The Twenty Minute VCMiki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953
CHAPTERS
- 0:00 – 2:44
Wolt’s origin story: building the “button for food” on the smartphone
Miki explains that Wolt didn’t start with a single lightning-bolt insight, but with a long-form conviction: the smartphone would become a remote control for everyday services. He describes how the post-crisis era and early exposure to the startup world in Europe shaped his ambition to define what “food” (and eventually local commerce) looks like on mobile.
- •Starting companies during economic “cleanup” phases can be advantageous (talent availability, risk appetite)
- •Early fascination with startups/internet transformation in Europe (2009 era)
- •Smartphone as a “remote controller” for life; Wolt’s core hypothesis
- •Vision-led founding vs problem-first founding
- 2:44 – 5:44
Finding product-market fit: why pickup wasn’t enough and delivery was the unlock
Wolt’s first product was focused on pickup and digitizing restaurant interactions, but growth wasn’t explosive. True PMF arrived when the team realized logistics and brand are inseparable—and that consumers wanted restaurants brought to them, not the other way around.
- •Initial model: ordering + restaurant iPad + payments for takeaway/pickup
- •Sticky early users, but not explosive PMF
- •Insight: e-commerce companies are also logistics companies
- •Delivery expands the market by making previously non-delivery restaurants accessible
- •Reframing delivery from “hungover Sunday” to a fast, reliable everyday lunch experience
- 5:44 – 6:54
Competing in a world of rising expectations: selection, affordability, reliability
Harry pushes on whether the job has gotten harder as consumers demand faster and better service. Miki argues it’s always “harder than ever” because expectations keep rising, and platforms must continually improve across multiple dimensions or lose.
- •Consumer expectations steadily increase over time (now and in the next 5–10 years)
- •Three-part experience framework: selection, affordability, quality/reliability
- •Execution includes handling failures well (service recovery)
- •Continuous improvement is existential in competitive marketplaces
- 6:54 – 8:54
High-performance leadership = focus: the Supercell lesson
Miki defines high performance primarily as the ability to focus ruthlessly. He uses Supercell’s decision to delay Android for Clash of Clans as a case study in concentrating resources on the smallest set of critical priorities to win.
- •Focus as the central operating principle for high performance
- •Supercell story: choosing iPhone first; Android launched much later
- •Performance = narrowing down what must be right and executing it well
- •Focus applies at individual, team, and company levels
- 8:54 – 11:24
When (and when not) to expand: avoiding the “split the raisin” trap
They explore timing for product/category expansion and why most startups go too wide too early. Miki explains Wolt’s disciplined decision to cut distractions for years, only expanding meaningfully (e.g., grocery) when scale and context justified it—accelerated by COVID.
- •Hardest focus decision: shelving the “everything app” vision to master food delivery first
- •Guidance: don’t “split a raisin” (small teams can’t effectively split focus)
- •Wolt expanded into grocery earlier than planned due to COVID’s “now or never” moment
- •Expansion becomes more viable only after significant scale (capital, headcount, operational maturity)
- 11:24 – 14:38
Prioritization, direct vs indirect value, and making room for serendipity
Miki shares how he chooses what deserves his time, emphasizing direct impact on company outcomes. He also acknowledges that a small portion of time must be reserved for indirect value—brand, visibility, and unexpected recruiting benefits.
- •PMF heuristic: if you’re unsure you have PMF, you don’t have it
- •CEO time allocation: ~80–90% direct-impact work; 10–20% serendipity
- •Interviews/talks can create indirect value, especially for recruiting
- •Brand-building resembles marketing: hard to attribute, but can compound
- 14:38 – 16:05
The myth of the superhero CEO: building a company that succeeds without you
Miki challenges the idea that great CEOs personally drive everything. The real KPI is whether the company can succeed in the CEO’s absence—requiring trust, delegation, and a scalable hiring and leadership system.
- •CEO as “knight on the white horse” is a limiting model
- •True test: if the CEO disappears, does the company still succeed?
- •If the CEO must approve/hire everyone, hiring won’t scale
- •Leadership is about building a system and team that can operate independently
- 16:05 – 20:38
Motivation through ownership: equity, accountability, and caring about details
Responding to Harry’s frustration that no one cares as much as the founder, Miki argues ownership is the path to genuine care. Equity helps, but real ownership comes from decision rights and accountability—making people responsible for big outcomes so they naturally sweat the details.
- •Equity as an enabler: broad option ownership across roles (including support)
- •Ownership isn’t only financial—nonprofit Slush still created deep ownership
- •Delegation should mean giving true responsibility, not dumping tasks
- •People care about details when they own the larger mission and results
- 20:38 – 24:29
Trust vs safety: high performance, fair treatment, and when mistakes become fatal
Miki distinguishes trust (fairness, support, integrity) from safety (guaranteed permanence). He argues high-performance environments can still be humane, but they must be willing to make hard people decisions; the line is usually crossed when trust is broken, not when mistakes happen.
- •Trust: fair treatment through hardship, transitions, and exits
- •Safety: lifetime employment isn’t compatible with winning-focused teams (in Miki’s view)
- •Mistakes are expected; firing is rarely about mistakes alone
- •The true breaking point is violated trust; trust is “binary”
- •Default assumption: good intentions—except in areas the founder holds very close initially
- 24:29 – 29:33
Founder identity, loneliness, and reducing the CEO burden through transparency
The conversation turns personal: the mental load, constant vigilance, and identity entanglement that comes with being a founder-CEO. Miki describes the CEO as a “single point of failure between two pyramids,” and explains how radical transparency with cofounders and leadership reduces loneliness and improves decisions.
- •Biggest sacrifice: mind space/freedom—founders can’t truly switch off
- •“Wartime CEO” mindset in cutthroat categories
- •CEO loneliness metaphor: the connector between investors/board and employees
- •Operating principle: share concerns widely with cofounders/management/board
- •Transparency reduces burden and yields smarter solutions than solo decision-making
- 29:33 – 37:56
Recruiting and hiring: betting on potential, building hunters, and avoiding ‘logo bias’
Miki outlines lessons from Booking.com’s former CEO and Wolt’s own scaling: most people don’t do “the big thing” twice, so hire for who they were before their famous success. He also shares early recruiting tactics when Wolt had little brand presence, plus common hiring mistakes like overvaluing pedigree logos.
- •Hire for potential and growth, not just “has done it before” credentials
- •Growth companies are “glorified recruiting operations”; leaders must recruit well
- •Early-market recruiting hacks: founder LinkedIn outreach (even delegated access)
- •Mistake: hiring for logos/pedigree rather than true capability
- •Being selective matters; “hire fast, fire fast” is rejected as low-integrity
- 37:56 – 40:20
Scaling pain and survival: layoffs, fundraising learning curves, and the investor who said yes
Miki describes multiple moments of feeling ‘underwater’ as Wolt scaled—especially learning recruiting and growth fundraising from scratch. The most painful moment was 2017: fundraising rejections forced layoffs, until 83North’s Lorel Bowden backed them when others wouldn’t.
- •CEO growth moments: facing unfamiliar problems with no playbook (recruiting, growth rounds)
- •2017 industry downturn: widespread investor skepticism; running out of runway
- •Painful execution: laying off ~1/3 of the company via one-on-ones
- •Lesson from Ilkka (Supercell): great companies execute the truly hard decisions
- •83North (Lorel Bowden, Arnon) led Series B after calling out “numbers can’t be true”
- 40:20 – 55:36
People, right-sizing, and compensation as culture: how incentives shape behavior
They discuss whether modern companies are overstaffed and why right-sizing is harder in knowledge work than operational roles. Miki then explains how compensation design—especially broad-based equity and ‘vanilla, fair’ terms—reinforces a culture where employees act for the company, not just local metrics.
- •Right-sizing is clearer in roles with direct throughput/value links (support, restaurants)
- •Engineering headcount is easy to miscalibrate; market cycles drive over-hiring
- •Wolt’s conservatism reduced layoffs risk compared to peers
- •Compensation principle: err generous and fair; avoid overly clever/hostile terms
- •Broad equity participation aligns cross-country collaboration and ‘company-first’ behavior
- 55:36 – 1:15:59
Selling, money, and staying in the game: why DoorDash made sense and what’s next
Miki explains his relationship to money as secondary to building—validated by repeatedly saying no to early acquisition offers and enduring years of struggle afterward. He shares advice for founders considering selling (momentum is hard to lose; secondary can reduce fear), reflects on learning from DoorDash CEO Tony Xu, and closes with his view of the next five years: local commerce as the real platform opportunity beyond restaurant delivery.
- •Money wasn’t the driver; early acquisition offers tested that conviction
- •Founder psychology: fear of losing momentum can push premature exits
- •Secondary liquidity can reduce pressure and improve decision quality
- •Tony Xu as a culture-and-language-driven leader; DoorDash culture as a learning opportunity
- •Long-term thesis: delivery companies evolve into everyday platforms for local commerce
