Americans are fucking amazing at it?

[Oscar Pierre]

I'd say in average. Yes. Yeah, yeah. When you speak to not only Americans, also I know you go to Tel Aviv, you also feel that just feel smaller. And then you look at the business you have and they have nothing to envy.

[Harry Stebbings]

You mentioned some of the other competitors, you mentioned your deliveries of the world who raised a lot more money. If your other competitors are raising a lot of money, do you have to raise a lot of money?

[Oscar Pierre]

So we raised as much money as we as we could in the seven years of fundraising. I could never choose. I never said no to an investor. That's how little optionality I had. And back to that brown that I was telling before the Series A when There were no VCs left to pitch to. Glovo was saved because I was in a. I was in an event of the FCB football Club Barcelona, whose sponsor back then was Rakuten. Rakuten is the Amazon of Japan. And Mickey Tanney, which is the founder, he was there in the party and in the event and he met me. And for some reason he liked the company. He had seen the backpacks in the streets of the couriers and he decided to lead the run. So you can work. Really?

[Harry Stebbings]

How much did he put in?

[Oscar Pierre]

I think he did like 15 million.

[Harry Stebbings]

Wow. I'm glad you went to that event.

[Oscar Pierre]

Yeah, me too.

[Unknown]

Did you get VCs after that?

[Harry Stebbings]

Be like, oh, we've heard about the round.

[Oscar Pierre]

And you know, hey, well in that round, it was a typical round that I had a lot of money pending to have a lead investor. At the end it was three leads. Two European VCs and Rakuten. The story doesn't end there. It got even worse because we're about to sign the contract with McDonald's. We were already operating with McDonald's but we had to sign the contract for like the next two years. And ICs had been already approved, all the docs were ready. And I get this call from one of the lead investors from Paris. He's like, look, we had another ic. I was like, but you already had an ic. No, but there was another IC and they're fine moving forward, but we need the contract of McDonald's signed. I was like, no way, man. These contracts take time. And I have three weeks left of cash. So I Was there negotiating with McDonald's at some point I had to tell McDonald's, like, hey, look, we need this contract, otherwise we're going to have to shut down the operations. And finally we got the contract.

[Harry Stebbings]

Wow. So you got the contract signed to meet the investor timelines?

[Oscar Pierre]

Yeah.

[Harry Stebbings]

Wow.

[Oscar Pierre]

Yeah, it was very stressful.

[Harry Stebbings]

Was that the most stressful moment?

[Oscar Pierre]

There were two more. Go on Series B, Series C. Well, I mean, there was. I think it was our series C again. Two months left of cash. So for seven years, we raced around every nine months.

[Harry Stebbings]

It's commonly done to raise one every 18 months. Is that just because you couldn't raise a round that would give you 18 months? Why did you raise for nine months? That feels far too fast.

[Oscar Pierre]

Because the stakes kept getting higher. So the industry kept getting more and more irrational, more and more growth. We were still at negative unit economics, so things were going really well, but the burn kept scaling. When we finally closed the round, every single time, we were like, fuck. We either overinvest and we shorten our Runway or Uber eats and delivery will kill us in all of our markets. It was a life or death decision all the time and we had to overspend every single time. And in one of those, again, it was December. We had to sign the round by, I think, the first week of January, end of January, we were running out of money. And December 23rd, I get a call from the lead investor saying that they're passing, think two days before Christmas. And, yeah, that was a really bad Christmas.

[Harry Stebbings]

Sorry, I didn't mean to laugh. What do you do then, mate? It's just like, it's such a gut punch. What happened then? You had the lead investor fall out.

[Oscar Pierre]

So in that case, I think we had to do like a small internal round. And then it gave us another three months to find another lead.

[Harry Stebbings]

Was there ever a cash tap that did turn on? Like you continuously had a lot of constraints. Was there ever a moment when in the series D or E or whatever it was, someone was like, here you go, here's 200 million.

[Oscar Pierre]

So we did get the run of 200 million, but it was in a moment where we were burning 30 million a month. So it was.

[Harry Stebbings]

I was like, oh, thank God. Oh, yeah.

[Oscar Pierre]

No, no. It was scary. So after Spain and Italy, when we realized we had cracked the model, we got super ambitious and we said, hey, because Paris, we failed. And we understood why we failed because we were late.

[Harry Stebbings]

It was it that simple. We were late and we couldn't afford to outspend them.

[Oscar Pierre]

Exactly. We were late and we could not acquire customers cheaply and retain them cheaply because there were already two competitors doing it well. But when we got that, we were like, okay, let's look at the map of the world. There's so many countries out there where nobody has disrupted them yet. Right. So we, as you know, as a Spaniards, we look to latam, I think Spaniards, entrepreneurs. It's a small secret we have there, but it's actually pretty natural for us to expand into latam, which is a massive market. Right. There's a cultural and language thing there. Right. So we started with Latam and we went to Peru, Chile and Argentina. And that was a big inflection point. When I saw, when we launched Lima and I saw the first week it was flying, I was like, what worked?

[Harry Stebbings]

What did you see?

[Oscar Pierre]

It was the same as very similar to, to what we saw in Milan and Barcelona and Madrid, which was frequency of orders.

[Harry Stebbings]

It was aov, it was restaurant sign ups, it was driver signups. What was it?

[Oscar Pierre]

It was the three sides of the marketplace were working. It was easy to convince restaurants couriers there was good availability. But the most important thing was customers. We were acquiring customers and retaining them. And when we saw that, we were like, whoa, the platform works really far away from Barcelona. Let's go huge. And then we roll out latam. We went to countries that just on latam.

[Harry Stebbings]

While we're there. Before you go, how do driver acquisition costs vary between Barcelona and Peru?

[Oscar Pierre]

Courier acquisition is not a huge line in the P and L in our business. Compared to ride hailing, yeah, it's fairly cheap.

[Harry Stebbings]

Acquisition strategy the same.

[Oscar Pierre]

Different for customers?

[Harry Stebbings]

Well, no, for couriers actually, yeah. Same for curios. On customer side, was it different in terms of CACs and then channel?

[Oscar Pierre]

There were a few differences, but not massive. We have a playbook that is quite scalable. Again, we use a lot, believe it or not, we use a lot of TV on top of online media. But TV has worked very well for us to drive a lot of downloads and new customers.

[Harry Stebbings]

Okay, so we have Peru and we're like, wow, this works so well. Miles, miles away. What happens then? We're like, where else do we go?

[Oscar Pierre]

So look, I sent Arnau. Arnau was kind of our co founder, he was our coo and we sent him there to lead or Latam for the first two years. And we expanded to I think 10 or 12 countries. Meanwhile, I hired someone that came from Uber that had been doing expansion there and we looked at the rest of the world and where we places that we liked a lot were countries that the investors. I had to really convince them or even launch without their approval in countries like Kenya or Kazakhstan, because from the European point of view, it was like, who's going to order food delivery in Kenya? I was like, well, there's a lot of people with cell phones and people like food and they like convenience.

[Harry Stebbings]

Respectfully, are your AOVS not much reduced there?

[Oscar Pierre]

More than the AOVs is the ratio between cost of labor and AOVs, which matters a lot. The bigger the ratio is, the more affordable you can offer the service and the more demand you will find.

[Harry Stebbings]

And for you, the cost of labor is way, way less in these emerging markets.

[Oscar Pierre]

In some cases, yeah. For example, we seek markets like Morocco, where that ratio is very large, and this allows us to offer the service much more affordable to the end customer.

[Harry Stebbings]

Which market did you try? You mentioned Paris, which didn't work. Which other market did you try? And it didn't work. And what did you learn from that?

[Oscar Pierre]

So the biggest failure was Brazil. Yeah, Brazil was a big failure. We lost a lot of money.

[Harry Stebbings]

How much money did you lose?

[Oscar Pierre]

It was like a black hole, probably. We lost like 30, 40 million euros. Yeah, look, we just did the wrong assessment. We looked at what was there in the market. There was a company, very successful, called Ifood, and we thought that iFood was very similar to Justit. Whenever we saw Justit in any market, actually, we launched because we knew we could compete against them and we could offer a better service. So we saw a lot of similar things, but we just did the wrong analysis. And when we went there, we realized that iFood had all the content all restaurants, all brands were delivering with Ifood. They had a pretty good service. So at the end, these platforms are really sticky. Right. If a high percentage of population is already using iFood, you need to spend a lot of money in vouchers to convince customers to switch to another app. Even if they switch, they will tend to go back to their favorite app unless you keep vouchering them. And vouchering in our business is horrible because you don't have. The margins are really thin. Anytime you go into a voucher, you go into negative economics. So we had to shut down Brazil.

[Harry Stebbings]

How long did you give it?

[Oscar Pierre]

That was fast. It was like a year.

[Harry Stebbings]

Was that a tough decision to shut down at that year, Mark?

[Oscar Pierre]

Yeah, it was really tough. I think shutting down things is a super important skill for a founder. At the end, it's an ego thing because you have to go against what you have previously Told the board, the investors, the employees. One year before launching Brazil, I was selling the Brazil dream. I was telling everyone, like, hey, this is going to be massive. And like. And even when you launch and you start seeing things not going super well, you have to keep selling it. Right? Because you need to inject that energy into everyone. And one day you're like, you have to go out there and be like, hey, you know, everything that I told you, I was wrong. The toughest thing is the ego when you have to take this decision. Apart from, of course, how tough it is to, you know, in Brazil, probably we had 100 employees. We had to let them go and they were doing things well. Just the market was too tough.

[Harry Stebbings]

So we go into these emerging markets, Kazakhstan, Kenya, what do we see? All up and to the right, pretty much. Why does this journey not get easier on the fundraising side? I'm confused. Like, we are now having, you know, Peru, Italy, Spain, Kazakhstan, Kenya, but who gives a fuck? They're performing great and the unit Econ are looking good. We're starting to see the benefits of scale. Why are investors not flocking to you at this point?

[Oscar Pierre]

So I think there were two things. One was the burn. The burn was really scary and it kept going up, 15, 20, 30.

[Harry Stebbings]

Did it make you nervous?

[Oscar Pierre]

Yeah, of course. Because you saw one thing I did during seven years was checking how much cash we had in the bank for seven years. And it keeps going down every single day.

[Harry Stebbings]

And also it keeps going down, no offense. A lot.

[Oscar Pierre]

A lot.

[Harry Stebbings]

If you're doing 30 mil a month.

[Oscar Pierre]

I mean, a million a day. When we launched in Latam, we had a competitor there, very well funded, called Rappi. They were the best fundraisers. They raised from Sequoia, from SoftBank. SoftBank. And it's crazy, when we went there, we went from saying, hey, these guys are crazy, they're so irrational, to doing exactly what they were doing in a matter of three months. Big exclusivities are worth a lot.

[Harry Stebbings]

Wow. So you pay these restaurants an exclusive, which is like a lump sum, to only be with you.

[Oscar Pierre]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

How do you.

[Harry Stebbings]

I mean, you must have like a load of McKinsey consultants working out the payback periods on that.

[Oscar Pierre]

We do it ourselves. It does pay back.

[Harry Stebbings]

How long does it take to pay back? I know it depends. But, like, what's acceptable payback?

[Oscar Pierre]

So we. We usually invest at three, four years payback.

[Unknown]

Three, four years payback?

[Oscar Pierre]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

And then you get the exclusivity for.

[Harry Stebbings]

Three to four years?

[Oscar Pierre]

Yeah, well, it depends.

[Harry Stebbings]

Wow, that's astonishing.

[Unknown]

Three or four years.

[Harry Stebbings]

That's long. Okay, okay, Right. So one, the burn was very high. That was one reason why I didn't like it. You said there were two.

[Oscar Pierre]

Yeah. The second was we were getting some scale, right? We were getting to 1 billion. 2 billion, top line. But we were still really small against the big players. Now, you looked at Uber, they were at least 15, 20 times bigger. Delivery hero, even Deliveroo back then was a lot bigger than us. And when you lack this scale, you're still really exposed to them, Right? Because they have so much scale that they can just go into your home market and destroy your business with maybe like 20, 30 million investment. So I think even though we were big, many investors, and I think rightly so, they didn't see us as big enough to fail.

[Harry Stebbings]

You mentioned layoffs in Brazil. Super hard thing to do. I do want to talk about talent. Building a business is merely a collection of people. You said some great things before about talent. You said to me before about rewriting values. Everyone you know, I speak to, mostly Americans, and they love mission and values. What are your biggest lessons on rewriting values?

[Oscar Pierre]

It's something that I've pushed in the executive team every single year, right? So we block a few hours, we look at the values, and even though 12 months ago we all agreed on every single word on how to define each one of the six values that we have, every time we sit down and we look at them, we're like, this doesn't feel right anymore. We can improve it with this word or changing this or maybe adding a new value. Right. We haven't changed the value so much, but we have proactively worked on them on a yearly basis. So that was really important. I think the problem was when we got to like a thousand employees, that's when we messed up the culture. That's when we. It was all my fault because. Yeah.

[Harry Stebbings]

You said you ruined the culture.

[Oscar Pierre]

Yeah.

[Harry Stebbings]

Why did you ruin it? What did you do?

[Oscar Pierre]

When you're hyperscaling, it's really easy to have a very aligned culture and everyone working super hard. Everybody's so stretched. Everyone's responsibilities is huge. And that challenge and that, but it just pushes everyone to work really hard. But it's inevitable. But that one day your business starts growing at 30% year on year. Right. And that coincided when we got to around 1,000 people. And I think I ruined it because I started getting scared of some part of our team reacting to how I said certain things. And I started being a bit of a politician. So what do politicians do they say things in a way that, that a very large percentage of the population will like it? It always gets to that first all hands or zoom call where you say something. You're talking about values, you're talking about work ethic, you're talking about the importance of working really hard and long hours. And when you finish the call, you're going to get a message from someone like, hey, what you said maybe was a bit too aggressive. Certain people in my team didn't like it. And as a young founder, you know, when I started getting those messages, I was like, oof. Yeah, it's true. Maybe I was too aggressive. Maybe I should say things a bit nicer. And that was the beginning of, not the end, because we have reconducted it.

[Harry Stebbings]

How do you think about that? I'd love your help here because I think I don't have that at all. I'm very, very bullish and confident in my leadership. But the challenge is some people find that abrasive and bluntly too direct. And part of me listens to this and goes, ha, ha, I'm right to be this way, like brilliant. I'm not affected by kind of bluntly weak people who get offended by it. But then you do have talented people who you want to feel empowered and opinionated and great. How do you think about that balance?

[Oscar Pierre]

The day I realized I was ruining the culture was in a Christmas party of Globo. I was in a conversation with a few engineers and at that moment there was a company poaching a lot of our engineers. And that company, I'm not going to name who it is, but they work really hard there now. They had a very hard working culture. And I heard one engineer saying, yeah, I was also a poach, but I decided not to go there because they work really hard there. When I heard that, I was like, shit. It's not only the intensity starts going down of the company, it's that you're losing the hard working people to another company that is achieving to set and keep that intensity right. So it's also a network effect that you need to keep working on.

[Harry Stebbings]

What did you do then? Like, I don't know you very well, but I know you a little bit. That must have been a crushing moment for you.

[Oscar Pierre]

It was.

[Harry Stebbings]

What did you do?

[Oscar Pierre]

Start from the top, start aligning the top leaders, firing those that were not aligned. Now you realize that some of them didn't want to go back to the global of the beginnings and then start saying things as they are. No, I wrote a Couple emails to the team that, you know, it was like the company was on fire for a few weeks because at the end if you have 20% of the company that is really misaligned and it wasn't their fault, it was our fault because we just relaxed. And all the messaging, the recruiting process, the onboarding process, nobody told them that we wanted that type of work ethics and a hard working culture. So if all of a sudden the CEO goes out there and sends a message that hey, we have to go back to the beginnings, this is how we like this, our culture. A lot of people didn't like it and then even if it's a 10, 20%, it's very loud, right? So you do get, it's not a week, it's a year of noise and it's a year of really bad energy. A lot of toxicity. People take time to leave or get fired. Actually.

[Harry Stebbings]

Is it lack of work ethic or is it wokeness?

[Oscar Pierre]

I don't know. I think it's just human nature that if your leader is not on top of you raising the standards, pushing for faster deliveries, how do you do that? You just relax.

[Harry Stebbings]

How do you instill that velocity, that unwillingness to relent and just say hey, we are a different organization now, we operate at the highest level and we don't accept anything that's not that. How do you do that?

[Oscar Pierre]

I wouldn't point to a single thing. But it's just everywhere. It's when you recruit people in that interview you have to be super transparent about what you expect in terms of working hard. And if you feel that he or she doesn't understand what working hard is, you explain it. It's like hey look, most of the days I'm here in the office until 8, you might have to do the same. And on weekends I connect the people you fire is another mega signal. And then in every single meeting, when I walk into a meeting I try to remind myself, okay, my mission here is just to add more velocity and to raise the standards. Nothing that they will present is going to be fine. This is the mentality that any leader has to go into because if you go to the report and you see the manager, your leader is fine with everything you're presenting. I think it's just human nature that the next time you have to report is going to be a little less quality.

[Harry Stebbings]

Do you have any other big management lessons? You've managed now thousands of people for years. Any other big ones?

[Oscar Pierre]

Look, I've had two stages at Glovo. One was hyperscaling as I said before, I think in hyperscaling things can work with the CEO being away fundraising because there's just so much energy into the business and actually that's what I had to do. I was all day fundraising. I was almost until six hours a day fundraising and then I worked on the business and then my new stage was when after acquisition of delivery hero, which coincided when we started growing at 30% year on year and when you're at this growth rates which are good but it's not hyperscale or hypergrowth, that's when you cannot sit back now you need to be injecting velocity and energy into what I said before knowing to any single meeting where you go how would the layoffs?

[Harry Stebbings]

Layoffs suck? If you were to advise founders on giving layoffs, what would you advise a founder who is about to give layoffs?

[Oscar Pierre]

So unfortunately we've done a few layoffs. What I found is that people are a lot more mature than what you expect when you're planning the comms and all that. We've always put a lot of budget into it to treat people well. It's not only about the people that will be leaving. They deserve it. It's not their fault that you have to lay off or do a big layoff. It's even more important for the people that stay because those people that you lay off are their friends and the way they exit the company is super important. In the post layoff era, I always pushed, we always got the layoff proposal from the HR department. I always push for more. Let's give them more. For sure it's a good investment.

[Harry Stebbings]

I always say to people the way you leave somewhere is often the way you're remembered. When we chatted before, you said that you did too much M and A. What did you mean by that?

[Oscar Pierre]

I did a lot of M and A. I think entrepreneurs are by nature very optimistic and you think only about the upsides. Not like well I'm going to take this company, I'm just going to connect it to Glovo. Eventually we shut down everything and my conclusion was I was just too optimistic about the upside but not looking at how complex it is to integrate different tech stacks, different cultures, different teams. Of course, when you buy a company that founder will most probably stop thinking about building and leave.

[Harry Stebbings]

What was the biggest acquisition you made?

[Oscar Pierre]

So we bought a couple instacart type of businesses. So large baskets, grocery marketplaces, one in Spain and one in Portugal. Maybe like 5 million each. I don't remember.

[Harry Stebbings]

5 million each doesn't feel like bluntly, a huge amount of money. No, this is not a sink the boat decision.

[Oscar Pierre]

No, no, it wasn't huge. It was also a lot of the focus. I also got really excited, right, because it was like me going back to the beginnings and starting again. And I, I talked a lot about it to the company. So now I think about it, I'm like, man, you're so stupid. Our business is about focusing on the small details every single day and making the marketplace better every single day, not about expanding to other things.

[Harry Stebbings]

How do you think about market depth versus breadth in terms of penetration? Of you could have stayed in Italy and Spain and just gone more services, more services, gone into pharmacy, gone into cash delivery, gone into driver banking and financing. I mean, we could take this a long way versus breadth, as you did of Peru, Kazakhstan, Kenya.

[Oscar Pierre]

I think the answer to that is how time sensitive it is and when is your right to win. So, for example, I know I can keep expanding now in Italy and in Spain into other delivery services because we have already won the battles, right? We are already by far the largest delivery brand, right? So the opportunity of groceries or pharma, where we're growing very fast, is still there and we can crack it and we can invest massively now in 2025. The opportunity is still there. If you go to Peru or you go to, I don't know, to Romania. It was a now or never decision back in 2018 because you had to be the first mover, like getting there first and building the scale. It was a now or never. So now we know that our playbook basically is number one, winning food delivery in restaurant delivery and number two, expand multi category. And we think the second will be much larger than the first. It's just a matter of the timing of.

[Harry Stebbings]

Can you unpack what is multi category?

[Oscar Pierre]

So multi category is basically groceries, pharma and then anything else. Anything else is any shop, electronics, flowers, retail in general, anything that can fit into a rider's backpack. That said, groceries is massive. Groceries is so big just going to Spain. For example, the groceries offline market is 120 billion out of which only 2% is online. 2% of groceries industry is online. We're fully convinced that this 2% will turn into 20, 30%. And the magic of it is that we don't see like delivering groceries on demand with no mistakes. You need so much technology and to make it profitable without overcharging the customer, you need so much technology that we now see all retailers, all grocers, they're Relying on us to go into the online business because their online business is not working. That's a massive opportunity. We know that when this 2% of online penetration turns into 20, we can capture at least half of it before.

[Harry Stebbings]

We get to the future of E commerce. You build a business to the scale where acquisition offers start to come. And you decided to take the acquisition offer at one point. Why did you decide to sell and was it the first acquisition offer?

[Oscar Pierre]

No, no, no. We had multiple offers. When we were only in Spain and Italy, we got the first offer.

[Harry Stebbings]

How much was it for?

[Oscar Pierre]

I think 100 million. Half of the board was in favor of taking it. I guess it made sense for them.

[Harry Stebbings]

How much did you have of the business then?

[Oscar Pierre]

Maybe 25%, 30%. 25?

[Harry Stebbings]

30 million is a lot. When you're 25, 26, it's a lot at any time. But when you're 20, was any part of you tempted?

[Oscar Pierre]

Honestly, no. And I don't think it was rational because, of course that changes your life already by a lot. But I was just so convinced that what we had was working and we could expand to 20 more markets, which is what we've done.

[Harry Stebbings]

Okay, so that was the first. And then tell me about the Delivery Hero one. How does that come to be?

[Oscar Pierre]

First of all, Delivery Hero invested in global in Series B. It was part of those rounds that nobody wanted to invest. So we ended up taking the competitors money. We were competing against DeliveryHero in some markets, and DeliveryHero also did some investments, and we agreed to take their money. Why did we decide to sell? Well, after the series, I think it was the Series F. You know that moment when you close the round, you go to the notary, you're so happy. But you go back to the office, you look at the business plan, and you're with your CFO with edu. And I was like, edu, we need to start fundraising for the next one. We cannot wait much. And we looked at each other and we were like, I can do another one. Emotionally, I can't. Because every single round was so stressful. And it was rational also not to do it. Because in every single round, there were high chances of failing and having to shut down the company. So that's when we decided, hey, either we IPO or we sell. And we started looking at both options. Ipoing, we were still burning almost a million a year a day. A million a day.

[Harry Stebbings]

I was like, wow, capital efficiency has really taken effect at a million a day.

[Oscar Pierre]

So IPO wasn't very viable.

[Harry Stebbings]

And you weren't profitable?

[Oscar Pierre]

We were not profitable. We were already at 3 billion top line and then we started looking for a sale. We talked to all the potential buyers and DeliveryHero by far was the best bidder. Not only for my investors but also for the team and for me. Basically Delivery Hero operating model is to empower local brands. Now they have Talabat in Middle east which actually recently IPO and they have 80%. They have peridos Ya in South America, they have Glovo. So they have a bunch of amazing delivery brands and they empower them with a lot of technology and with capital when we needed it. So this allowed us to keep operating and keep running the business and it was a great deal for everyone.

[Harry Stebbings]

How much did they buy it for?

[Oscar Pierre]

It was an all stock acquisition for 2.3 billion.

[Harry Stebbings]

When you signed that deal, how does it feel?

[Oscar Pierre]

It was 31st of December. We had to do it in 2021. How did it feel? Good. I felt really good. I felt like part of the mission was completed which was on one end returning the money and on the other making sure that Global would keep existing, keep delivering to customers, keep serving riders and restaurants.

[Harry Stebbings]

Bluntly on paper you suddenly have, I don't know, whatever your ownership was, $220 million, $300 million, whatever it was of stock. You don't seem like a guy who really cares that much about money. Oscar, how did it change your mindset?

[Oscar Pierre]

So one thing I did was I started speaking with a lot of people that had done an exit. And I think one thing I realized very fast is a correlation between unhappiness and people that had stopped working. So those entrepreneurs that had made a big exit and moved into a wealth management lifestyle were then happiest. And that to me was very clear. Like what gives me a lot of happiness is going to the office every day, spending time with my team, cracking big problems. Of course that's not all my life. Right? They have a lot of life outside of work. But for me it's very clear I want to keep working until I die.

[Harry Stebbings]

And you're still at Delivery Hero today? Still in the role? Yeah, Most leave post acquisition.

[Oscar Pierre]

Yeah, it's something that I think about on one end. I co founded a small VC in Europe called Yellow. So it's a 30 million fund. We invest in young entrepreneurs.

[Harry Stebbings]

Why move into VC? I mean it in the nicest way. You're like an amazing entrepreneur and you've been through this incredible journey. You've redefined a category.

[Oscar Pierre]

Why do a vc, I mean in Some way I was already investing a lot as a business angel. I had done like four investments and I loved spending time with entrepreneurs. It got too messy. Like as a business angel it's really hard to keep things under control. So I just teamed up with Adam which was came from Atomico and gave them all my money that I wanted to invest in pre seed. For me it's like an important hobby. I spent a few hours with them every week and I like it a lot. I'm learning but I also. Back to your question. I realized that I don't want to be an investor full time. I really like operating businesses.

[Harry Stebbings]

What have been your biggest lessons from.

[Oscar Pierre]

Investing as well as a first time founder? When I spoke to VCs back then I thought I was having a one on one conversation and in reality is like if you are broadcasting to the entire VC community so the amount of chit chatting that happens across all VCs like they're talking all day, they're sharing all the deals or sharing all the intel. So that's an advice for all founders, especially first time founders. It's a very, very connected community and anything you're saying to one, don't try to play games assuming that conversations are confidential because they're not.

[Harry Stebbings]

Also don't go out too early. This is often not in my interest. Don't go out too early because they talk so much that if you go and meet one it will likely go in an Associates WhatsApp group that you are meeting. Do you see what I mean?

[Oscar Pierre]

Yeah.

[Harry Stebbings]

And then suddenly people think you're racing and then suddenly it's like oh, we turn them down and it gets known that they were turned down by Excel or Index or whoever it was and suddenly vicious rumors can start.

[Oscar Pierre]

Yeah, totally.

[Harry Stebbings]

That's dangerous. Will you still be at delivery Hero in five years?

[Oscar Pierre]

I want to operate businesses all my life. Right. Or build things. That's what I like and I enjoy. And every time I think about starting something new I realize how cool it's Glovo and the platform we're building, how much we're growing. I still see Glovo being 10x bigger than today. We're getting to 7 billion top line. I see so much potential. I see us as Amazon 20 years ago.

[Harry Stebbings]

Is Glovo profitable today?

[Oscar Pierre]

Yeah, yeah, we just turned profitable. We just turned 10 years. Last semester was our first profitable semester.

[Harry Stebbings]

That must be a special moment.

[Oscar Pierre]

Yeah, it was good.

[Harry Stebbings]

One thing I think that's a big needle mover in the industry. That was respectfully the reason why I've invested in the past is because I actually believe that you can subsidize one part of the business with a very effective ads engine on the other side of it. And I don't think we've seen that fully taken advantage of yet. How does advertising and media change the quick commerce business?

[Oscar Pierre]

It's fascinating, the ad space and that's an area where I feel we just started. Yeah, we believe in our business out of every €100 of GMV we'll be able to generate at least €5 of advertising money which of course are almost full margin. We're now at 2. We're halfway more or less between 2 and 3. It makes so much sense. Right, because every time someone, a customer opens Glovo, they open it with an intention of purchase. So for any brand, any restaurant, they want to be there. Right. It's so efficient advertising. Right. If you are, I don't know, a shampoo brand, you want to be there when the customer is searching for shampoo and you want to be in the first listing. Right.

[Harry Stebbings]

So what will drive your revenues from 2 to 3 to 5? Is it purely a traffic?

[Oscar Pierre]

So it's more advertising product and more penetration. So we have around a fraction of all the merchants that we work with and all the groceries and brands that we work with using our advertising products. So it's a matter of penetration and also improving just the advertising engine.

[Harry Stebbings]

Totally get you. Which brand do you not have today? Could be a restaurant brand or other brand. Which do you not have today that.

[Oscar Pierre]

You would most like to have in terms of merchant? I think that the number one I would like to have are two Spanish ones. One is Inditex. So all the Zaras, etc. They still don't want to go into the quick commerce.

[Harry Stebbings]

Why not?

[Oscar Pierre]

They're in the quick fashion game, they're not in marketplaces. You will not find them also in Zalando, maybe a bit in Zalando but they really want to control end to end their online experience. And the other one is Mercadona, which is the Walmart of Spain, 40% market share offline. And they also want to console end to end their experience.

[Harry Stebbings]

What company did you not acquire that you wish you had acquired? With the benefit of hindsight, we have.

[Oscar Pierre]

A very beautiful story with Mickey from World because we started the same month, almost the same month in 2014, end of 2014 and we sold like two months away. So our story is very, very parallel and we always had conversations of teaming up and joining forces and building a Very large European new delivery company, but our paths never joined.

[Harry Stebbings]

I think Nikki is one of the great entrepreneurs of Europe, so I'm super happy to hear that.

[Oscar Pierre]

I agree.

[Harry Stebbings]

One element I do just have to discuss before we do a quick fire is regulation. Regulation is difficult to implement and sometimes poorly done. When I look at the market that you operate a lot of time in, it seems that Uber have a lot of freedom to do what they want to do and you maybe don't. Is regulation enacted fairly?

[Oscar Pierre]

Of course. The gig economy needs more regulation. Right. It's a reality that has grown everywhere in the world and operating this business across 23 different markets, with all governments realizing that they need to regulate it somehow. Right. Because it's growing so much and so many people are working and generating revenue from it. It's been tough. Like, it's been tough. We have to build public affairs teams in every single country, etc. And unfortunately, the country where we suffer from regulation the most is Spain. I'm not going to go into the details, but it's so extreme that I'm now in a criminal process. The general attorney accused me with six years of prison for running with a freelancer's model, which is something that has been validated by judges in Spain up to 14 times. It has gotten really political, but the reality is that I'm there. I had to go declare three months ago. I think it's the only country in the world where a founder, a CEO of a digital platform has to be declaring with criminal accusations.

[Harry Stebbings]

Does that make you very nervous?

[Oscar Pierre]

I mean, it was big. Yeah, it was big. And it also got a lot of noise in the media. And the worst thing, now that I think there's a lot of discussions around bureaucracy in Europe as a barrier for entrepreneurs building great things. The worst thing is that we're not playing a fair game against our competitors. So for some reason, we were the only company that the administration went against in Spain. And our competitors who are from the us Uber eats, they're still not being accused. So we're not only suffering from, I think, aggressive regulation, but we're not playing.

[Harry Stebbings]

Is that lobbying? Is someone paying for that?

[Oscar Pierre]

No, look, I think it's just that we were by far the largest one, the most visible one, and as it was very political, I guess the administration targeted first, the larger one. And I guess they're going to go now after the second one. The timings are slow here, so there's going to be a time difference that reduces our advantage maybe.

[Harry Stebbings]

Do you worry it's going to get worse. Just being blunt, EU has hired 1500 people for AI safety policing. Do you worry that it's going to get worse?

[Oscar Pierre]

Generally I'm very optimistic in life, but I just don't see the incentives so that this trend changes. So in EU and regulations getting easier for the next wave of entrepreneurs, I'm not super optimistic.

[Harry Stebbings]

Final one before we do a quick fire. When you think about being a young European entrepreneur and for the thousands that will listen to this show, what would you say to them when they're often told you really need to move to the Valley if you want to build a tech company?

[Oscar Pierre]

No, I strongly disagree. Look, I think from Barcelona where there was a very small ecosystem of tech and tech talent, we were able to build top notch technology. I don't think our technology had anything to envy our American competitors. So I fully disagree. I wish somebody had told me to have more ambition when I started. At least for the first three, four years, I didn't fully believe I could do it. There were no big examples in Europe or at least in Spain. So I wish somebody had told me. But at the end we are as smart and we can work harder or as hard as in any other place.

[Harry Stebbings]

Do you think it's a fallacy that Europeans don't work as hard?

[Oscar Pierre]

If you sustain a hard working culture, you will keep finding the talent is there. I mean, you don't need to convince a million people. That's what I told the team when they told me no, because now younger talent, they want more work, life balance. I'm like, look, I only need a thousand. I don't need to convince the entire young community. I just need a thousand people that want to work hard and you will find them.

[Harry Stebbings]

Dude, I want to do a quick fire. I could talk to you all day.

[Unknown]

So let's start with what do you.

[Harry Stebbings]

Believe most that most people around you disbelieve?

[Oscar Pierre]

I think we're building a platform that most people think of it as only food delivery and I see it as the future of online commerce. When people have this first experience of ordering a MacBook charger and getting it in 30 minutes and repeating, I think that's going to be the future. So everything will be on demand and everything will be delivered in 30 minutes.

[Harry Stebbings]

Which competitor do you most respect and why?

[Oscar Pierre]

I like Walt. We compete against them in five, six markets. In some we beat them, in some we don't. But it's always a very nice battle and they do things as we like, they do things with high standards.

[Harry Stebbings]

Which market are you number Two in that you would most like to be.

[Oscar Pierre]

Number one in, I'd say Portugal, but we're going to get there in a year. Uber Eats is still ahead because we launched too late, but we're going to get there.

[Harry Stebbings]

You can take one investor with you to your new company. Which investor do you take Bea from?

[Oscar Pierre]

Seiya. She was the first VC that believed in us and she was in the board all the way until the very last day.

[Harry Stebbings]

What makes a great board member to you?

[Oscar Pierre]

What I loved about her is she always told me, hey, Oscar. Because most of the conversations with her were around fundraising and she was always like, hey, look, I know that if you don't call me is that you don't have news. While most of the other investors were like, how's the term sheet going? Have you received the term sheet? Are they signing it? How did that. No. So this just added so much pressure because they were suffering also. And Bea knew that the moment I had good news, I would call her immediately. So I appreciate it a lot.

[Harry Stebbings]

What about the way that your parents brought you up? Will you do differently deliberately with your children?

[Oscar Pierre]

Look, I was lucky that my parents had money. We've never lacked anything at home, but at the same time, I saw my father working until 2am every single day. Every single day. And that, I think, marked me a lot. I think that's also the other very important reason to keep working, to show the example to your kids. I'm not a father yet, but I know that when I am, it's really important that your kids see you suffering every day or not every day. But they don't see that it's easy life all the time.

[Harry Stebbings]

One of the most famous CEOs in the world said to me once that if you want to learn to be a good parent, just watch the Discovery Channel on National Geographic and watch the elephants. The little ones learn by watching the big ones, you learn by doing. And so if you want your kids to work hard, you got to work hard.

[Oscar Pierre]

Yeah, exactly.

[Harry Stebbings]

Can I ask you, did having a bit of a safety net, like not worrying about money, help you as an entrepreneur? I always kind of say I'm not an entrepreneur. I started, my family was kind of middle class, but like, I lived at home in a nice home. Mum paid for food. I was going to be a law scholar. If mine failed, I'd just be like a middle class lawyer. Wasn't that risky?

[Oscar Pierre]

I think it helped me in having irrational ambition and taking a lot of risks, to the point that we almost shut down the company. Three times. Because I was always pushing to the limit so much. Because back to your point, I guess that I wasn't that scared about death. No. I didn't have kids, I didn't have a house for the first four years I was living with my parents. So I was like, look, I mean, I would be terribly sad, but my life didn't depend on it.

[Harry Stebbings]

You can be CEO of any other company for a day. What would you be CEO of and why?

[Oscar Pierre]

I think Vinted. I think about Vinted a lot. Yeah, because I like big consumer platforms and of course I like the impact they have.

[Harry Stebbings]

Do you know Thomas?

[Oscar Pierre]

No, I've never met him, but you should meet him.

[Harry Stebbings]

He's a friend and investor in the fund. He's wonderful. Like really one of the most fantastic CEOs. What do you know now that you wish you had known when you started Glovo?

[Oscar Pierre]

What I suffered the most was when the culture started softening a lot. So what I would tell the Oscar of the beginning is keep speaking with full transparency all the time. Doesn't matter how many people have in front and doesn't matter if a fraction of them get upset.

[Harry Stebbings]

Final one for you. I like to end on positivity. I'm an optimist like you are. What are you most excited for in the world when you look at all the developments? Could be anything that you work around. See what excites you most when you see it today. So for me it's AI and its ability to help Ms. Patients, multiple sclerosis patients, find newer, more innovative cures. My mother's got Ms. It was always told to me that you'd never find a cure for Ms. Now it looks like you might do in 5 to 10 years in those lines.

[Oscar Pierre]

I guess what feels really exciting is how terrible jobs will disappear very soon. So those jobs that nobody wants to do, like in hospitality or cleaning or all of this will get robotized. If you think about the world where nobody has to do shitty jobs, that's a much better world.

[Harry Stebbings]

I've so enjoyed doing this. Thank you so much for putting up with my very meandering schedule. You've been fantastic and I serve. Appreciate it.

[Oscar Pierre]

Thank you. It's been great.

[Unknown]

I have to say Oscar is one of the most humble, thoughtful, strategic leaders that I've been fortunate enough to have on the show. It was so great to have him in the studio and just what a fantastic guy. If you want to watch the full episode, you can find it on YouTube by searching for 20VC. That's 20VC on YouTube. But before we leave you today, here are two fun facts about our newest brand sponsor, Kajabi. First, their customers just crossed a collective 8 billion in total revenue. Wow. Second, Kajabi's users keep 100% of their earnings, with the average Kajabi creator bringing in over $30,000 per year. In case you didn't know, Kajabi is the leading creator commerce platform with an all in one suite of tools including websites, email marketing, digital products, payment processing, and analytics for as low as $69 per month. Whether you are looking to build a private community, write a paid newsletter, or launch a course, Kajabi is the only platform platform that will enable you to build and grow your online business without taking a cut of your revenue. 20VC listeners can try Kajabi for free for 30 days by going to kajabi.com 20VC that's kajabi.com K A J A B I.com 20VC once you've built your creator empire with Kajabi, take your insights and decision making to the next level with AlphaSense, the ultimate platform for uncovering trusted research and expert perspectives. As an investor, I'm always on the lookout for tools that really transform how I work. Tools that don't just save time, but fundamentally change how I uncover insights. That's exactly what AlphaSense does. With the acquisition of Tagus, AlphaSense is now the ultimate research platform built for professionals who need insights they can trust fast. I've used Teagus before for company deep dives right here on the podcast. It's been an incredible resource for expert insights, but now with AlphaSense leading the way, it combines those insights with premium content, top broker research, and cutting edge generative AI. The result? A platform that works like a supercharged junior analyst, delivering trusted insights and analysis on demand. AlphaSense has completely reimagined fundamental research, helping you uncover opportunities from perspectives you didn't even know how they existed. It's faster, it's smarter, and it's built to give you the edge in every decision you make. To any VC listeners, don't miss your chance to try AlphaSense for free. Visit AlphaSense.com 20 to unlock your trial. That's AlphaSense.com and speaking of incredible products, when you're building a business, you're going to encounter obstacles. Your banking doesn't have to be one of them though. Just talk to a founder who uses Mercury. Like Sanpe Omichi, the founder of Ellis.com, a modern immigration law firm. Helping startups and their employees immigrate to the US and they're a 20 VC portfolio company. And Sampe says using Mercury was a no brainer for me. When I started my company company I was able to get an account open immediately and using treasury and the checking account has been a breeze. So you need to visit mercury.com to see why. Founders like Sanpay use Mercury to help them hit the ground running, make the most of their money and see all their business moves in one place. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column N A and Evolve bank and Trust, members of the fdic. The provider of this testimonial was not compensated and is a client of Mercury Advisory ll see. As always, I so appreciate all your support and stay tuned for an incredible episode coming soon.

[Oscar Pierre]

The first round was valued at 280k free money and we raised 100k.

[Unknown]

Wow.

[Oscar Pierre]

I would say all the European VCs or most of them passed on us. Nobody believed in our story, you know, a bunch of kids from Barcelona beating the Deliveroos and the uber eats of the world. I remember the series B. It was like 25 million. We were going to die. So we unlocked the biggest deal of all history of food delivery, which was and that was a huge inflection point.