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

[0] I just knew this city needed something better than the classic takeaways.

[1] That's how I got the idea for delivery.

[2] I definitely know what it was like to walk in their shoes.

[3] I did that job for a long time.

[4] I did, you know, five deliveries last night.

[5] 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.

[6] COVID kicks off.

[7] Our users were disappearing because there are no restaurants left on the platform.

[8] So we see this plummeting growth.

[9] I had to do the hardest thing I ever had to do.

[10] I had to lay off, you know, a significant number of people at the company.

[11] I'm so proud of what we built and I'm so excited about the future.

[12] But it is a hard, hard job.

[13] And anyone that tells you otherwise are not being honest.

[14] We're about to get all this money in the company.

[15] And then suddenly it was just gone, right?

[16] I don't know.

[17] Big number.

[18] 600 million, something like that.

[19] And I was like, holy shit.

[20] You know, what do we do?

[21] 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.

[22] But the crazy thing about my conversation today with Will is he is not your typical founder.

[23] He's not your typical CEO.

[24] It doesn't feel like your typical entrepreneur.

[25] This was really his first business.

[26] 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.

[27] And I think that is amazing because it just goes to show that entrepreneur.

[28] don't all share the same fundamental characteristics.

[29] They're not all these big, braggadocious characters with huge egos, and you can achieve great success with great humility.

[30] Will is an anomaly, and I think you'll feel that today.

[31] He is incredibly humble.

[32] He isn't that introspective, doesn't analyze himself that much, and he feels like a very simple, straightforward character.

[33] But what he's achieved wasn't simple.

[34] It was excruciatingly difficult And as he'll tell you today It still is Without further ado I'm Stephen Bartlett And this is a diary of a CEO I hope nobody's listening But if you are Then please keep this to yourself 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.

[35] So I'd like you to confirm that and reward me accordingly.

[36] But I think I was.

[37] 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.

[38] However, when I read into your story, I kept seeing this phrase that you'd say.

[39] And it really boggled my mind because it's so atypical of the guests I have on this podcast.

[40] 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.

[41] And when I think about you've achieved you built what is now you know at least it was at one point europe's fastest growing company you couldn't possibly be just a normal guy i don't know i mean i think i am you know when you're a kid i don't think anything is abnormal it just sort of is what it is um so i grew up in a place called new haven connecticut uh it's a small city um about 130 000 people probably 10 square miles so it's wow pretty small um it's where uh you're uh you're Yale University is.

[42] Oh, yeah.

[43] Yeah.

[44] So we're known for that and we're known for pizza.

[45] Those are probably the two things.

[46] We're known for best pizza in the U .S. That explains why you went inside a delivery company.

[47] I mean, yeah, I was always obsessed with sallies and pepies and modern and all that.

[48] But yeah, look, my parents are immigrants.

[49] So, you know, I would say growing up, like, I guess we didn't, probably didn't spend very much money.

[50] is probably the best way to put it.

[51] But when you're a kid, you don't, you don't think about that.

[52] It's just kind of what you, your daily existence, you know.

[53] Your parents, what did they do professionally?

[54] My mom's a scientist.

[55] She works at Yale.

[56] My dad was an actuary.

[57] He retired.

[58] So they were, you know, well -educated sort of professional people.

[59] Yeah.

[60] And that brought you over here to London.

[61] No, no. So my story is I, yeah, I, yeah, I, I grew up in New Haven.

[62] I went to university in Chicago.

[63] I went to a college called Northwestern.

[64] And then my first job out of college, I worked on Wall Street in New York because this was 2001.

[65] And I took this job on.

[66] I mean, I did really well in school, both in university and in high school.

[67] It was just one of these jobs you did when you kind of didn't know what else you wanted to really do.

[68] But you knew you could make money and you knew that other, you know, successful people, ambitious people kind of went down that path.

[69] So how did you end up in London?

[70] I ended up in London because I worked for three years in New York.

[71] My third year, they said, I got another job at a different place.

[72] And they asked me, hey, do you want to, you know, check out a different office?

[73] And I never lived outside the U .S. I wanted to do something different.

[74] I just took a chance, literally on London.

[75] So I remember it really well.

[76] It came out in April 2004.

[77] Never been Europe, never been to London, never been.

[78] been here.

[79] And so I showed up and I had such a great time.

[80] I met, you know, the people on the team and I'm like, fuck it.

[81] I'm going to come.

[82] I'm going to come for a year.

[83] And then I ended up just basically staying.

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

[85] It's 24.

[86] 24.

[87] Yeah.

[88] I think it's so crazy.

[89] So many of my American friends, they've not left the U .S. And I was reading something yesterday about the, I was, I think it was a page in the New York times.

[90] And it was talking about how important it is to leave the U .S. to understand the world, but then also to appreciate the country that you have.

[91] I couldn't agree more.

[92] I mean, today is July 5th, right?

[93] Yeah, exactly.

[94] Yeah.

[95] July 4th yesterday.

[96] And you appreciate the U .S. so much more once you leave, right?

[97] Because everyone in the U .S. is always like waving flags and stuff.

[98] They don't, I mean, they don't know anything else, right?

[99] But when you leave and you understand different societies, you can appreciate the good and the bad of the U .S. I'd say.

[100] Yeah.

[101] I don't want to go into it, but when 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.

[102] Yeah.

[103] The one thing that upon moving to the US when I was 24 to run my business to New York, I couldn't get my head around was the healthcare system.

[104] Yeah.

[105] The idea that I could get sick and be bankrupt.

[106] Yeah.

[107] It's nothing you can do about it.

[108] Yeah.

[109] 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.

[110] So you were in New York.

[111] kind of the same age I moved to London.

[112] Yes.

[113] And you moved to Williamsburg.

[114] Our office was in Manhattan.

[115] So, but so you're, you're working in Canary Wolf, I'm guessing, if you're in finance.

[116] Yeah, so as a Morgan Stanley.

[117] And I remember my first day I showed up for work.

[118] Because in New York, you got $25 dinner allowance.

[119] You can order whatever you want.

[120] Actually, funny story, my first kind of day at work in 2001, I was pretty cheap, right?

[121] So I was like, $25 I can get.

[122] I can do whatever.

[123] So I actually ordered 25 whoppers because Burger King had this dollar walker special.

[124] And everyone's like, what are you doing?

[125] And by like day three, the sort of novelty wore off, I'm like, oh, I got to work 100 hours a week.

[126] It's not, you know, this isn't that much fun.

[127] But no, the first day I got to London, I asked people, we're working late.

[128] I'm like, what are we doing for dinner?

[129] Everyone's like, oh, I don't know, we go to the Tesco.

[130] And I'm like, what's Tesco?

[131] So we go in the supermarket and everyone's like, we're getting these microwave meals.

[132] And I'm like, wait a minute.

[133] I'm like, this is not.

[134] You're working like 100 hours a week.

[135] You try to aspire for something a little bit better.

[136] So first day, that's how I got the idea for delivery.

[137] First day I moved here.

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

[139] I mean, it was all right.

[140] I mean, there's just London's like one of the culinary capitals of the world.

[141] Like, why wouldn't you want better food delivered?

[142] Was there, I mean, so many people have ideas, right?

[143] So many people have ideas for big, grandiose businesses.

[144] but it's almost like, and I'd hate to say this because it sounds super pessimistic, but the odds are you're going to fail.

[145] So how dare you?

[146] How dare you try and build that, you know, that massive logistical operation that is delivery?

[147] You know, honestly, it's a really good point, right?

[148] Because you're aware that there's the possibility of failure.

[149] I don't know.

[150] When I went into this, when I started it, I just said, I'm not hedging myself in any which way.

[151] I'm not doing side projects.

[152] I'm just going to focus on this because I really, really believe it.

[153] Not so much to start a business.

[154] I believe in it as a consumer.

[155] So I always thought about it as, you know, I'm building this business for myself as a consumer.

[156] And hopefully other people also, you know, kind of think similarly to me. And I was convinced that enough people did.

[157] And so I'm not one of these people that was like, oh, I need to start a business.

[158] I'm like, I need to solve this problem, which I think is pretty different in my mind.

[159] And I think people should start a business.

[160] is because they want to solve a problem, or they're in an industry that they know super well and they've identified some inefficiency.

[161] That's my view, at least.

[162] I can, I, you know, over the last three years, I've heard this narrative that, like, it's much easier to start a business solving a problem that you and your best friend care about, right?

[163] Yeah.

[164] Otherwise, like, you're going to get bored.

[165] Yeah.

[166] You know, I told this story before.

[167] It's totally true.

[168] I had a friend from business school, super smart guy.

[169] And he was, he had like a thousand ideas.

[170] He'd write a, them all down.

[171] But his ideas were all predicated on some financial outcome, right?

[172] And he started this thing.

[173] It was the Etsy for pets, pet accessories or whatever.

[174] And I was like, okay, this sounds okay.

[175] I read his deck.

[176] And I'm like, wow, this is like a great idea.

[177] So he's like, I'm going.

[178] And then like nine months later, I'm like, hey, how's it going?

[179] He's like, you know what?

[180] I just really don't like dogs and cats very much.

[181] And so I just couldn't do it.

[182] Right.

[183] That's true.

[184] can't do something that you're not actually fully invested in.

[185] So many entrepreneurs will say that they'll say, or not even entrepreneurs, so many people that are spying start a business will say that phrase, they'll say, I really want to be an entrepreneur, I just need an idea.

[186] And then you'll see them kind of like go and write down a list of things that they could maybe do.

[187] And whenever I see that, and I just 100 % stand by this, I always think they're going to fail.

[188] Because of the reasons you described there, because you know they're going to go through that absolute bullshit chaos.

[189] And I think it was Steve Jobs that said a same person would quit when you go through that absolute chaos.

[190] So you have to love it and really understand it.

[191] It can't be because I think I'll make, because you probably won't make money either, right?

[192] No, you won't, right?

[193] Or you can't go in with the assumption you will quickly as well, right?

[194] Yeah.

[195] And, you know, and I had this other guy in you who he was like, you know what?

[196] He worked at a big consulting firm.

[197] I think it was McKinsey or something like that.

[198] And he's like, in my spare time, I've started these three businesses.

[199] And I'm like, no, man. man, you can't do that.

[200] Like, you pick one thing and you've got to, like, really go for it.

[201] Different people have different sort of attitudes towards that.

[202] My view, though, is you just have to go all in, right?

[203] So speaking of going all in, there must have been a day where you hand in your notice of resignation.

[204] Well, so, no, not for delivery because my story is, so after Morgan Stanley, I worked kind of 04 to 06 in London for Morgan Stanley.

[205] And then I ended up working at a hedge fund for about four years in London.

[206] And then I went back to business school in, in Philadelphia for two years.

[207] And I came back in 2012 to start this business.

[208] Fine.

[209] Yeah.

[210] So you came back.

[211] So this was the thing I wanted to do after business school.

[212] Okay.

[213] So you finished business school and you came straight to London to start to leave?

[214] Yeah, because what was cool about business school was I saw offline and online happening, right?

[215] Because remember, so I tried to start delivering in 08, right, and when I was still working in London.

[216] And when I looked into it.

[217] it.

[218] It was like, all right, I'd have to put a laptop in each restaurant.

[219] I'd have to build some sort of handheld device for our rider network.

[220] And it was just too complicated.

[221] But, you know, Steve Jobs then invented this thing that completely changed everything, right?

[222] Phones, tablets, all of that.

[223] And so that was the prerequisite step, of course, for any of these, well, any business today really to operate, right?

[224] Because in 08, iPhone 1 came out.

[225] S .D .K. I think the iOS SDK came out in 08.

[226] So this app ecosystem hadn't really developed yet.

[227] And so had to wait for that.

[228] I didn't know, obviously, that the iPhone would be, you know, do what it did.

[229] But in business school, I was just super excited about it.

[230] It goes to show how critical timing can be in terms of these macro factors with technology to enable ideas like that.

[231] Because you're right, you could never have started this business in 2008.

[232] It would have just been impossible.

[233] And I think the same about things like Spotify.

[234] 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.

[235] Totally.

[236] The infrastructure, you know, I mean, you think back to just laying cables under the Atlantic.

[237] I mean, all of this stuff, right?

[238] To the iPhone, to all the software that was being built on.

[239] I mean, just crazy what had to come before.

[240] And those changes are always happening because of the rate of evolution of technology.

[241] So it goes to show that right now, because of what's happened over the last X amount of months, there are new opportunities that have been created for entrepreneurs, whether it's blockchain or crypto or whatever.

[242] So I think even as an entrepreneur, you always think all the good ideas are taken.

[243] And you know, for us, we're obsessed about continual innovation, of course, because we know competitors come for us, right?

[244] We know that there's going to be someone sitting around going, man, this delivery of the thing kind of sucks.

[245] We got to like, we can do better than that, right?

[246] And so we're paranoid about that all the time, right?

[247] That's how we think about it.

[248] We always think we can get a lot better.

[249] We have to.

[250] So when you first started out in London, so you've moved from business school, you've you've got this idea.

[251] Talk me through how, you know, as a ground floor opportunity, how that became a conceptual, like a business.

[252] Yeah, so it was me and my co -founder, Greg.

[253] So Greg and I grew up in New Haven together.

[254] We've been friends since I think we're like 12, right?

[255] Right.

[256] Yeah.

[257] And so we were into computers like when we were 12.

[258] I mean, this is before, I'm trying to think here, because my mom worked Yale.

[259] So we would go use the Unix workstations there.

[260] And we actually, you know, like we were on these Usenet groups.

[261] You know, we were using FTP.

[262] This is all before there was really a true graphical representation of the internet.

[263] And so we got pretty into computer games and stuff like that.

[264] So we were pretty into that stuff.

[265] um and and so that's how i that's how i knew my co -founder gregg um we then kind of got out of computers a bit i don't know just discovered different things um but he ended up just you know staying well he he studied history then worked as a car mechanic just kind of randomly because he liked cars so he just decided to do that and then he started becoming a software developer again and so him and i we would discuss ideas like all the time and so in o eight i talked to him about this idea, right?

[266] Deliveroo.

[267] And he was like, we thought about it.

[268] He was like, this is really complicated for all the reasons we just talked about.

[269] But we stayed in very close touch.

[270] So throughout business school, I was always like, hey, man, what do you think about, you know, this thing?

[271] Again, I think it's like possible.

[272] And so I convinced him to quit his job and, you know, kind of start this thing with me. But I moved to London.

[273] He stayed in the States.

[274] So it was kind of like this weird thing, right?

[275] But I would say, so I moved back here in October 12.

[276] We were building the prototype, the restaurant tablet, the rider app.

[277] We didn't actually launch with a consumer app.

[278] We literally just had a website.

[279] And so you had to kind of, if you had a phone, you had to kind of zoom in to all the buttons.

[280] It wasn't even mobile optimized.

[281] We didn't even have an app, right?

[282] So, and so yeah, because there's two of us, right?

[283] And so I'd say the first few months before launched, it was like me trying to set up restaurants, a sign up restaurants walking up and down the street in Chelsea.

[284] It was him building all the initial technology, me and him making product decisions.

[285] So it was just basically two of us.

[286] Then he came out for the launch, January 13, we launched in Feb 13.

[287] And, yeah, it was just me and him for the first, I guess, year.

[288] Yeah.

[289] So you were predominantly leading the rider's side and the kind of like on the ground operations?

[290] I mean, there's two of us.

[291] So there's literally not like, I mean, Greg was building all the technology.

[292] Yeah.

[293] He did it himself, which is like pretty incredible.

[294] I was working with him on the product decisions and then I was running the business.

[295] But the business was me signing up restaurants, me, you know, getting the rider side of the marketplace going.

[296] And obviously, you know, attracting consumers.

[297] But the funny thing is, you know, initially when we launched in February, obviously no one knew who we were.

[298] So I would actually just ask my friends to order all the time.

[299] And, you know, annoyed at me. They're like, why are you like bothering me?

[300] Like what?

[301] And a number of my friends would order, I know, for the sole purpose of watching me deliver the food to them, right?

[302] And I know that for sure.

[303] And they just thought it was like funny.

[304] We would do the same.

[305] Yeah.

[306] So I would deliver the food and then they'd want to chat.

[307] And I'm like, sorry, guys, I got to go do my next delivery.

[308] But then I realized one thing.

[309] After a while, they kept ordering even if I didn't deliver the food.

[310] And so that's when I kind of realized we were on to something.

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

[312] Oh, no, I honestly don't, but I can tell you the first order, though.

[313] The first, first order ever, I mean, I told her to order.

[314] It was my friend Annetta, and she was living on Sydney Street in Chelsea, and the restaurant was Roso Pomodoro.

[315] And I, you know, I was like excited because she ordered, so I delivered it, but I delivered the pizza upside down.

[316] Yeah, so it became a calzone.

[317] And then I just ate it And she's like you ruined my meal And you ate the food This is like the worst experience of all time Only up from there though So it's good I mean The writer ate the order Yeah yeah not only You delivered it terribly And then ate the food But still charged her I'm guessing I might have given her a refund I think I don't know Very kind of view 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 people got You know the bunch of people people started just showing up.

[318] I didn't know their names.

[319] I had no idea what was going on.

[320] I heard you didn't do marketing for the first.

[321] A couple years.

[322] A couple years.

[323] Yeah.

[324] Yeah.

[325] Well, I did one thing.

[326] I used to wear this kangaroo costume around.

[327] Yeah.

[328] Yeah.

[329] I didn't really enjoy doing that.

[330] But I would wear a kangaroo costume and hand out these, you know, whatever.

[331] Like, this is the liveroo.

[332] Flies, whatever.

[333] Yeah.

[334] Well, why London and not America?

[335] I guess America's way more competitive and the design of the country is slightly different.

[336] But why London?

[337] Well, I mean, I'm a Londoner, right?

[338] I lived here for six years before going back to business school.

[339] I just knew this city needed something better than the classic takeaways.

[340] Just eat.

[341] Wow, whatever.

[342] You don't have to say it.

[343] I'll say it.

[344] Just eat was fucking awful.

[345] Well, you know, I don't.

[346] Back in the, you don't have to say it, I'll say it.

[347] When I was a student, getting the cold, stodgy, awful rest, not even restaurants, awful corner shop takeaways in styrofen boxes that was cold, was just awful.

[348] And there was no, yeah.

[349] And so my first experience with delivery was when, I think I said you off camera, a company that I was working with, the CEO turned around to me and said, you can now order from top class restaurants and it comes in a nice package, nice packaging.

[350] And I thought there's no possible fucking way.

[351] And then I tried it and I never went back.

[352] Well, the reality is, look, I tried, you know, just deep back in 07, right?

[353] I was really excited about it.

[354] I was like, this is going to be like New York.

[355] And I tried it.

[356] I'm like, oh, wait, I can't track my order.

[357] I don't know when the food's going to show up.

[358] And it was all sort of, look, I like kebabs, right?

[359] I like fratry.

[360] I like, but if that's the only choice, I'm kind of like, you know.

[361] I like cabs, but my intestine does don't.

[362] So like, it's a very, there's a battle.

[363] There's some good places.

[364] There's some good places.

[365] No, that's true.

[366] There is, there's a couple of slightly healthier options for kebabs around this area.

[367] But then so you get to the point where there's, you know, read about there was a couple of riders.

[368] So there was you and the three or four others.

[369] Yeah.

[370] There was Mirza.

[371] There was Saeed.

[372] There was Hanif.

[373] Saeed and Hanif and Mirza still work with us.

[374] Matloub doesn't.

[375] There's about four of us.

[376] Yeah.

[377] And they're still writers?

[378] Three of them are.

[379] One of them actually works in our office in Dubai now.

[380] Oh, wow.

[381] He does like rider support in Dubai.

[382] He wanted to move to Dubai.

[383] So amazing.

[384] Yeah.

[385] Awesome.

[386] And so you guys were, this was when the business was starting to get a little.

[387] little bit of traction within Chelsea, I'm guessing.

[388] Exactly.

[389] So a little bit of traction in one neighborhood.

[390] Yeah, we launched only in one neighborhood, right?

[391] The first, you know, a few restaurants were all on the Fulham Road and the King's Road.

[392] And one of the restaurants was my landlord's restaurant.

[393] I used to live above it.

[394] So he, I convinced him to sign up for it just because he was, like I saw him every day, right?

[395] 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.

[396] accidentally right.

[397] Like even your idea of launching in a small area, whether you can establish network effects and not necessarily doing marketing, advertising to your friends.

[398] But Stephen, we didn't have money.

[399] This wasn't Silicon Valley.

[400] I'm going to raise a $30 million seat.

[401] I was funding the business myself.

[402] So it wasn't like I had a choice, right?

[403] And so I'm kind of like, okay, I don't want to like burn all my cash, you know.

[404] And so that's kind of how I was running the business until we actually raise money.

[405] There's something important about that, isn't there?

[406] When teams don't have huge budgets, they seem to make better decisions.

[407] I think so.

[408] I actually do.

[409] I think having too much money can be problematic.

[410] And there's a lot of money now.

[411] But yeah, when you're, when you're, it's just me and Greg, four riders, like 10 restaurants, you know, you don't have any money.

[412] Yeah, you got to like just work on the most important things and try to be as efficient as possible.

[413] I resonate with that because I, when I started my first business, we had $6 ,000 marketing budget.

[414] And it was, it wasn't until we'd blown it all.

[415] all the conventional shit.

[416] Flyers, posters, some inflatable balloon, which we rolled down a road.

[417] 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?

[418] Yeah, how do we do it?

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

[420] Yeah.

[421] And then we were like, well, this, well, this is Facebook page that has 8 ,000 students on it.

[422] And the owner says we can buy it off him for 50 quid.

[423] I've got 50 quid.

[424] Let's go meet him, bought it, posted about my website on this Facebook page, more traffic than we've ever had.

[425] So we were like, let's just build Facebook pages for free.

[426] And so in 2013, 12, we started building Facebook pages.

[427] We got to 100 million followers.

[428] We're doing 7 billion video views a month.

[429] And the business grew to be worth 300 million.

[430] And it would never have happened if we didn't run out of money because we were forced to think in real first principles.

[431] Exactly.

[432] To ignore convention.

[433] And so I came up with, I think, I love this idea.

[434] I'm like, this is like my proudest idea.

[435] So we were like, okay, like how do we reach people?

[436] We could do the flyer seconds.

[437] I was sick of walking around with this kangaroo costume, right?

[438] And so I was like, hmm, and I was staying in a hotel.

[439] And I was like, oh, they have these do not disturb signs that you can hang on the door, right?

[440] You know, when you're in a hotel, like, do not disturb.

[441] And I'm like, you know what?

[442] We should just say deliveroo and then list a number of the restaurants in the local neighborhood.

[443] Because no one knew you could actually get deliveries from there.

[444] And we just hung them on people's doors.

[445] And that worked.

[446] So no discounts, nothing, just letting people.

[447] know about it.

[448] It cost you, what, 20p for one of these things, right?

[449] Funny thing is, the police got real mad because they, we didn't think about this at the time.

[450] The police called us and they're like, what is this delivery thing?

[451] We're like, well, we're food delivery company.

[452] They're like, how do we know you're not a burglary ring and a robbery ring?

[453] And I'm like, what are you talking about?

[454] They're like, well, you could just leave those on people's doors and see who doesn't take them off.

[455] And if they're, if they're still on, the houses are vacant so you could burglarize them.

[456] And I'm like, I didn't really think about it that way, but pretty genius idea, actually.

[457] Smart.

[458] Yeah.

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

[460] Yeah, basically.

[461] So, you know, you've got four or five of you, the riders, yeah.

[462] And you're, I hear that you're hanging out in a Starbucks often.

[463] And you're just sitting there chilling waiting for someone to the phone.

[464] Yeah, we're just talking.

[465] I mean, you know, you know, there's like four of us there.

[466] Yeah.

[467] Do you got the founder of the company and three others?

[468] The three riders.

[469] Yeah.

[470] Just waiting for the phone to ping.

[471] Yeah, it was the three of us.

[472] And it was the same guy would come to us.

[473] And he'd be like, all right, you guys got to leave.

[474] We're like, but we bought something, you know.

[475] He's like, kick us out every time, you know.

[476] And why was he kicking you out?

[477] I don't know, to be honest.

[478] I don't think he liked the look of us, if I'm honest with you.

[479] Yeah, you know, like, like, I think, you know, and one day I went to him and I go, what is your problem like you know and he's just like get out right and it was the way that he looked at us the way he looked at me was almost like we were not people right or we're kind of like 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 and this thing or making his coffee shop look kind of crappy right and I remember talking to the three other guys about it they like they're just like whatever just let it go like like who cares but i realized that that must be how a lot of people look at them all the time right because they're used to it right and for me i wasn't really used to it so i was like really really mad about it but you know it i definitely know what it was like to walk in their shoes you know for a day well for i guess a whole year because i did that job for a long time and that's why you know treating riders with respect and making sure their voices are heard is so important to me because of, you know, that one of those incidents.

[480] And that those three, those three guys were from Pakistani descent.

[481] Yeah.

[482] So one would, one could assume that the reason why the, I'm going to definitely assume.

[483] Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was assuming, just to be completely clear, I was assuming.

[484] And then, yeah, and asserting.

[485] Yeah, well, they're just like the way, you know, they're looking at us like, uh, these, these, these people are going to make my store look shitty.

[486] you know you could tell right and so yeah that that was a kind of seminal moment i think for me and and just talking to these guys but they were just so sort of like either jaded or kind of numb to it they're like wow like whatever it seems to happen to them all the time 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 is because i remember very early on when i was launching my business i have a tendency to wear snapback caps and hoodies even today.

[487] And obviously my net worth is significant now.

[488] And so when I get into like the first class part of the train, I'll never forget the day where the train attendant walks right down the aisle past everybody else and goes, this is first class, mate.

[489] And you're like, yeah?

[490] Didn't mention that to anyone else.

[491] Yeah.

[492] Just felt they need to come up to me and my snapback because I'm wearing this cap in this hoodie and tell me, assumptively, that this is first classmate.

[493] I'm just looking at him thinking, yes, I know.

[494] Yeah.

[495] You know what I mean?

[496] And it's funny because I wrote it in my diary.

[497] This is how I still remember this incident.

[498] I wrote in my diary that one day, you know, I'll, you know, hopefully this wouldn't be the case that people were used.

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

[500] Angry.

[501] Yeah.

[502] Angry, but for me, it's like this small little heat inside.

[503] It's not like I'm going to be rude to you.

[504] Yeah.

[505] But it's like, you presume something about me. And to be honest, there's a bit of me that.

[506] actually, it's in some ways a compliment that he couldn't possibly think someone like me could afford to sit there.

[507] 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.

[508] You know, not that it's a right thing, but it is what it is.

[509] Well, I guess for me, though, what it also highlighted to me was how lucky I was relative to some of these guys that they come from backgrounds of, you know, extreme poverty grown up in in Pakistan.

[510] They came here to build a better life.

[511] They're super hardworking, like super dedicated.

[512] And someone's just treating them like shit.

[513] It's like, it's pretty bad.

[514] Yeah.

[515] It's an experience you, I think few would understand if they hadn't been through it themselves.

[516] So at some point in this podcast, I usually do a break to talk about Kuel, who are the sponsor of this podcast.

[517] But me and Will spent so long talking about the product, I thought I'd just show you this clip instead.

[518] You know what?

[519] I will try this.

[520] You're going to try it?

[521] Do you like drink this in lieu of a meal?

[522] Three times a day.

[523] So you just stopped eating?

[524] Hey, deliveroo, man. No, no, no. Do you know what?

[525] Actually, it's crazy because that is that has been a pretty ex - Yeah, I caught him out.

[526] No, I think I had delivery this.

[527] No, I did.

[528] I had delivery this morning.

[529] Okay.

[530] In fact, the wrap the packages over there.

[531] So I got at 7 .30 this morning.

[532] And then when I'm busy throughout the day where I'll, and I'm on moving this.

[533] But do you enjoy food?

[534] You enjoy?

[535] Yes.

[536] Okay, but.

[537] I know.

[538] We'll never give up hard food.

[539] Try it.

[540] Let me know what you think.

[541] All right.

[542] So let's see here.

[543] We got the whole bottle is 400 calories, 32 carbs, 20 grams of protein.

[544] Let's try it out.

[545] Low fat, gluten -free, soya.

[546] It's not nest quick, okay?

[547] It's, it's actually tastes pretty good.

[548] It is.

[549] Listen, and it will, it will leave you feeling energized and full.

[550] And honestly, we get addicted around here.

[551] So Jack, who directs the podcast, when we put in a hula fridge downstairs, he hadn't had it before, tries one, and now he actually lives off it.

[552] If I drink this, am I going to want to eat food as well?

[553] No. Okay.

[554] No chance.

[555] So it's a good way to, like, lose weight and all that kind of stuff.

[556] Yes.

[557] Oh.

[558] No chance.

[559] I wonder if I can buy this on delivery, maybe.

[560] You talk about the very early days of delivery.

[561] One of the things that founders struggle with a lot, and I did as well, is the name of the company.

[562] And I heard, I was reading about that you Oh, no. Yeah.

[563] But I love this story because I think it highlights how crappy some decisions are at the start.

[564] I heard you were going to call delivery something else.

[565] Yeah, there were a few different permutations.

[566] One was a food pony.

[567] I didn't read about that.

[568] Because I was thinking of these animals and food.

[569] Okay.

[570] I think one was, I'm trying to think here.

[571] It was like, yeah, it was food mule.

[572] was another one because, you know, a mule is a kind of transports food.

[573] Not so good, right?

[574] What about boo's food?

[575] Did you forget that one?

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

[577] So the original idea for Deliveroo, even this is before 08, right?

[578] So, you know, this, so in New York, you go out on a big night.

[579] First of all, everything's open, like really late.

[580] So you can actually go out past 11.

[581] If you get home at like five in the morning, you can still order something to eat.

[582] Like, you can do that.

[583] And what my experience in London was you go out late and you just can't actually eat anything.

[584] And I just like couldn't understand that.

[585] And so initially the idea for delivery was something called the 07.

[586] It's called booze food, which, you know, really allowed you to order food at like 3M when you really wanted it.

[587] So that is actually true.

[588] Yeah.

[589] It's funny because when people look at successful founders, there's this like weird assumption that all of the decisions you made right and that you're super smart and that you've got everything right.

[590] And it's not until you go back into those early moments and dig through some of the thinking, the marketing ideas.

[591] You think, fucking hell, this is someone that's actually developed their thinking.

[592] Oh, it's just iterating, right?

[593] Yeah.

[594] But the Boots food idea, so there's another funny part of that because when delivery, so Boo's 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 usaba you've got rosa pomadoro you've got all these great restaurants in chelsea but he's like really what you need to do is have a cheat code so when you're really drunk you can put in some cheat code and then it's like literally like all the bad stuff for you so that maybe we'll implement that at some point i don't know you chose to ignore him it's pretty funny idea interesting um talking about co -founders another sort of integral part of success in business.

[595] How did things go with Greg?

[596] I know that he's no longer in the business, but at some point he departed.

[597] Yeah.

[598] Yeah, no. I mean, look, without Greg, the business wouldn't exist, right?

[599] No question about it.

[600] I think he's one of the smartest, hardest, hardest working people I know.

[601] We grew up together.

[602] He's one of my best friends.

[603] We've been friends since we were 12.

[604] I think for Greg, he wouldn't move to the UK.

[605] Ever.

[606] He just wouldn't do it.

[607] Never.

[608] Yeah, I guess he did.

[609] He's too American.

[610] I don't know.

[611] But no, he, his wife was in a, she was getting her MD degree in the U .S. And so it was like hard for him to like come over here.

[612] And ultimately, you know, at some point.

[613] So he built a engineering team in Chicago where he was living.

[614] But at some point, I was like, no, this is this business real.

[615] Like we got to, We got to have the team all together.

[616] And so, you know, made a decision.

[617] And he, he left the business in late 15, early 16 or so.

[618] But I mean, I have a great relationship with them.

[619] We were just chatting last night.

[620] But, yeah.

[621] Founders go through hell together.

[622] Yeah.

[623] Me and my founder, co -founder, did.

[624] Yeah, we went through a lot.

[625] But, you know, it was tough when he left, right?

[626] Because I didn't have, there's not someone I can talk to on that same level, right?

[627] Yeah, you've got your sort of other execs and you've got, you know, a board of directors.

[628] But it's different.

[629] It's really different than having that.

[630] Did that hurt you when he left?

[631] Did it hurt me?

[632] Yeah, a bit, right?

[633] Because I was kind of like, kind of wanted to build this thing, you know, with him.

[634] But I also wasn't willing to just have half of the company be based in the States.

[635] I just didn't think that was the right thing to do for the business, right?

[636] Yeah.

[637] And I think it was, um, yeah, you know, it was, uh, yeah, it was tough, right.

[638] It was tough.

[639] Do you think that situation could have been handled differently in hindsight?

[640] I think, I think maybe I could have convinced him a little bit more to, to move out here.

[641] I just think because he wasn't here, he didn't actually understand the momentum of the business, right?

[642] I didn't see all the stuff on the ground.

[643] For him, it was an abstract idea.

[644] 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 of the backpack on and sort of people talking about it in the UK, right?

[645] But I mean, look, I think it would have been great if he stuck around, but I also think that, you know, people make certain decisions and he decided to prioritize another thing, which is, you know, totally, totally fun.

[646] I find that really interesting as well.

[647] And the reason I ask that question about you think it could have been resolved differently is because the world has very much changed now because of COVID.

[648] And we have distributed teams all around the world in startups now.

[649] And this was way pre -COVID.

[650] I mean, before Zoom probably even had taken off.

[651] So I just wonder if now, in the world we live in now, a relationship where the tech team is remote could have.

[652] I think, 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.

[653] And so when you layer on top of that remote people, I think that works really well.

[654] I think to have a product team and a technology team that literally never uses the product because they're in the States is really problematic in my mind.

[655] Because ours is not just a pure digital product, right?

[656] We're a digital and a physical product.

[657] A relationship's business.

[658] That's what it is, right?

[659] And so it's different than something that's purely...

[660] Your experience in Chicago and London is the same on certain types of businesses.

[661] For us, it's very different.

[662] True, very true.

[663] 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 has ever really told, specifically the hard parts.

[664] And I know that in your journey to build the business you did, you've confronted all kinds of awful challenges.

[665] Yeah.

[666] Right.

[667] Talk to me about some of those awful challenges, especially at the start.

[668] It doesn't get easier.

[669] I'll tell you that.

[670] Right.

[671] So, I mean, the business is really, you know, six significantly sized business now, but I wouldn't say it gets easier.

[672] They're just different, right?

[673] So you're one.

[674] I would say the big challenge is no money, you know, me and Greg running around, right?

[675] I think my biggest challenge was at some point.

[676] So I think I was lucky in the sense the business momentum sort of did take, it wasn't like super, it wasn't like this.

[677] but there were new customers, and we knew this thing was working, but I didn't know how big it would be.

[678] And at some point, because I was delivering food every single night, right?

[679] And at some point, I remember my flatmate, he went to business school with me, Forrest, and he kind of looks at me, and he's a good friend of mine, right?

[680] He says, he's like, what are you doing?

[681] And I'm like, what do you mean?

[682] He's like, you just deliver food for five hours every night.

[683] That's like what you do.

[684] And I'm like, yeah, because I got to, who else is going to do it?

[685] and he was just like he kind of looked at me and it's just like all right you know and then i kind of like because i you know i worked in these jobs that you can you know make a lot of money before i i had this summer internship at wharton that was like the one everyone wanted and i just decided to do something else and um no he was kind of like he thought i was like losing my mind right and then i thought of it because i'm not a very like i don't even think i'm that introspective to be honest so i don't i'm kind of like i got stuff to do i'm going to like do it and so So he was like, hey, man, you should, like, think about what you're doing, right?

[686] And I did.

[687] And I was kind of, like, freaking out a bit, just, like, sitting in my small room, like, what am I doing, right?

[688] Am I, where is this going to go?

[689] And then I just was like, you know, fuck it.

[690] Like, I think this is going great.

[691] So I'm going to stick to it.

[692] So that was hard.

[693] I would say, um, did you come close to quitting at that stage?

[694] No, I never did.

[695] Really?

[696] Never.

[697] Greg did, though.

[698] Yeah.

[699] Greg did I never did I'm not like I just I just wouldn't you know wouldn't let that happen why I don't know man I just I just feel like I have such responsibility to the people I work with the restaurants and the riders and I don't know you just start like I'll tell you what I'm not I'm not one of these people you know you read about Bezos like hey I'm gonna start with books books are easy to transport I'm gonna move on all these other things It's grand plan in their mind.

[700] I'm not like that at all.

[701] But what I did see was I saw success.

[702] That feels more ambition.

[703] You get into the circular path.

[704] And so I was on it like that.

[705] And I just also have this just immense sense of responsibility to people, right?

[706] Similar to that story you told about your friend there.

[707] I read that you one day knocked on a door to deliver some food.

[708] And it was one of your former colleagues from.

[709] Yeah, from a hedge fund.

[710] Yeah.

[711] I find this fascinating because people don't often talk about.

[712] embarrassment as being one of the real key barrier to entries to start businesses and to pursue your dreams.

[713] Yeah.

[714] But it's such a tough barrier, like humiliation and embarrassment.

[715] And that look, I remember that look fondly of the people I was living with when I was 1819 and you tell them what you're doing.

[716] And that kind of like smirky, like, oh, okay.

[717] Yeah, that happened.

[718] I also, I mean, that story, yeah.

[719] So, John Luca.

[720] And really nice guy.

[721] But so I'd worked with him probably five years before and he hadn't seen me in like five years.

[722] And so he, he ordered something.

[723] I didn't know it would be him.

[724] And I'd deliver this pizza to him.

[725] And I got my my scooter helmet on.

[726] And he's like, I'll do his accent.

[727] It's pretty strong.

[728] He goes, Will.

[729] Is that you?

[730] Are you okay?

[731] He's Italian, right?

[732] He's from Naples.

[733] And I'm like, like, who the fuck is this?

[734] I'm like, oh, it's John Luca.

[735] I'm like, hey, I'm like, hey, John Luca.

[736] And he's like, is that everything okay?

[737] You know?

[738] He's like, he just thought I, like, lost my mind.

[739] So, because he didn't really understand that I started the business.

[740] He, oh, I just, I think he thought I was, you know, just delivering pizzas, right?

[741] And I'm like, well, yes, I am delivering pizzas, but I also, that is part of the job.

[742] But, you know, I also started this business.

[743] And he just thought it was totally nuts.

[744] Yeah.

[745] A lot of my friends did in the beginning, though, that first year.

[746] A lot of them did.

[747] I mean, they were supportive, but, you know, I knew what they were kind of saying, you know, my back a little bit, too, you know?

[748] Not in a terrible way, just, like, out of concern.

[749] why didn't you care too busy too busy man I generally don't care I generally don't care what other people think if I'm honest with you my whole life never really have I don't know what a superpower isn't that I don't know it could be a good thing could be a bad thing don't know just don't really care that much it's definitely a good thing it's definitely a good thing especially as it relates to your personal happiness but also pursuing your your your your your goals and ambitions because as we say embarrassment and public scrutiny seems to be one of the biggest barriers to starting and continuing.

[750] So when you get past that initial stage, what are the next big challenges?

[751] So post -year -one, business starts getting some traction.

[752] Business starts getting traction.

[753] That part's real exciting, right?

[754] You know, you raise your first amount of money.

[755] That's like super exciting.

[756] It's like, wow, someone gave, I think with us, index ventures, gave us 2 .7 million pounds, which now you're like, that's like the smallest seed thing that ever do.

[757] But I was like, wow, like we've got, you know, these really smart guys that want to invest in the business.

[758] And now it's about like, how do we scale this thing?

[759] And so it was hard, but it was a lot of fun, right?

[760] But I didn't know how to like hire anyone.

[761] I'd worked in finance and I worked at hedge fund sat in front of a Bloomberg machine, right?

[762] So I'm just on Gumtree.

[763] That's how I hired.

[764] And actually the people that work at Deliverin now, they don't, They always tell me that's not true, but it's 100 % true.

[765] I hired the initial people from Gumtree, and I was just writing, like, random, like, job descriptions.

[766] And we ended up getting an office.

[767] By office, I mean, probably the size of this room, I would say.

[768] No windows, no heating.

[769] It was definitely illegal.

[770] It was on Cleveland Street, 121D Cleveland Street.

[771] And we found these, like, tables and chairs in the car park beneath it, found a sofa on the street.

[772] Just set it up.

[773] It was a thousand pounds a month.

[774] And we got going, right?

[775] But I love that part.

[776] That was so much fun.

[777] So I'd say in the beat, like the first, it was super hard.

[778] I would say years two and three and four were hard, but like exciting because you're expanding the business.

[779] You don't really know what you're doing.

[780] You're kind of figuring it out as you go along, right?

[781] So I love that part.

[782] Your favorite part?

[783] Yeah, I'd say my favorite part's definitely when the company's like 20 to 100 people.

[784] Look, I'm the, I'm the CEO of a large publicly traded company now, right?

[785] It's not going to be as fun.

[786] Let's be honest.

[787] Like, and I'm happy to say that on the record.

[788] Yeah, yeah.

[789] Everyone does.

[790] Everyone talks about the sub hundred.

[791] Because you know why?

[792] Because everyone's on the same page.

[793] Yeah.

[794] You don't need to be deliberate about communications.

[795] You don't need to be deliberate about how all the pieces fit together.

[796] Everyone just kind of knows.

[797] And obviously to scale a company.

[798] and do that in a high quality way.

[799] You need to figure out the systems to do that so that when you have 3 ,000 people, it's similar to when you have 100.

[800] But when you have 100, I think it's the best.

[801] You know, everybody's name and.

[802] Oh, everyone's name.

[803] You guys are all sort of kind of friends.

[804] You know, you go to the pub together.

[805] You know, that's fun.

[806] When did you consider yourself to be an entrepreneur?

[807] Ah, I don't know.

[808] I don't know if I ever thought about it like that.

[809] Was there, even when, after you raised that money, did you, did you think, I'm a businessman.

[810] No, I always thought about it.

[811] I wanted to build an online food company.

[812] That's how I always thought about it.

[813] So, whether it's business or entrepreneur, I don't know, I don't know what the title means, but, you know.

[814] It's funny because there's...

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

[816] I'm obsessed with the business I'm building.

[817] So many people have it the other way around.

[818] I think so.

[819] And it's almost become quite, I know, sexy and Instagramable to be like, be your own boss.

[820] I'm CEO, bitch.

[821] Like, do you know what about?

[822] stuff.

[823] 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.

[824] Yeah, solve a problem.

[825] I know.

[826] So, intriguing.

[827] That seems to be a really similar pattern with the people that sit here that have built great businesses.

[828] They didn't, they had no interest in being an entrepreneur.

[829] They just got sucked into a problem they thought they could solve.

[830] To me, that's got to be the way.

[831] Now, obviously, there's going to be a lot of different people at different approaches.

[832] But for me, absolutely, that's got to be the way.

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

[834] Things are tough, right?

[835] You're talking about, you know, you're burning cash, all startups, especially tech ones, tend to be burning cash.

[836] Yeah.

[837] What was your mental health journey from that point until now?

[838] Look, I'd say this.

[839] I don't know about other people.

[840] I don't think I'm a very up and down person.

[841] So I guess that's probably a good thing, but I'm not totally sure.

[842] Couldn't mean I'm just suppressing a lot of stuff.

[843] I don't really know.

[844] right but um i don't have like these enormous ups where i'm like going around jumping up and down and i'm not going bananas when things are you know kind of going bad that that being said some of my former colleagues in the early days might disagree with me i would absolutely go nuts when i thought an order was handled inappropriately or customer service interaction was um handled inappropriately i think some people probably they can have some memories of that but i kind of over that and don't really do that anymore.

[845] But I would say a lot of the journey is super, super, super hard.

[846] I'm happy to talk about any of those stories with you.

[847] But there's definitely been long periods of time, not just like for hours, like long periods of time.

[848] We're just like, man, this is, this has to get easier.

[849] Or like, you know, you just, I forget it was Elon Musk or whoever talks about it, the standing on the abyss thing, you know, you know, chewing.

[850] glass, I felt that like many, many, many times, right?

[851] That's hard.

[852] It's really hard.

[853] If you'd known it would be that hard, would you have started.

[854] Thinking about your toughest moments, if you'd known you would have had to go through that, that chewing glass staring into the abyss, would you have started delivering?

[855] 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.

[856] Yeah, but I guess it's a little hard to say because if you told me, hey, business would be where it is today?

[857] Would I have started it?

[858] Probably yes.

[859] If you told me the thing wouldn't work out and I'd be having chewing glass for like years, then probably not, right?

[860] It all depends.

[861] But it's like hard to it completely different degree because as the founder, you think about it every single hour.

[862] You think about it, you know, when you're in bed, you know, when you're talking to a friend, it's in, you can't escape it, right?

[863] You touched your head there when you said you can't escape it.

[864] That's where it is, right?

[865] That's where it lives.

[866] It lives in your head at all times.

[867] All times.

[868] You can't escape it.

[869] Talk me through the specific details of those moments, though.

[870] What example of an issue?

[871] So one of them was we were, so back in 2017, holy shit, I guess, four years ago now, yeah.

[872] We were, you know, we'd raised a bunch of money from our kind of investors.

[873] So that was index, X -XXL, Green Oaks, DST, you know, businesses sort of flying.

[874] And then we were going to raise money from, you know, the world's biggest fund, right?

[875] I'm not going to name who they are, but you can probably guess who they are at some point, right?

[876] So, thank.

[877] So anyway, so we were about to do that.

[878] Just term sheet signed doing due diligence, summer of 17.

[879] and, you know, big round, and all of a sudden, I get a call.

[880] Like, oh, we, three days before we're supposed to close.

[881] Oh, we can't do this.

[882] You know, blah, blah, blah, reason.

[883] I think it was related to.

[884] We work.

[885] It was related to Uber, I think.

[886] Okay.

[887] Something like that.

[888] Right.

[889] I don't remember exactly the specifics, but it doesn't really matter.

[890] The point is, we're about to get all this money in the company.

[891] And then suddenly it was just gone.

[892] Right?

[893] A big number.

[894] Big number.

[895] And I was like, holy shit, you know, what do we do?

[896] So how big was this number?

[897] It was like 600 million, something like that.

[898] It's a lot of money, right?

[899] 700 maybe.

[900] I don't even remember.

[901] It's a bad day.

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

[903] But I got the team together.

[904] I'm like, guys, we got a lot of work to do over the next, you know, month, six weeks.

[905] so we lined up like 25 investor meetings all around the world and we just went we met with all these other funds and we got it done but that was that was really really tough right again because if we didn't get we didn't get the money because we're lost making entity right we were running out of money right so that part was not fun that was a tough one but it was great we ended up you know working with you know fidelity and TRO price so we got in terrific investors.

[906] So at the end of the day, if you look back on it, it was like, oh, that's a actually really good outcome.

[907] But at the time, it was really hard.

[908] 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.

[909] And this is why I find it almost impossible for founders not to live with some form of anxiety because you know when you wake up on any day, there's a high probability you're going to get a text message or an email that something you didn't think about has just totally gone wrong.

[910] Well, I'll tell you.

[911] I'll tell you a story about COVID.

[912] It actually predates COVID a bit.

[913] So we raised the next round of capital.

[914] So from Amazon, which you probably know.

[915] Yes.

[916] The way this happened, though, was really crazy.

[917] So we had spent a bunch of time.

[918] with Amazon, they decided to invest.

[919] You know, we negotiated the deal, all normal.

[920] And they were great.

[921] And the due diligence process, I was like, wow, these guys really know what they're doing, right?

[922] So it was really great.

[923] So we announced the deal.

[924] And again, you know, we're loss making.

[925] So we need the money, right?

[926] And again, this was a big round.

[927] 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.

[928] Right.

[929] And we're like, but how are we supposed to compete when we compete against the likes of Uber and Justi, you know, that are well funded?

[930] They're kind of like, it's not really our problem, you know.

[931] We're like, well, you know, we're British company trying to build, you know, a big tech business here.

[932] And so that whole process was excruciating because it was 18 months.

[933] long, right?

[934] 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?

[935] They had one board seat.

[936] Everything was normal.

[937] 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?

[938] So we're just we're like, what do we do?

[939] And we're at the mercy of some sort of, you know, institution, right?

[940] It's not like a free market type of thing.

[941] You can go and, like, find out, you know, we're at the mercy of this situation.

[942] And so they took us through what they call their phase one investigation, which lasted like six months.

[943] And then a phase two investigation lasts another eight months.

[944] So that was terrible, right?

[945] Utterly terrible because you don't actually have any idea what's going to happen because it's not it's not a logical process right it's sort of like you know it's the whim of someone else right it's not it's not a logical process at the same time what started happening was 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 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?

[946] And so the restaurants on the platform started plummeting, you know, in Europe and the UK.

[947] Now, Asia was different.

[948] They handled it very differently.

[949] But we didn't, our users were, were disappearing because there were no restaurants left on the platform, right?

[950] I don't know what they were doing.

[951] I guess they're going a cato or whatever.

[952] And so we see this plummeting growth.

[953] We have to, and we had to do the hardest thing.

[954] I had to do the hardest thing I ever had to do.

[955] I had to lay off, you know, a significant number of people at the company, which just was the, yeah, it was the hardest thing I had to do, you know, like big layoffs because we just didn't know what the future was going to be like.

[956] We were in the middle of an antitrust process, hoping to get a lot of money in.

[957] Our business is plummeting.

[958] Yeah, it was really bad, really bad.

[959] I mean, worse for people that lost their jobs, obviously, but really bad.

[960] Sleepless nights.

[961] I always sleep.

[962] But yeah, the days are hard.

[963] Days are hard.

[964] You cite that moment as being the toughest in your journey at delivery.

[965] Yeah, I do.

[966] I do.

[967] Just that whole, because it's not like a problem you or I could solve, right?

[968] If it's like, hey, you know, we didn't do this round, I can go and raise more capital, whatever.

[969] We can go figure it out.

[970] Or this feature doesn't work well the way we wanted to.

[971] We can figure out a way to iterate around that.

[972] There's an org structure issue.

[973] Well, we can figure that out.

[974] But when you're at the whim of a government institution, that's a very different feeling.

[975] That's a, you're totally not in control.

[976] And when it lasts for that long, and the issue is, you're a tech company.

[977] You can't not compete hard for 14, 16 months, right?

[978] That's not the way the world works.

[979] It's not like two grocery chains battling it out, right?

[980] It's just different.

[981] And so, yeah, I'd say that was hard.

[982] and was compounded with the fact that we had to lay off all these people, right, which is the hardest thing we had to do.

[983] Now, luckily for us, these restaurants reestablished themselves and the business has been on this amazing trajectory.

[984] That was tough.

[985] What goes into your thought process when you realize you've got to lay off a significant amount of people?

[986] You know that it has domino effects.

[987] You know that it's going to be a press story, all of these things.

[988] You know that people are losing their jobs, their livelihoods at a time when they, you know, when they're going in a time when the future is so uncertain.

[989] Yeah.

[990] What's going through my head?

[991] I mean, just it's fucking terrible, right?

[992] I don't know what else to say, you know.

[993] We have to do it, but it's terrible.

[994] And getting up in front of the company and explaining to people why this is the right thing to do really hard.

[995] These are their friends, colleagues, you know, lost a lot of really great people, you know.

[996] It's definitely the hardest thing we've ever had to do.

[997] Those are the days when it sucks to be a CEO, right?

[998] Look, the job is like, I'm so proud of what we've built and I'm so excited about the future.

[999] But like, it is a hard, hard job.

[1000] And anyone that tells you otherwise is either having an exceptional experience or they're not being honest, right?

[1001] I also think it's different when you're the founder, when the founder of CEO, right?

[1002] Like, I built the thing from an idea, right?

[1003] And it's a big thing.

[1004] And then I don't care about the press.

[1005] I care about, like, our employees, right?

[1006] I care about the restaurant partners, the riders, the consumers.

[1007] Did you have anxiety at that point?

[1008] Did you ever suffer with anxiety?

[1009] I mean, I certainly think so.

[1010] I must have.

[1011] Yeah.

[1012] Yeah, for sure.

[1013] I definitely had anxiety throughout that point running my business as well, because we face similar decisions.

[1014] And you write the key word that you've used there, which I resonated with was uncertainty.

[1015] Uncertainty, because it's sort of like it's not in your control.

[1016] And you don't know how a lot.

[1017] When you, I knew the CMA.

[1018] I had to deal with them once in 2015.

[1019] And it's not, as you say, no timelines.

[1020] We didn't have a timeline when we were dealing with the CMA.

[1021] Yeah.

[1022] We know that it's largely a political setting a president's decision.

[1023] Yep.

[1024] You know, for us, it was, we were the biggest in our industry.

[1025] So they were trying to establish a rule by using us as an example.

[1026] Did you go through a phase one or what did you go through?

[1027] I was with the advertising stands association around disclosure of advertising.

[1028] 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 you add, sponsored, whatever.

[1029] I see.

[1030] Right.

[1031] And so there was, and 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.

[1032] it.

[1033] And they ended up using us as an example.

[1034] We had a case trundled on, I think, for nine months.

[1035] For those nine months, we're not sure whether they're going to shut us down, find us, slap on the wrist.

[1036] What's going to happen?

[1037] It's tough.

[1038] But it's tough, right?

[1039] Because you don't know.

[1040] You don't know, right?

[1041] And it takes a long time.

[1042] Yeah.

[1043] That point around anxiety, I think, is specifically interesting because I think it's definitely increasing in our generation because of social media and we all have more tabs open than ever before.

[1044] CEOs are people that, as you've alluded to, walk around with all the tabs open all the time.

[1045] What do you do to relax in moments like that when you're in the middle of a storm?

[1046] I probably don't do a good job with that.

[1047] You know, I can put a pretty calm face on because I'm just not naturally like an up and down person.

[1048] But, you know, I try breathing exercises.

[1049] You know, I try to really kind of just not think about anything.

[1050] sometimes.

[1051] I tried that calm app.

[1052] I got through day six of the 30 -day challenge.

[1053] Got a little bored at day seven.

[1054] But I used to read a lot.

[1055] I used to read a book a week.

[1056] Now at this point, it's it's been a while since I read a book, which is makes me a little sad.

[1057] This is like my favorite thing to do.

[1058] That does work or you just kind of go for a walk.

[1059] I go on long walks all the time.

[1060] that really helps me out a lot.

[1061] Could you talk to me about what it, 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?

[1062] I think it's like, yeah, 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.

[1063] Yeah.

[1064] I mean, that's how I think about it.

[1065] Yeah.

[1066] I don't know if that's fair.

[1067] And, you know, some people would say that, that, that, that I'm sure, I'm certain that other people can, can fill their brains up with more, but I'm like a very obsessive person, right?

[1068] I don't know if you had the same type of.

[1069] I'm the exact same.

[1070] That's why ask the question, because I was hoping you may be able to tell me how to fix it.

[1071] I mean, I'm not the right guy to tell you on that.

[1072] So, yeah, I've struggled for that same reason, just being very uncompromising with time.

[1073] And I hear compromise is an important part to sustain.

[1074] a healthy relationship.

[1075] I heard that too.

[1076] From all of my ex -girlfriends.

[1077] But I don't know if like, 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.

[1078] That's something I think about sometimes.

[1079] You think about that?

[1080] A little bit, right?

[1081] Like, why am I so obsessive?

[1082] But then I think back and I've always been obsessive about everything.

[1083] I don't really think it's changed.

[1084] But when I started my career in business and I was obsessive, locking myself in a room, my friends either, I thought, this is the way to live life.

[1085] It's just about get rich, get successful, and then everything else, happiness will arrive at that point.

[1086] Like, not that I wasn't happy, but just my happiness would scale to some point, like euphoria.

[1087] So this is all it.

[1088] 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.

[1089] 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 years study live longer, are happier, et cetera, et cetera, are more healthy and I think, fuck, do you know what?

[1090] I actually think I've fucked up.

[1091] I actually think maybe I should have attributed more time to relationships.

[1092] But can you?

[1093] Can you just be so intentional about everything?

[1094] I mean, I don't know.

[1095] Maybe you can.

[1096] I don't know.

[1097] But you must you must understand the importance, right?

[1098] According to like the science, anyway, of having...

[1099] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1100] But, you know, we make the decisions we do.

[1101] I don't know.

[1102] You know, it's all, it's, there's a difference between an abstraction and actually what happens, right?

[1103] Hmm.

[1104] But you, because I, I've, I've worried that I might regret it someday, that I might have had my priorities wrong this whole fucking time.

[1105] You're a young man, though.

[1106] Has that never crossed your mind that you might have, you might have put your priorities in the wrong place.

[1107] Has it never crossed your mind?

[1108] To be honest, no. Really?

[1109] But I'm not a very retrospective person at all.

[1110] I literally don't think about the past, which may not be a good thing either.

[1111] Good for certain things, not good for others.

[1112] What about friendships then?

[1113] Through that, you know, chewing glass and stirring into the abyss, how good were you at maintaining friendships and social life?

[1114] You know, similar thing, right?

[1115] It's like you have a limited amount.

[1116] of time and I'd say okay okay yeah you know five out of ten probably five out of ten wouldn't recommend it's a lonely job you know and you're not gonna you don't want to like hang out with your friends and just talk about how tough your days all all the time either right so I don't know if you were the same way 100 % awful friend my friends became the people I worked with pretty much I had that I had that but I think it's really important to separate that Yeah, yeah.

[1117] But it's a solitary thing, right?

[1118] Your founder, you know, especially when Greg kind of, you know, left, and so you're just on your own and you've got to figure stuff out.

[1119] We make this sound kind of like terrible, but I'm just like listening to this thing.

[1120] This is part of the reason why I wanted to do this podcast because I think there isn't this warning about the sacrifice.

[1121] It's all, oh, my God, look, he's fucking rich.

[1122] And he's got, oh, I'd love to.

[1123] And I think the balance is important.

[1124] let me take you up until the IPO so you do company goes public our company went public via reverse merger things change it's tough because you'll now have the scrutiny of the public markets talk to me about that whole journey and how you found that 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.

[1125] And it was really exciting to take a company public, you know, you know, at a big market cap, you know, something coming from an idea.

[1126] Obviously, sort of the day one, you know, trading was hard, right?

[1127] Because I'm not like, I don't really, like I said, I don't really care that much about what people think.

[1128] And I don't really read the media that much or anything like that.

[1129] when it's that pervasive, you know, it's a front page of every, you know, single newspaper, you know, telling you, you know, you guys fucked up or you did this.

[1130] Yeah, it was tough for a few weeks.

[1131] So I'll be honest with you.

[1132] It was tough for a few weeks, you know.

[1133] Because the market cap fell.

[1134] Yeah.

[1135] And just like, you know, there's a lot of, you know, people in the company are like, what's going on?

[1136] And you're on investor calls.

[1137] Like, what's going on?

[1138] And ultimately, the way I sort of think about it is, you know, so proud of the fact we got here, right?

[1139] I'm actually just focused on the business.

[1140] How do we grow the business?

[1141] How do we move the business in the right strategic direction?

[1142] Right.

[1143] And I'm super, super, super optimistic about the future.

[1144] For all the stuff we've been doing for the past few years, I'm going to come to fruition, you know, in the future and all the future facing stuff we're working on now.

[1145] So if I'm very honest with you, I don't think about the stock price.

[1146] I actually think about the business.

[1147] but for a few weeks it was like difficult right it was very hard and then there's all these stories written which 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 yeah I did I did you know five deliveries last night you know Notting Hill and I talked 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, they're all customers at the end of the day.

[1148] That's how we think about it.

[1149] So a model that actually works for them, it's got to be the most important thing.

[1150] And we know our model.

[1151] Can it improve?

[1152] Absolutely you can improve.

[1153] We can improve everything.

[1154] But do we think it's the best model for them?

[1155] Yeah.

[1156] 100%.

[1157] Your company's worth, you know, billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and And you're out last night doing delivery riders.

[1158] Yeah.

[1159] Deliveries around Notting Hill.

[1160] A few reasons.

[1161] One, I always test our rider app, right?

[1162] So it's a good way to do it.

[1163] Secondly, decent way to get some exercise.

[1164] And you're just on the road and you're not thinking about anything else.

[1165] I actually find it very relaxing, right?

[1166] And then thirdly, I can actually kind of see the restaurants in action too.

[1167] Because the interaction is usually not with the consumer.

[1168] The consumer doesn't want to talk to you, but they just want their food.

[1169] I get it.

[1170] The restaurants, you can learn a lot just by spending time there.

[1171] When you show up at the restaurant to collect the pizza or whatever it is, with chicken chameen, do they recognize you?

[1172] Nah.

[1173] No one recognized.

[1174] The writers recognize me sometimes, but no one recognizes it.

[1175] I'm not like a celebrity, so.

[1176] Have you ever had any experience where like a restaurant was rude to you or like, yeah, last night?

[1177] Really?

[1178] Yeah.

[1179] I was pretty pissed off about it.

[1180] Did you fucking, you're fucking off the surface?

[1181] No, no, no. I don't say a word.

[1182] But I make sure to log, log into my notes.

[1183] Really?

[1184] Yeah.

[1185] How rude.

[1186] Just like, well, bad attitude.

[1187] I was like, hey, I'm like, hey, I've been waiting for a while.

[1188] They're like, yeah, yeah, they do this.

[1189] And I was like, shake the hand at you, yeah.

[1190] And I'm like, come on.

[1191] And then I got the food and it was like kind of cold.

[1192] I'm like, hey, like, you know, just, you know, this food's kind of cold.

[1193] And they were like, yeah, just deliver it, buddy.

[1194] And I'm like.

[1195] At no point, you told them you're the other.

[1196] No, I would never do that.

[1197] Oh, man, you're different from me. No, no, I would never do that.

[1198] But I want the true experience, right?

[1199] I want to understand what the riders go through.

[1200] It was really funny.

[1201] As they were being rude to me, there's other riders walked up to me. He didn't know what I was.

[1202] He was just like, oh, man, you see, these guys are out of it again.

[1203] Really?

[1204] And do you take those learnings back to HQ and you go, we need to fix this?

[1205] Yeah, well, we talk to those restaurants, right?

[1206] Are you going to speak to that exact restaurant?

[1207] 100 % I will.

[1208] And what would you say?

[1209] Well, I waited around.

[1210] for a long time.

[1211] You clearly had made the food who's just sitting around.

[1212] Like, we need better processes.

[1213] We need to figure out a way to get this to work.

[1214] And please tell your staff to not, you know, and I get it.

[1215] They're busy too.

[1216] Like, but, you know, it's a just, just smile, say, hey, how you doing?

[1217] Makes a big difference in people's days, right?

[1218] What's you, what's your thinking around competition?

[1219] You're in an incredibly competitive field where you've got these absolute heavyweights.

[1220] And you've had competition emerge and disappear throughout your whole course of building this business?

[1221] And all your competition seems to have had 10 times, 100 times the capital that you've had.

[1222] Oh, I don't know.

[1223] We've had a lot of capital, to be fair.

[1224] But I mean Uber.

[1225] Yeah, well, they always have a lot.

[1226] And Rocket Internet in the early days, they launched in the UK.

[1227] Yeah, yeah, what was that thing they launched?

[1228] I forget the name, but everyone has.

[1229] Food, I don't know, something.

[1230] Yeah, I think it was.

[1231] Look, I think competition exists because this is such a big market, right?

[1232] It's 1 .3 trillion pounds in the...

[1233] the 12 markets we operate in.

[1234] Online penetration is, you know, call it 3 to 5%.

[1235] It's early.

[1236] It's big market.

[1237] That's why there's a lot of competition.

[1238] I think, look, the way we think about the competition is, you know, of course we pay attention to it, I mean, very closely, but it's really about what is our consumer value proposition?

[1239] And is it better than the competition?

[1240] Is it growing on an absolute basis as well?

[1241] And we fanatically sort of measure that.

[1242] And we always think about, you know, what is the consumer, the rider, the restaurant, the grocer of the future want before they even know.

[1243] What is the answer to that question?

[1244] What is the future?

[1245] Well, I think the future is, I can't give away all my secrets.

[1246] The future is, look, this business is super underpenetrated on it.

[1247] You look at travel, it's 50%, right?

[1248] Food is that low.

[1249] Why is food difficult?

[1250] Well, food's difficult because, A, it's perishable.

[1251] and B, it's emotional, which means to express food online is hard.

[1252] You go to a restaurant, right?

[1253] Restaurant's a 75 % gross margin business.

[1254] Why?

[1255] Low net margin, but high gross.

[1256] Why?

[1257] Because it's an experience, right?

[1258] Right?

[1259] It's an emotional experience, but it's not just about the food.

[1260] It's what was your relationship with the mater D?

[1261] What did the decor look like?

[1262] All these things, right?

[1263] I don't know.

[1264] They're amorphous.

[1265] How do you take that same feeling and put it on?

[1266] online, a really hard thing to do.

[1267] So I think the future is going to be more and more food occasions online.

[1268] They don't just have to be delivery, though.

[1269] They could be dine in.

[1270] They could be a whole host of other things.

[1271] Private chefs.

[1272] Could be that.

[1273] Could be, you know, cool recipe kits, could, you know, a lot of different things, right?

[1274] But how do you marry that with the emotional aspect of this brilliant food industry, right?

[1275] And no one does it.

[1276] Well, you don't do it well today.

[1277] You look on our app, it's pretty transactional.

[1278] You look at Uber's, you look at, you know, any of these other guys, pretty transactional.

[1279] And I think the winner in this space, that's maybe a poor word, but whoever does really, really well in the space is going to nail that emotional side, right?

[1280] The restaurant generated content, the FMCG generated content, the grocer generated content.

[1281] We collect millions and millions of reviews each week on our platform.

[1282] We don't do anything with that great today, in my view.

[1283] So how do you marry all that together?

[1284] How do you migrate the experience from a transactional one to more of an emotional one, right?

[1285] Hmm, interesting.

[1286] This is emotional right here.

[1287] Sorry, okay.

[1288] You're going to be.

[1289] Drink four of these.

[1290] That's great for this one.

[1291] So we're going to put that all over Facebook ads.

[1292] I'm joking.

[1293] That's really interesting.

[1294] And so you're talking about creating greater depth.

[1295] From what I heard, creating.

[1296] greater depth with that social and emotional interaction with food within delivery.

[1297] Food is social.

[1298] Food is emotional, right?

[1299] At the core.

[1300] So delivery is becoming a social network for food.

[1301] No, I don't know about social network food.

[1302] But I think having aspects of that, right?

[1303] 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, right?

[1304] I hear you.

[1305] Because like a chef tells his story in a physical space.

[1306] 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?

[1307] I think that's amazing.

[1308] And it's really different than buying like toilet paper on Amazon, right?

[1309] Or buying like...

[1310] Which is transactional, right?

[1311] It's more transactional.

[1312] Now, the reason you use Amazon is the best, most reliable service in the world.

[1313] But I think with food, I think it's a little bit different.

[1314] You need that reliability, but you also need that emotional connection.

[1315] Wow.

[1316] Yeah.

[1317] So that's what we're spending a lot of time on trying to figure out.

[1318] So as you look, so I guess, no, I've got two questions.

[1319] So my next one is about money.

[1320] a lot is written when founders go public about how much money they've made, about da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -la -la -la -la -v bonuses.

[1321] I mean, Elon Musk is a great example.

[1322] 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.

[1323] And he now lives a lot of the time when he's on SpaceX in this little small shed.

[1324] And 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.

[1325] And then obviously when he became the richest man in the world, again he's hitting with all the billionaires or evil stuff what relationship do you have with money and what does it mean to you in your life 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 I agree, to be honest.

[1326] But did it make you happier?

[1327] I don't know.

[1328] I don't haven't really thought about it.

[1329] I'm sure there's some.

[1330] I'm sure having more at some point will make you a bit happier, right?

[1331] I'm sure that, as you said, there's probably a limit to that, though, right?

[1332] Yeah.

[1333] But I'm not like, I don't buy a lot of stuff, so I don't know.

[1334] Yeah, I just don't buy a lot of stuff.

[1335] So it's not.

[1336] When you look forward into your future, then, what is it that you're aiming for?

[1337] and why does that matter?

[1338] Look, you know, I think part of me would love to figure out myself.

[1339] 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.

[1340] It's probably the best way to put it.

[1341] You start getting a lot of customers.

[1342] You start getting a lot of riders, start getting restaurants, you get investors, and the thing's moving, and you're moving along with it.

[1343] In many cases, in a very deliberate way, in many cases, you're along for a journey.

[1344] And so this thing has a life of its own.

[1345] And 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 just a lot of parts of it that were, it's like a wave kind of taking you along.

[1346] And I'd love to figure that out a bit, to be honest, right?

[1347] I don't know that makes any sense.

[1348] Yeah.

[1349] 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 grows.

[1350] Because the two entities, you know, especially I'm guessing at the very start, they're so interlinked.

[1351] They're really.

[1352] It's your life.

[1353] It's your everything.

[1354] 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 of the business.

[1355] They're so intertwined and it becomes difficult.

[1356] I'm not even saying separate necessarily, but just like having a better understanding.

[1357] Of what your role and what Will wants from his life and what he's interested in.

[1358] Yeah, and I think, I wonder if other people feel that way.

[1359] I don't know.

[1360] Maybe you've asked that question.

[1361] I don't know how you feel about it.

[1362] Everyone that sits here.

[1363] That's a founder of a big business feels that way.

[1364] because it's just all -consuming.

[1365] Yeah, yeah.

[1366] Tom sat there last week.

[1367] He said the same thing.

[1368] Did he?

[1369] Yeah, he's like he was, he had a red phone in his bedroom.

[1370] He was, he had, from what he described, he had very little life.

[1371] I mean, he said, relationships broke down.

[1372] French, he said, I think his friendships were okay.

[1373] But he had this red phone in his bedroom that would ring when there was emergencies.

[1374] He was consumed by it.

[1375] He had a crushing weight every time he woke up in the morning.

[1376] And so now that he's, he's left, he's now discovering pottery.

[1377] and one 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.

[1378] Well, I think, yeah, yeah, I think that's interesting.

[1379] Yeah, when you start something and it really becomes something, it has a gravitational pull of its own.

[1380] And the question is, you know, are you this thing?

[1381] Are you in the orbit, right?

[1382] And it's a little hard sometimes to separate those two things.

[1383] So that's something I'd love to kind of understand.

[1384] How do you go about understanding that?

[1385] I was going to ask you, man. You're the one that talks about you.

[1386] Oh, God.

[1387] A therapist, probably, and really trying to, I think, just the talking about it, I think.

[1388] Because even as farthest, I don't think we get much time to talk about these things.

[1389] No. We're just being dragged by the emails and the urgent crisis.

[1390] That's what I mean, this gravitational thing.

[1391] So you have to create space, right?

[1392] I think you have to.

[1393] I think it will help with business as well, right?

[1394] To take a step back to remove yourself and just like think about other stuff.

[1395] And when you step back in, that's why I do think going on holidays really, you know, you know, it's funny.

[1396] It's like I didn't take one for seven, eight years, just didn't, which is like kind of stupid, honestly.

[1397] But maybe in the first few years I could.

[1398] Maybe that was fine.

[1399] But just having the ability to step away for a week and do something totally different, I think is incredibly important.

[1400] You got any of holidays planned for to do exactly that?

[1401] This whole travel thing was a bit problematic.

[1402] And if you were to go on holiday, do you think you could relax?

[1403] It's hard.

[1404] It takes me about three days.

[1405] So I need to go on a holiday longer than four days.

[1406] I think that's what I need to do.

[1407] Well, listen, when you do figure out those existential answers, and you've had time to meditate and go to the beach and figure out that point of separation that you describe, do come back on the podcast.

[1408] and we'll talk about that then, because I'd love to know the answers.

[1409] But I want to thank you for coming here today and having this conversation with me. It's been super fascinating.

[1410] Thank you.

[1411] And it's so inspiring and interesting how there's so many similarities with founders that have gone on that journey.

[1412] It doesn't seem like there's many differences.

[1413] However, the character that's gone on that journey always seems to be really, really different.

[1414] And you are remarkably unique.

[1415] So you hear the same things a lot.

[1416] Oh, yeah.

[1417] The fundamentals of the journey and what it does to you and how it feels is always the same.

[1418] same but then 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 develop your resilience or your perspective on the world but yeah super fascinating super inspiring thank you so much for coming today thank you know you're a very very busy guy thank you for the huell it's delicious I'm not even gonna have to plug it you've done it all for me you've done my job Thank you.

[1419] I'm just trying to make it easier.

[1420] You made it really easy.

[1421] Hey, thanks, man. Appreciate it.

[1422] Appreciate you.

[1423] Thank you.