Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953

1. 0:00 – 2:44

   Found Moment of Wolt

   1. HSHarry Stebbings0:00

      Mikki, I'm so excited for this. (upbeat music) I obviously saw you speak before, and I thought it was fantastic. But I thought that I had to be the one interviewing you this time. So thank you so much for joining me today.

   2. MKMiki Kuusi0:09

      Awesome to be here, Harry. Thank you for inviting me.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings0:12

      Not at all. But I want to start with a little bit on you. So we see Wolt today, this incredible household name. But what was that a-ha starting moment for you with the founding?

   4. MKMiki Kuusi0:21

      (inhales deeply) Hmm. There wasn't really s- like a single a-ha moment. Um, but, like, I started in university in 2009 right at the financial crisis. And, uh, in hindsight, it was a really good time to start in university. I, I think it's kind of like starting university today because when the world looks, you know, as fucked it is right now, that's a really good place to be starting something new. Um-

   5. HSHarry Stebbings0:44

      W- w- well, s- sorry, sorry, can I just... Why?

   6. MKMiki Kuusi0:46

      Because, uh, there's gonna be a lot of things that get cleaned up from the economy. Uh, you know, l- right now, you can see, like, a lot of tech c- tech companies, for instance, like, you know, laying off people after, you know, a decade of fervent fighting for talent, which means that it's a really great time to start a new company. There's a lot of people that are willing to take risks, uh, that are available in the labor market and so forth. So it's still like this, like, renewing phase, uh, of economy. And if you start to work on something new, you benefit out of whatever may come next.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings1:15

      Mm-hmm.

   8. MKMiki Kuusi1:15

      So hindsight was a very lucky time after 2008 financial crisis. And, uh, I ran into this group of people, and I r- like, you know, uh, they were talking about startups and TechCrunch and Facebook and Twitter in 2009, when, like, in Europe, no one knew what any of those things were.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings1:29

      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   10. MKMiki Kuusi1:30

       Um, and I just got hooked. Like, you know, this was a world that was talking about building stuff. This is a world where, you know, people were talking about how the world is changing when I was a little bit afraid starting in uni that, like, the world is ready. Like, it's already been defined, we only get to live in it. And then you realize that, like, hell, it's like this inter- internet revolution. Everything is going online, a world of opportunity. It's at the start. So it kind of got me hooked, and, uh, and I went with it. And, uh, over those years, uh, of, like, you know, I did many things in those years. But, like, I just realized that, you know, we're living through this almost, like, industrial revolution. The world is going online. Every industry is being redefined. Every service, like, every part of the world being thought of in a new way because you can organize things more efficiently, differently, um, because of the internet. And for me, the a-ha moment was kind of realizing that, you know, the phone, the smartphone in everyone's pockets, like, iPhone came out in 2008, uh, it's gonna become a remote controller. It's gonna become a remote controller for everything we have in life. And I was like, "You know, I want to be a part of defining what's gonna... what that remote controller is gonna do." And Wolt was... The hypothesis was, what is the button for food going to look like and ultimately for local services and everything in the city?

2. 2:44 – 5:50

   When did you reach product-market fit?

   1. MKMiki Kuusi2:44

   2. HSHarry Stebbings2:44

      I, I, I have to ask. When you started, was it immediate product market fit? Did you know instantly that it was a service users loved?

   3. MKMiki Kuusi2:50

      No.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings2:50

      When was that moment when you were like, "We have something here"?

   5. MKMiki Kuusi2:53

      No. So, uh, Wolt's founding thesis was that, okay, the world is going online. Consumers want to be able to interact with, like, different services, uh, using their phone. You know, it's gonna start with things that are easy to do as, like, a pure digital service, like music or entertainment or video or news or so forth. And eventually, you end up with all the physical services, like the things that are more difficult to do as an online thing because you have to do, like, a hybrid of online and offline. And I was like, you know, "What is this going to mean to local services? Restaurant is the biggest local service we eat every day. You know, what is the button for food gonna look like on the phone?" So we started with, like, a vision. Like, we, we didn't start with, like, you know, "We have a problem. We're gonna fix this problem." We were like, "The restaurant and food is gonna end up as a button on the phone, and we're gonna figure out how that happens."

   6. HSHarry Stebbings3:39

      Right.

   7. MKMiki Kuusi3:40

      And, you know, our kind of thesis was that we're gonna do everything about the restaurant online. We're gonna take the order online, the transaction online, the r- if there's a reservation, we do reservation, if there's delivery, we do delivery. We do takeaway, we do delivery. We're gonna build the Spotify of people figuring out what are the most popular dishes in the city. Like, you like chicken and avocado?

   8. HSHarry Stebbings3:58

      Mm-hmm.

   9. MKMiki Kuusi3:58

      We're gonna find you the most popular chicken, avocado, including dish in the city that people that have similar things you like, you know, also like in that city. Um, and we started with pickup. We started with a simple app. You know, order in the app, there's an iPad at the restaurant. We handle the transaction, the order, and you can order, like, takeaway. Um, and, like, man, we thought it would be a revolution. Like, if you can do this stuff with your phone, people were just gonna use it. And we were like, "Yeah, there's, you know, a few people that like to use it. They're very sticky, but it's not like the explosive product market fit that we were hoping for." Uh, and that we found in delivery, but it was definitely not in the first thing we tried.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings4:34

       So when you had delivery, then you saw immediate product market fit?

   11. MKMiki Kuusi4:37

       Yeah. The magical product market fit for us was when we realized that... You know, the biggest realization was that, you know, every e-commerce company is as much of a consumer-facing brand as they are a logistics company because-

   12. HSHarry Stebbings4:48

       Yeah.

   13. MKMiki Kuusi4:49

       ... you know, there's a coupling of, uh, things going online and people wanting things to come to them. Um, so we f- realized that the magical product market fit for the restaurant was not really taking people to the restaurant. It was taking the restaurant to them. And most restaurants didn't used to be available, you know, to people's homes or offices.

   14. HSHarry Stebbings5:07

       Mm-hmm.

   15. MKMiki Kuusi5:07

       And that was the magical thing. Um, and to make it, like, you know, into an app, it was quick, it was reliable. Like, if something went wrong, there was really good service. It was the restaurants that didn't use to be available for delivery. It was golden. And suddenly, you could redefine what delivery was. Like, restaurant food delivery used to be a market where you're hungover at home on a Sunday. It's too painful to even crawl to the fridge.

   16. HSHarry Stebbings5:29

       (laughs)

   17. MKMiki Kuusi5:29

       So you're gonna do anything on a website, even if it takes you an hour to fill in the order and another hour to get the order, because it's better than the pain of, like, what the next best alternative is. But we got to redefine that. We get to do it into a five-second experience for lunch.

   18. HSHarry Stebbings5:44

       (laughs) Crawl to the fridge. I'm just picturing that, the tequila Saturday and then Harry on Sunday. I feel your pain,

3. 5:50 – 7:00

   Competition in the Market

   1. HSHarry Stebbings5:50

      my friend. Can I ask, do you think your job's got harder? With consumer expectations increasing more and more, where we now have 10-minute delivery, you're totally right. Before, two hours, it doesn't matter. It came, and we were happy that it came. Now, it has to be now, and it has to be hot, and it has to be incredible s- Is it harder now than ever?

   2. MKMiki Kuusi6:09

      I think it's always harder than ever. I think consumer expectations will keep on increasing, not just, like, from where we started and where we are today, but also, like, where we're going to be in 5 or 10 years. Like, you know, consumer experience, in our case, like, you know, we like to think that it's, okay, selection is what you can order on the platform. It's affordability. Is it, like, uh, inexpensive to use? Can I use it every day? It's quality. Uh, you know, like, is it quick? You know, we promise X, did we deliver on X? What if something goes wrong? And all three, the expectation goes up. It has to be cheaper. It has to be better. It has to be more reliable. You have, need to have better selection. You need to have things available that are not available in the physical world. And the race to build a company like us is to just be able to continue to improve as consumer expectations also improve. Otherwise, you're out of business.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings6:54

      ... they totally are. You mentioned the word race there, and I, I wanna talk about, like, performance. And I wanna start with you

4. 7:00 – 9:49

   How do you think about high performance?

   1. HSHarry Stebbings7:00

      as a leader. Wh- when we are ... When I say high performance to you as a leader, what does that mean? And how do you think about high performance in leadership?

   2. MKMiki Kuusi7:08

      So for me, high performance is all about focus. Like, there's a word that everyone in our company knows, um, if there's one word, that's gonna be focus. Because, uh, there are too many things we can spend, spend time on in the current world. Like, I was at, at Supercell back in 2012, you know, when the company was working on its first, like, mobile titles, like, you know, the game like Clash of Clans and Hay Day. Um, and I remember when, when we had ... Clash of Clans was in testing in, um, in North America, in Canada. Um, and it was only available on the iPhone. And we could see the data, and it, it looked like this is gonna be, like, a hugely popular game. Every number was off the charts when you looked at, like, what games were back then in terms of numbers. And I asked Ilkka, who's the founder and CEO of Supercell, that, like, you know, "We're not working on an Android version." Like, you know, "People are gonna see what we're doing, and they're trying to ... They're gonna try to outrace us to Android. Like, we should start probably working on an Android version right away." And Ilkka was like, "Yeah, I've been thinking about this. And, you know, we're a small company, you know, 35 people back at the time, with like 10, 15 million in funding. Like, we get one chance, and we either get it right or we blow it. And if we blow it, we're not gonna se- get a second chance. Why would we split our efforts, split our people, split our focus to try to succeed on two platforms versus putting all into one platform and succeeding on that?" And, you know, what happened was that Supercell launched Clash of Clans, very famously, only two years later on Android. That's what focus means. Like, focus means making difficult decisions to put all of your effort in the smallest possible subset of things. And if we now think about performance, performance is the ability to decide what exactly are the things that you need to get right and getting that to the smallest possible area. It's both as an individual, as a team, as in a company.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings8:54

      Can I ask, what has been the hardest decision around focus for you with Wolt?

   4. MKMiki Kuusi8:59

      I mean, we started with this grand vision of the everything app. Every local service, everything you can buy in a city, it can get on our platform. You know, we wanna do everything. We wanna do restaurant, grocery. We wanna, wanna do, like, clothes, electronics. We wanna do services. We wanna sell you movie tickets. Uh, that's the vision of the company. And for the (clears throat) five first years of our existence, restaurant, food, delivery. When we saw that it worked, we were like, "Cut everything else." This is really difficult to do. We're only going to focus on doing this with great, quick, consistent customer experience and efficiency and good unit economics. That was a very difficult decision over years to keep on bringing people back to the fact that, like, we still wanna do these, all of these other things. But right now, we need to focus on this.

5. 9:49 – 11:31

   When is the right time to expand?

   1. MKMiki Kuusi9:49

   2. HSHarry Stebbings9:49

      How do you know when is the right time to expand product or customer segment? This is the two mistakes that I see people make. Either they expand product line or move into enterprise too soon. How do you advise founders? When is that time to expand and slightly increase ... like, decrease the focus?

   3. MKMiki Kuusi10:05

      So, one of our early investors, Petri from Lifeline Ventures, once told me a story that, like, he had a company that was, like, a small team, like 15 people, and they figured out ... They had, like, a good product-market fit and they were growing. And they figured out something that was really, really interesting that had also a great product-market fit and, uh, you know, a huge opportunity. And the team came to him and asked that, you know, "How should we do this? Should we, like, split the team, and, like, have part of the team work on this, or spin out in another company or something?" And Petri was like, "You know, you sh- probably shouldn't split a raisin. Because it's already so small that having half a raisin is, like, you know, not very intelligent." Um, and, like, the, the reality is that I think people just try to do too many things too early. Um, and that's been the case. I mean, when Wolt started to expand really beyond the cres- uh, beyond the restaurant, like, uh, that was when COVID started. Uh, we were not originally meant to go as early and as wide into the grocery space. And when COVID started, we kind of saw that this is the perfect storm, so it's now or never. Uh, but the reality is that, like, at that time, we had raised, like, close to a quarter of a billion in financing. The company was, like, five, six, seven, eight hundred people. Like, think about, like, how sizable we were as a company. And that's like, "Let's do thing number two." So, like, that's my perspective on, like ... And now we're a 7,000-person company, and we can do way more many things today. But I think people are just going too wide too early.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings11:24

      How do you know where to focus, is the obvious question. (laughs) Like, you have many options in front of you. I, I, I struggle

6. 11:31 – 14:40

   How do you prioritize?

   1. HSHarry Stebbings11:31

      with it in many ways. Prioritization is key. How do you know what to prioritize versus what to punt later?

   2. MKMiki Kuusi11:36

      So, first of all, if you think about companies, uh, product-market fit. Uh, you know if you have product-market fit. If you don't know that you have product-market fit, you don't have product-market fit. It's as simple as that. Like, you'd see if you have it. It's, it's something you can feel. It's something everyone can see. Like, it's just drawing you in, and it's like, helping you grow and helping you prioritize things and so forth. If you don't have product-market fit, it's incredibly difficult to figure out what are the things that help you get there. But realizing that you don't have it means, uh, that you need to change something, you need to do something differently. Um, I think on an individual level, like, I always try to t- Like, I'm, I'm one of these people that tries to be hyperfocused on things that matter. I feel guilty about doing stuff like this, for instance. I don't do a lot of interviews because this doesn't help me succeed as a company. Like, it's nice to have visibility and this stuff, but, like, that's not th- you know, what is it gonna make or break the company if I think about, you know, end of this year or next year. So I always feel guilty when I'm doing stuff that is not directly contributing to the fact that you ... how we're gonna succeed. Um-

   3. HSHarry Stebbings12:40

      Let me, let me, let me jump in there 'cause that is one of the most challenging things I find. There's no obvious benefit to you doing this. That said, that could be the most incredible VP of engineering, VP of product, VP of marketing that listens as one of our 1.3 million subscribers and goes-

   4. MKMiki Kuusi12:57

      (laughs)

   5. HSHarry Stebbings12:57

      ... "Mikki inspired me. I have to meet him, and I have to join Wolt." And actually, that could be one of the transformational highs of the year or the three years. And so, that's the hardest thing I find. When there's no obvious benefit-

   6. MKMiki Kuusi13:10

      Indirect value.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings13:11

      Yes.

   8. MKMiki Kuusi13:13

      So I think in hiring, what I've learned is that, like, I have to do an on-stage session, uh, once every year or every two years. Because whenever I meet candidates for final interviews, like most of them have watched me on YouTube do some talk. And I realized, like, oh, actually I have to do these things because people actually do w- do watch this shit. Uh, but like, uh, for me, it's more about the-

   9. HSHarry Stebbings13:34

      Did you just call, you just called my career in business this shit? (laughs)

   10. NANarrator13:38

       I'm laughing

   11. (laughs)

   12. MKMiki Kuusi13:38

       ... but like, it is valuable. But the point I'm going for is that, uh, like I try to have around, let's call it 80 or 90% of my time on things where I can see a direct correlation, uh, you know, to the things that I'm trying to move. Like, I don't do a lot of talks, I don't do a lot of interviews, I don't go to a lot of events. Uh, like I don't... Like I... Uh, like one thing I like to do is help, uh, new entrepreneurs and new companies, and I try to spend some time of that, on that. But I don't spend too much time with people outside of our customers and partners and employees in the company. Like, I try to focus on... You know, as CEO, my job is to help the team succeed. My ho- job is to make sure we have the right team. I try to focus on that. But then there's always the 10 to 20% that you have to spend on serendipity. You have to take leaps of faith. You... It's like brand marketing. You don't necessarily know what it's gonna do for the company, but oh, oh my, if people know your name as a company, it's likely to lead to some good things. Okay, so how much of your efforts do you put into that? That's a very good question. But if you don't know how valuable it is, probably you're not gonna put like 100%.

   13. HSHarry Stebbings14:38

       I, I totally get you. I mean, speaking kind of

7. 14:40 – 16:04

   The Myth of the CEO

   1. HSHarry Stebbings14:40

      doing talks and being in public, you know, there's this real idolization of CEOs today, and leaders in, especially in Silicon Valley, I think. And we've spoken before about kind of the, the myth of the CEO and the superhero CEO. What do you think people get wrong about these notions, and why sh- should we maybe rethink them?

   2. MKMiki Kuusi14:58

      So when I was an early stage CEO of Slush, my previous company, um, my chairman of the board at the time, an experienced investor, told me that like, you know, "Mikki, you're... As CEO, you're like the knight on the white horse." Like, you want to be there at the front with your sword in the air, leading the troops into battle. But if you really want to build something big, something scalable, like you need to be able to build a team that is able to succes- succeed without you. And your biggest KPI at the end of the day is, if you die tomorrow, is the company still gonna succeed? Like, are you able to build something that succeeds, uh, you know, in your absence? Uh, and I think if I look at the, like the, the mytholo- methodology of the founder or the, like the, the all-powerful CEO, it's almost like creating this picture of someone that, you know, like, you know, hires everyone up until their thousand employees. Which to me tells that, oh, you don't trust your people to hire people. Like, you know, because ultimately, your job as a CEO is to build a team that succeeds without you. Your team is to build a team that you can trust to hire really good people. Because if you're re- required for every hire, your company is not gonna be, you know, a very scalable hiring operation.

8. 16:04 – 20:40

   How do you motivate your team?

   1. MKMiki Kuusi16:05

   2. HSHarry Stebbings16:05

      Can I just jump in and say, you mentioned the word trust there. Something I'm struggling with right now is no one cares as much as you do, as the leader and the founder. And you almost can't expect them to. It's not theirs like it is yours. But it frustrates the shit out of me that they don't care, and it frustrates the shit out of me that little mistakes are made. And it's either 'cause you're stupid or lazy. And you're not stupid, so then you're fucking lazy. Well, that is annoying. So can you just coach me? A- how should I deal with this acceptance that they won't care as much, and how do you deal with that?

   3. MKMiki Kuusi16:37

      I mean, culture, you're talking about culture, so how do you create a culture where people actually care? People, uh, people like, you know, act like owners.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings16:45

      Yeah.

   5. MKMiki Kuusi16:45

      You know, the easiest way to make someone act like an owner is to make them an owner. That's why I'm a big believer in having, like, you know, equity programs, and like in Vault, up until very late stages, every single employee, even in customer support, was a stockholder of Vault, or shareholder, or an option holder of Vault. So you know, it starts with compensation. Like, if you don't incentivize people to be there for the company, like, you know, how can you expect them to be there for the company? Uh, but then it goes to, like, culture and the kind of people you hire, and like, ownership is a big part of that. Like, giving ownership over things. Like, you don't need to be an owner in something to feel like an owner. Like Slush, uh, when we started building the tech conference out of Helsinki, you know, we set it up as a nonprofit. Yet if I look at our team, if I look at the current team of Slush, all the teams in between, they have an incredibly high ownership over what they're building.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings17:31

      Yeah.

   7. MKMiki Kuusi17:32

      But they don't own it. It's a nonprofit. There's a foundation behind it. Why? Because they make the decisions. They are accountable. It's their thing, it's their baby that they're building, that they're molding, that they over, uh, over some time then pass onto the next generation. So it's about true ownership. I think how you get people to care about the small things is that you give them ownership over the big things. And when people are responsible for the big things, they start to care about the small things that contribute to those big things. Like, people talk about delegating as if, like, delegating is y- you... I don't wanna do something, I'm gonna delegate it to you, now you have to do it. But I think the bigger thing is that I'm gonna make you the owner of whatever area we're talking about. And if there's small things related to those owner, uh, that area, like, that's your responsibility because you own that area. You know, you're gonna make it or break it for us in this thing. And I think ownership leads, you know, people also caring about the details. If they feel like owners, they're gonna also care about the small things.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings18:28

      You said about giving them the big things, uh, the thing that I worry about in my business is giving people the big things and then mistakes being made. How do you-

   9. MKMiki Kuusi18:36

      That's how it works.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings18:37

       ... what do you do then? (laughs) Like-

   11. MKMiki Kuusi18:40

       So-

   12. HSHarry Stebbings18:41

       Yeah.

   13. MKMiki Kuusi18:41

       ... I mean, the first thing is that you have to have the right people. Um, like, uh, you know, I, I joined Supercell as a 20-something-year-old kid, not knowing anything about games outside of being a gamer myself, and, uh, not knowing anything about the gaming industry or free-to-play games. Um, and like Ilkka, the founder and CEO of Supercell, he liked to always talk about, like, how he wanted... He's a huge ice hockey fan, so he talked about how he wants to build, like, the winning ice h- ice hockey team that's gonna win the Skamp's Stanley Cup, the biggest prize in NHL. Uh, and, you know, you would ask him, like, you know, "What does this mean?" And he's like, you know, "A lot of companies say they want to be a family. We want to be a team." So what's the difference between a family and a team? Uh, you know, they share a lot of similar qualities, like you support each other in both, you know, go, you go through the thick and thin, you're gonna be there on the rainy day and the sunny day. But the difference between a team and a family is that a team is defined by its capability to win. A team that doesn't win matches is not going to be a team for too long. Whereas a family is gonna be a family no matter w-, you know, whether you like it or not, you know, you're connected by blood.

   14. HSHarry Stebbings19:38

       Yeah.

   15. MKMiki Kuusi19:38

       So in team, you make difficult decisions. You hire people, you fire people, you make... You know, you can't, you know... If, if the team is not working and you have five players on ice plus the goalie, you can't, like, double the number of players. You need to change players on the ice. So I think, uh, the w- way you can give responsibility to people is that you're very rigorous about setting a high bar to hiring people, but also that you're making difficult decisions if something is not working out. So this way, you're not creating a culture of micromanagement where, because there's someone in the team that is not able to live up to this kind of, like, ownership and responsibility, you're making everyone's lives a lot more managed. But also if you onboard someone to do something new, they're not gonna be as good of you, uh, good as you as, uh, uh, as you on day one. So you need to, you know, spend time with them, on them. You need to invest in them. You need to do things together. Then you let them fly on their own wings. And if it doesn't work out, you accept the fact that it's not gonna be perfect on day one. And ultimately, you go forward two years in time and you're like, "Man, this person is a lot better than I ever was in doing this thing." But you need to have the patience.

   16. HSHarry Stebbings20:38

       So I have this split mind when I

9. 20:40 – 24:30

   Safety vs Trust

   1. HSHarry Stebbings20:40

      hear you, 'cause I'm like, I totally understand you on kind of performance being central with the team. But then there's also a large school of kind of managerial thinking that says, you know, safety brings out the best in people. Teams and performance being number one isn't necessarily an optimization of safety. And actually, there's a lot of studies into lifetime employment, which is when you tell people, "Mikki, you will always have a job here." And that trust and imbued safety makes people feel ownership, but also makes people feel like they can be their best selves without worrying about some things.

   2. MKMiki Kuusi21:11

      You're confusing two concepts. You're confusing concepts of trust and safety. Trust is very important. Trust is that we're gonna treat you fairly. Like, if, if you're doing badly, you're, you know, having a divorce, you're burning out, we're gonna make sure we take care of you. Like, we're gonna make sure that, like, you know, "Oh, you need to take time off from work. Oh, you're not feeling so well. Okay, we need to take you to the, uh, make sure you go to the doctor's office and you, like, take care of yourself," and so forth. That's trust. Trust is also like, "Oh, this is not working out anymore, Harri. Like, you know, you're a great person, but you need to find a better place for your ambitions and what you're doing, and we need to find the right person in this role. But we're gonna treat you fairly. We're not gonna leave you on top of nothing. We're not gonna do the bare legal minimum. Oh, you're just about to hit your cliff. We're gonna give you your cliff. Oh, we're gonna give you some months of salary so you can take a break and figure out what you wanna do next." Like, trust is important. But safety, no. Like, if you want to build something that is able to be successful, you need to have a high-performance environment. And in a high-performance environment, like a team knows that they're as strong as the weakest player on ice. And you need to have strong players on ice so that you're able to win matches. And if we're... You know, why are we playing this game if we don't wanna win? Like, you know, we need to be able to win matches. So I'm not a big believer in safety. I'm a big believer in trust, in giving people opportunities, giving people the opportunity to learn, to grow, to make mistakes, and so forth. But the, at the end of the day, you still have to make difficult decisions about making sure that you have the right people in the right places. Trust is important.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings22:43

      What's a mis- what's a mistake too far? Often people make mistakes, they're learning, and you need to be there and support them and, you know, have that trust. (laughs) But when is it like, "You know what? This is not working"?

   4. MKMiki Kuusi22:53

      So mistakes are... I don't really remember parting ways or firing someone because of mistakes that they would have made. But it's ultimately about trust, when trust is violated. I can't trust that this person owning this area, that, you know, they're gonna do a good job without having to be involved, without having fo- having to follow what's going on and so forth. So it's a lot about individual mistakes. It's about... Trust is a binary thing. There's either trust or there's no trust. Um, and as long as there's that trust, you know, people can make mistakes, and as long as you understand, okay, this is why it was done, and it was done on good conscious, and, you know, they tried their best and they learned from it and so forth, you know, mistakes are more than fine. That's how you learn.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings23:34

      Can I ask, do you start from a relationship of full trust and it's yours to be lost? Or do you start with little and it's there to be gained?

   6. MKMiki Kuusi23:41

      Hmm. That's a very good question. Depends on the thing. Like, I try to start with an assumption of trust, and that's what we, what we also say within the company. Like, assume good intentions, assume that people are trying to help the company succeed. That's my starting point. But if I have something that I'm personally very passionate about, something that I've, uh, you know, been close to during the history of the company, like, you know, I'm not gonna be very trust, uh, trusting until I see that you got it. You know, the first person to lead product outside of myself in Walt. The first person to lead brand outside of myself in, in Walt. Like, these kind of things that are very close to my heart, and I have a very strong opinion about those things. Like, I'm not just gonna let someone take it over and do whatever they can out of it before I see that they get it right. Because I don't want us to, like, you know, fuck the thing up.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings24:29

      (laughs)

10. 24:30 – 29:36

    Attachment Between Founder and Company

    1. HSHarry Stebbings24:31

       Can I ask, in terms of, like, your attachment now to certain aspects of the business, th- there's a deep attachment between the CEO and the founder and the company itself. Your identity, in many ways, is your company. It sh- probably shouldn't be. Your therapist will tell you different.

    2. MKMiki Kuusi24:44

       One of the most unhealthy things about being a founder, yes.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings24:46

       Yes, I agree. And then I have these American founders on the show and they're like, "I'm very good at this. I'm very detached." And I'm like, "No, you're an asshole." Um.

    4. MKMiki Kuusi24:53

       (laughs)

    5. HSHarry Stebbings24:54

       Uh, but like, I, I'm, I'm like, I hate going on holiday because I'm like, "Oh my God, I don't know who I am without it." How do you think about your own identity attached to the company identity?

    6. MKMiki Kuusi25:05

       So someone once asked me, a bit out of the blue, that what has been the biggest thing you've had to sacrifice to build, uh, you know, buil- do these things and to build your, your company and your career? And after, you know, thinking about it for a while, I came to the conclusion that it's my, uh, mind space. It's my, you know, freedom. It's my free time. Because there is none of it. Like, you're always gonna be thinking about, you know, the next thing that the company has to do, the things that are threatening you. You're always gonna be pissed off by the things where someone is treating your company unfairly, writing a news piece, you know, doing something, uh, as a competitor thing. Like, uh, Ben Horowitz wro- wrote a fantastic book called Hard Things About Hard Things, one of my favorite books on management, because it talks about the difficult side of management. And in that book, there's a good, um, s- uh, good chapter called Wartime CEO Versus Peacetime CEO. And in this chapter, um, uh, Ben describes that a peacetime CEO is a CEO who thinks of competition as other ships in the vast blue sea, and you might never intercept with them. A wartime CEO thinks of competition as someone trying to break into your house and steal your kits.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings26:12

       (laughs)

    8. MKMiki Kuusi26:12

       That's the kind of industry I live in, like very hyper bloody competitive all the time. Um, and the point is that, um, like, you know, you can't turn this off. It's always gonna be with you. So you either learn to live with it or you don't. And I've at least, like it's the same today as it was eight years ago, I've just learned to live with it better. A little bit better, not much better, but a little bit better than, than it used to be at the start.

    9. HSHarry Stebbings26:35

       I, I, I totally agree. I think the biggest misconception when you are an owner, a- as we are, is like, there's no n- there's no time off, like 9:00 till 5:00, 9:00 till 8:00. It could be-

    10. MKMiki Kuusi26:43

        Same here.

    11. HSHarry Stebbings26:44

        ... 9:00 till 9:00. But like even at 11:00, 12:00 in bed, you're like, "Ah, fuck, we could have done that better. We could have done that better."

    12. MKMiki Kuusi26:48

        A friend of mine, who is an entrepreneur, once told me... Uh, this was before founding Wolt, so I was crazy enough to still go for it, that, you know, being an entrepreneur is great. You get to choose when you want to work. Any 16 hours per day will qualify.

    13. HSHarry Stebbings27:01

        (laughs) Can I ask though, my mother actually says to me, uh, h- she's very posh in English, she goes, you know, "Darling, are you not lonely?" 'Cause I, I'm single and, you know, I just sit on my own and work for most of the days and nights. And I go like, "Are you kidding me? Like, look at my fucking to-do list. Am I lonely? What a luxury to be lonely." Um, and so I'm almost quite grateful for it, because otherwise I would be quite lonely. (laughs) I'm really going off, but I really like you, Miki.

    14. MKMiki Kuusi27:28

        (laughs)

    15. HSHarry Stebbings27:28

        Is that weird and random? And have-

    16. MKMiki Kuusi27:30

        (laughs)

    17. HSHarry Stebbings27:30

        ... you been the same? (laughs) Like, genuinely.

    18. MKMiki Kuusi27:33

        So, it is a lonely job to be the CEO of a company, because there i- there are a lot of things that by definition... Like, I, I describe being a CEO as being like the single point of failure between two pyramids. You know, one at the bottom and one at the top, uh, you know, connected by their tips. Uh, because like, you know, on the top you have your shareholders, you have your investors, you have your former employees, your board, all these other people, and they're looking down and they're like mu- "Yay, Miki, you got this." And then you have like, you know, everyone in the to- bottom, which is like all of your employees, everyone in your team, your co-founders, everyone. Everyone's looking up like, "Miki, you got it." And you're standing in the middle like, "Why is everyone staring at me?"

    19. HSHarry Stebbings28:12

        (laughs)

    20. MKMiki Kuusi28:12

        That's oftentimes what it feels like being the CEO. Like, you know, there's a really difficult decision, everyone has, you know, opinions, and, you know, a good conversation, and then ultimately people look at you and like, "Okay, so what do we do?" Uh, so it's a very lonely job. One thing that has helped me is that, you know, since founding Wolt, in my previous company I realized that, you know, you're oftentimes an inex- inexperienced leader, you try to protect the team from things you're afraid of, from things that keep you up at night. You're like, "I'm gonna like protect the team from these things, and if they knew all these things, would they be able to work, or would they even be here? They would probably leave the company if they knew all the shit I know." Um, and I have realized that, you know, first of all, that's very heavy.

    21. HSHarry Stebbings28:50

        Mm.

    22. MKMiki Kuusi28:50

        Like, you burn out yourself very easily if you're making yourself the single point of failure. And secondarily, your company is not gonna be, your team is not gonna be able to f- work with full information to try to succeed. So, I decided from the early days of Wolt that everything I know, everything I'm concerned about, every one of my co-founders knows, everyone in our management knows, uh, and my chairman of the board and board know. So I've always acted on full transparency. There's been nothing going on with the company that I wouldn't share, have shared with these groups of people. And you know what? It's not as lonely. It's not as heavy on your shoulders. And the company, the team, comes up with a lot smarter solutions to these things than you would ever come up on your own.

    23. HSHarry Stebbings29:30

        Uh, y- e- I agree. You have to have the right people in place to do that though.

    24. MKMiki Kuusi29:33

        Mm-hmm.

    25. HSHarry Stebbings29:33

        And I do wanna touch on this, 'cause we've chatted before and you,

11. 29:36 – 33:20

    Lessons on Recruiting

    1. HSHarry Stebbings29:36

       you've said some pretty great things that I wanna touch on. And in terms of kind of leaders that you bring into the team, what have been some big lessons for you that you think are really important in terms of... I don't, I don't know where we can start here, because it's like... Yeah, what have been your biggest lessons in terms of getting those great people? What works? What doesn't work?

    2. MKMiki Kuusi29:56

       So, one of my biggest lessons on hiring came from, uh, a guy called Case Keulen. He was the CEO of Booking.com from like-

    3. HSHarry Stebbings30:02

       Yeah.

    4. MKMiki Kuusi30:02

       ... this t- 20-person company to like one of the biggest, I think the biggest consumer software company out of Europe. Um, and Case told me that, you know, one mistake people make in hiring is that they're looking for the person that has already done, uh, you know, what you need. And you're like, "We need to hire that person. He's done this before, he's gonna do it for us, and it's gonna be amazing." But what people don't realize is that very few people do these things twice in their life. And actually what you need to be looking for is this person before they did that thing. Like look for the person that, okay, in this company, there's a person that did the thing that we now need, I need to look at what was that person like before they started at that company? You're looking for that person. And that's been my biggest learning in hiring is that, you know, you ultimately need to be able to grow a lot of people with your company, take a lot of bets on people, and you need to be able to hire for that potential. Like, it's so easy to go to this mode that you're just trying to hire the logos into your company, and the past experiences, and the whatnots. But actually you build a successful company by having a large group of people that do those things for the first time with you.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings31:05

       I totally agree. It's still tough though, okay?

    6. MKMiki Kuusi31:09

       It is.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings31:09

       It's the first time they've done it, and they are the, I don't know, uh, d- deputy assistant rising star of their function. No offense, Miki, they've never heard of you, they don't know you.

    8. MKMiki Kuusi31:19

       (laughs)

    9. HSHarry Stebbings31:19

       They don't know what you do. And they're probably at a pretty good company in a more junior position. But how do you convince those when they have no prior knowledge and you have no brand, and really, you need to sell the hard way?

    10. MKMiki Kuusi31:32

        It's... You're ask- you're asking a CEO, uh, this question is like asking a developer, like, "So how do you write code?" Like, you know-

    11. HSHarry Stebbings31:39

        (laughs)

    12. MKMiki Kuusi31:39

        ... you have to make all these, like, you know, lines. Like, that's what you do. Like, if you, if you want to build a company from the get-go, like, what are growth companies? Growth companies are glorified recruiting operations. And every single senior person in a growth company has to become a great recruiter. What is a great recruiter? A great recruiter is someone that can get people as excited about the opportunity as they are. That is the art. Th- there's a lot of things that you could do. Like, I remember when we expanded to new countries as Wolt and no one had ever heard of us, and we had, we didn't announce a round of financing for three years. We had raised financing, but we kept a low profile. We didn't do any press because we didn't want anyone noticing what we were doing. So we're hiring people, and people are like, "Oh, Wolt sounds like a company that's going to go bankrupt because you haven't raised funding in such a long time," and so forth. So we just started hacking this thing. We noticed, for instance, that when using my LinkedIn profile to contact someone for, like, a GM position higher in a country where no one has ever heard of, uh, heard of us, my profile had better conversion of the people responding back to me. Uh, so I started writing these cold messages to people about these roles. And then when we started to scale that, some of our recruiters had my LinkedIn password and username so they could write messages as Miki being like, "Hey, you look like a really interesting person for this role we're thinking, and this is what we do. Uh, would you be interested to talk more? I'll, I'll connect you with the recruiter." And it's the recruiter running the message.

    13. HSHarry Stebbings32:57

        (laughs)

    14. MKMiki Kuusi32:57

        Like, there's a lot of, like, this kind of hacking that we had to do in the early days. Because, like, you're literally looking for the people. This is not like... Zero CV is coming your way, like, peop- like, putting an application open, zero people applying for it. You need to go out and hunt and get people excited at the opportunity and sell the opportunity. And then you have the chance to try to figure out if, is this th- i- is this the right person for the company or not?

12. 33:20 – 35:26

    Should you announce when you’ve fundraised?

    1. MKMiki Kuusi33:20

    2. HSHarry Stebbings33:20

       Why did you not announce the round of funding? I literally always argue with founders. I don't ever see why you should not announce a round of funding, so argue with me back here. But the reason being, like, if someone reads a TechCrunch article and goes into Sweden because Wolt is in Sweden, fuck me, they're not gonna change their whole strategy because of a TechCrunch article. And if they are, they're not gonna be the competitors for very long. Like, I don't understand this fear that founders have about announcing rounds.

    3. MKMiki Kuusi33:47

       So, uh, we raised our series A, it was 10 million euros in, uh, January of 2016. The next round we raised was in January 2018, two years later, that was our 27 million euro series B, and then we raised our series C in April of 2019, which we announced in June alongside with our series B. So from Jan 2016 up until June 2019, no press, no international English-speaking press on Wolt. The reason was very simple. I just realized that our consumers and our merchants and people working with us as couriers don't read international tech press, and they don't care about international tech press. They care about whether we're doing something that adds value for them. And I realized that when you do these articles, like, you know, people are excited about you, and they contact you, and you get these, all these opportunities, and people want you to speak here and there and so forth, and you get distracted. And I just realized that, you know, we can be a lot more focused when it is us figuring out who we wanna talk to, where we wanna go, what we wanna do. And then we can always, like, reach out to Harri because we think Harri is a great candidate for GM of UK, and being like, "Harri, like, you know, we don't do a lot of stuff. We try to keep a low profile, but this is who we are, this is what we've done, this is who's, who's invested," and people feel like they've been let on a secret. This is something that most people don't know yet about. So at least it worked for us. But our industry is a cutthroat industry. Our industry... Like, we went to Japan, uh, after announcing all these rounds and everything. Four companies followed us in the half a year that followed. Like, you know, our industry is an industry where people do watch what others are doing.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings35:20

       Uh, totally. Um, I also have a, uh, great large ego and deep insecurity, and you don't.

13. 35:26 – 36:23

    Expansion Strategy

    1. HSHarry Stebbings35:26

       So there's, you know, maybe reasoning behind that. Whoa, no offense-

    2. MKMiki Kuusi35:29

       (laughs)

    3. HSHarry Stebbings35:29

       ... why the fuck did you choose Japan? I'm so... I, I remember reading this, I was like, "Huh?" (laughs) Okay?

    4. MKMiki Kuusi35:35

       I mean, we've looked at always, like, uh, always at the globe, um, as our kind of home base. Like, the reason we stick to, stuck to Europe in the early years was that time zones are expensive. Like, longer flights are more expensive. Uh, if you need to support, like, you know, customers six hours time zones away, it means there's gonna be engineers up every night pretty late. Uh, and if you have a 20% engineering team, like, man, that team is gonna be under a lot of stress very quickly. So okay, let's go south because the, like, the time zones are gonna be similar. But we were always looking at the whole globe, and we just saw that that's an interesting market because it's underpenetrated. It's a very difficult market, but it's an underpenetrated market in our industry. And that's, you know, how we've expanded. We've always looked for the places where we can create, uh, the most value with the most efficient investment.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings36:20

       Can I ask, sorry, going back to the hiring,

14. 36:23 – 40:30

    Mistakes When Hiring

    1. HSHarry Stebbings36:23

       there's always challenges that one faces. What were the biggest mistakes that you made in the hiring?

    2. MKMiki Kuusi36:29

       Hmm. Hiring for logos. Like, I remember, like, uh, we had, um, another company. I'm not just gonna say any names, that would be impolite, but we had another company that was inqui- interested acquiring our company many years ago, I'm not gonna mention the year. Um, and they had a, like, very impressive team. Their management team came to Helsinki, and we spent time with them, and we had all these dinners and stuff and so forth. And ultimately, they gay us- gave us an offer in the company that we ultimately said no to. Um, and I remember my co-founder, who's a little bit like autistic, uh, you know, developer, like, you know, doesn't really care about, uh, care about other things than, you know, how things are in the rational world. And he was like, you know, talking about the VP of engineering of that other company, he was like, "Yeah, he has a really impressive CV. Like, he was in this company in Silicon Valley, and that company in Silicon Valley, and that company in this role, and he's involved in that project we all hear about."... yeah, like it's like, this is a very similar person to the best people or some of the people we see in Helsinki, but the logos are more well known. And I just remember like, being like, "Yeah, that's a really good point." Like, you know, you, you get dazzled by these logos because they are global services you've heard of, but it doesn't mean that you wouldn't have fantastic people in companies you've never heard of. That's really the art and the skill. And I think my biggest mistakes in hiring were going after logos, were going after, oh, this person has done this and that in this company and that company. And then, you know, later on you realize that actually you need, uh, just people that are very capable. They can come in big logo companies or from other companies.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings37:56

       Can I ask, was there ever a point in the journey, Miki, where you felt you were behind the scaling of the company?

    4. MKMiki Kuusi38:01

       Several times.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings38:01

       And when was that? Wh- when was the most poignant one when you were like, "I don't know if I'm growing as fast and I'm fucking worried"?

    6. MKMiki Kuusi38:08

       Yeah, like several times. Like, you know, the c- CEO job, like I've been the CEO of Wolt since, uh, you know, I had an idea, to founding team, to around 7,000 people today. So I have, you know, and the role has changed quite significantly on the journey. And there's been multiple points in time when I felt like, you know, I'm underwater and I'm gonna drown unless I somehow, you know, figure out a way to get back on top. Uh, like I'll give you an example. There's a vivid experience I remember. The same case, Couwland, he led our series A from EQT Ventures, uh, and we had this session in Amsterdam. For over eight hours we were talking about the booking story, and he was an early investor in Uber, and he was very involved in the early days of Uber, and he explained the Uber story and so forth, and you know, what they're, what's there to learn. And one of the things he said to me was that, "Miki, the most important hire you're going to make next is that you need a great recruiter. That's the most important hire, your first recruiter." And I go to, I write it like, "Great recruiter," you know, top priority. And I go to Helsinki and I'm like, "I've never met a recruiter in my life." I was like 20-something years old. Never worked at a real company outside of Supercell, and Supercell didn't really have full-time recruiters back then.Um, and I'm like, "What does a recruiter do? What does a great recruiter look like?" Like, man, I have no idea what I'm doing. And I remember like feeling this uncomfortable feeling of like having absolutely no idea what recruiting is or how it works or what a great recruiter is. And mind you, I'd been doing a lot of recruiting, but I had no idea what a recruiter is. And I still remember how uncomfortable it was for the weeks that followed that I started to like pick, pick apart this problem and meet with recruiters and try to figure out what they do and try to figure out what great looks like. And ultimately, we hired our first recruiter. But the point is like this moment in time of being encountered with something where you have no idea... Same thing, we raised our series B, we're like, "We're running out of money in six months. We need to raise a growth round. We have absolutely no idea how you raise a growth round. So we, unless we do this, you know, we're gonna run out of money." And they were like, "Go." And I remember like, you know, we're making like a deck with my CEO, like, "What does a deck for a s- growth round look like? Absolutely no idea." And we blow up the first couple of investor meetings like, "Oh, this company doesn't know what they're doing," and you learn, and we, somehow we're able to pull together the round. That times 100, that's what it's like to be a CEO of this kind of a growth company.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings40:20

       I, I totally get you. Um, I'm sure they're regretting that series B blowing up for the first few meetings. Um, but y- you said there kind of about the importance of recruiting. You've said it a couple of times, like,

15. 40:30 – 44:00

    Can companies work with fewer people?

    1. HSHarry Stebbings40:30

       you know, they're just kind of, um, people acquisition organizations. We're kind of seeing this new realization though today that most companies need far fewer people than they actually have. Do you agree with that or are you like, no, it's a correlation to the macro and it's just an excuse of bluntly, you know, financial flows? Um, how do you feel that companies need far fewer than people actually think and does that throw shade on?

    2. MKMiki Kuusi40:53

       So, uh, this is a funny thing. So right-sizing a company is easy in occupations where the relationship with the person's work and, uh, the value they're creating is very, like, connected. Like, you know, you're running a restaurant, you either have enough waiters and waitresses, you know, serving customers. You either have enough chefs or not enough chefs in the kitchen. If you have too many, you're probably like, should have less and pay less, and you get the efficiency through that. You have too little, you probably should hire more. And then you find this equilibrium and you're like, "Great, we were able to make all the dishes, customer experience was great, not too much slack time, the inner economics looked good." So right-sizing this kind of an operation is easier, like customer support.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings41:33

       Sure.

    4. MKMiki Kuusi41:33

       But when it comes to engineers, the issue is that there's not like this direct correlation. Like, you know, if we have a thousand engineers today, we can build all these beautiful products and everything and it's gonna be amazing and so forth. But we only have 50, should we have 100, 200, 150? Should we have it in one year, two years, five years? So the issue is that in these kind of occupations where it's not immediate, like, you know, uh, immediately clear what the value creation of each individual is, uh, it's very easy to over-hire. Things are going well, the company's growing like hell, you know, it's very competitive. Every s- everyone is afraid of someone else, like, you know, beating you to the opportunity. So you're kind of like, you know, just to be safe, hiring as fast as you can, if you can. Uh, and then when the market changes, you're a little bit like, "Oh, what do we actually need?" Uh, and then it might look very different. Uh, and I think different companies have been dealt differently, like, you know, to our benefit. Um, you know, we haven't had to go through any layoffs, god forbid, like in the current landscape, at least so far. Uh, and the reason is that we were just always very careful, because we were always like running out of money. So like, we were always on the little bit more conservative side of the spectrum. So I think different companies have been built differently. But ultimately, the core problem is that it's not easy to right-size these things where technically WhatsApp was 20 people when it was acquired by Facebook, and Facebook today, Meta, is like 87,000 people. The right answer to how many people like Facebook needs or Meta needs is probably somewhere between 20 and 87,000 people. Like where? It's a very difficult question to answer.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings42:59

       I, I, I totally agree. Do you agree with hire fast, fire fast?

    6. MKMiki Kuusi43:03

       No, uh, my thinking is that hiring is a commitment. When we hire someone, we're serious. We are hiring someone because we want to commit to them and we want them to commit to us. We will have failed as a company if we part ways with you. We will still have to make those difficult decisions because, like, we're not going to be a successful company if we don't make the difficult decisions. But companies that are like, "Oh, we're going to hire 10 people and fire po- half of them," I don't think that's a great company. I don't think that's, like, a very high level of trustworthiness or integrity or, you know, like, you know, that the company is showing. Like, I want to work for a company that, you know, I can work my ass off for and the company is going to stick it, uh, you know, be there for me even if, you know, you know, I fumble and things go a little bit wrong because they see all the work I've done for the company. They n- It needs to be a two-way street. That's the trust I was talking about.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings43:51

       I totally get you. Uh, you mentioned compensation earlier as part of that trust-building exercise. I just want to understand just so we nail it down, uh, you said before this is

16. 44:00 – 47:22

    Compensation Builds Culture

    1. HSHarry Stebbings44:00

       such an important driver of shaping culture. Like, uh, for founders listening, how can we use compensation intelligently to shape culture?

    2. MKMiki Kuusi44:08

       So my feeling was always that I'd rather be a little bit more generous than a little bit more stingy. That was my guiding principle. It's the same thing about, like, culture. I always err on the side of transparency. If there's something I can share with the company, like, I always ask, "Is there a reason I couldn't share it?" If there's not, I'm gonna share it. If I'm thinking about sharing it to the smaller group and I'm like, "Is there some reason I couldn't share it to the bigger group?" I will default to the bigger group. It's the same thing with, uh, with compensation. I try to err on the side of treating the employees, treating the team more fairly than not. Um, I think a lot of companies try to be a little bit too smart around, like, all the terms and, you know, how quickly you need to subscribe your shares if you leave the company and the vesting periods and, and the whatnots. Like, I will, uh, I, my kind of thinking has been make it as vanilla, as fair, uh, as possible for the team. Like, our approach since we... Like, up until we were, like, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people, uh, you know, every single, uh, comp- uh, employee in the company was eligible to get stock options in the company. Even when we were thousands of people and you came to customer support as a part-time employee, there's a way to become a stock option holder in the company. Uh, and the thing was that, like, you know, I remember in the early days, I, I was in Czech Republic, uh, you know, during the weeks we were launching it. And, uh, I meet with some of the local folks in the team, and I noticed that there's an employee from our Baltic operation. And the guy is, like, a restaurant partner manager, so acquiring restaurants, helping acquire restaurants to the platform. And he's helping the Czechian guy doing the same thing. And I'm like, "Oh, Mantas, what are you doing here?" Uh, and he's like, "Yeah, like, you know, we needed someone to onboard the new guy. And like, you know, they called me in. You know, Mantas, can you come to Czech Republic, to Prague for a while and teach the new guy, you know, the ropes?" And, you know, I've realized now doing meetings with this guy for a couple of weeks that it's not that different from, you know, from where I'm from. But the point is if that guy was incentivized based on how many restaurants they acquired in their home city or home country or whatever, what's their incentive to really be out for the company? You know, like, a lot of companies say, "We want to be, like, everyone is an owner, and it's a mission, and we're building this thing," and so forth. But when you look at how they're paying people, they're paying people based on doing this. And then you're expecting people to do that, you know, to, you know, take ownership and responsibility and fix the small things and take the trash and whatnot. Like, the point is, you know, if you want to build a company where people are in it for the company, you need to make sure that the company is in it for them.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings46:27

       I, I love that. You are the master of great sayings, by the way. I mean, I, it's such a shame you're not on Twitter more because you could absolutely smash it. Um-

    4. MKMiki Kuusi46:34

       (laughs) I've noticed Twitter adds very little value in company building, unfortunately.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings46:39

       Totally wrong. Totally wrong. We disagree. So you are far too humble. I, I actually think the next wave of great... Like, you're seeing the personalization of CEO-ship. You're seeing it with Elon more than ever, but you're seeing it with your Aaron Levys. And CEOs are now public figures. And I actually think it's actually kinda-

    6. MKMiki Kuusi46:56

       There's always, like, uh, whenever some entrepreneur says, "Go through the wall," there's some entrepreneur who is like, "Don't hit your head," and thinks, "There's the wall. Just go around it." That's how it goes. There's always, like, two different ways to succeed in everything.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings47:07

       But n- Do you, do you know what I think it is? I think it's like the barbell. It's like the ones who do nothing and the ones who do everything. And the ones who fail are the ones who kinda do the 30% of their time, but not great. And like-

    8. MKMiki Kuusi47:17

       You're coming to an extreme. That's actually a good way to think about it. I agree.

    9. HSHarry Stebbings47:19

       Yeah, I think that's probably what happens.

17. 47:22 – 51:43

    Lessons Learned from Scaling

    1. HSHarry Stebbings47:22

       But I'm a VC, so who fucking knows? Um, uh, I do wanna ask, in terms of, like, lessons learned scaling to 7,000 people, what's the most difficult but valuable lesson that you've learned that you're also really quite pleased to have experienced?

    2. MKMiki Kuusi47:37

       Hmm. That's a good question. Um, I think one realization in hindsight is that you're not gonna be... When you're a 20-person company or a 5-person company, you're not gonna be able to... Like, I look at people we hire today into Wolt as like, you know, different roles. Like, if Miki founding Wolt applied to hire, you know, work at Wolt today, like, I would, at best, work in customer support. At best. Uh, like, I would never qualify for the top 95% of the jobs in the company, if I even qualified in the first place. Like, I'm not a... Like, I dropped out from university and, like, I, I didn't, you know, study at IMDb, uh, like, uh, at the, uh, like, uh, Stanford or MIT. And, uh, um, I, I didn't, like, you know, work at McKinsey or Boston Consulting Group and all the biggest and the fanciest companies in the world and whatnot. So, like, I think the big realization is that, you know, as a company, you know, you have to take more bets on people in the early days. And you also find people that take a bigger bet on you as a company. And as a result, you get this very entrepreneurial-type of bunch of people that, you know, can go through, uh, many very, very interesting and intriguing paths with the company's growth. And then even when you become bigger and bigger, you're just able to choose, like, more and more merited and smart and, uh, and driven and motivated and, um, and so forth people from around the world.... and just, that's just the way it goes. And you kind of have to accept this, that at every stage, you're gonna be hiring the best people that you can get, and you're gonna get different profiles of people at different stages, and that's fine. And also, that, you know, the first person you hire to do recruiting in your company is probably not the person that runs a 100% recruiting organization where you're way bigger. So, like, also accepting that, you know, people change along the journey. That's fine. You know, some stay with the company, and they are fantastic at what they do. They might be ICs, they might be team leads, and you hire above them. You know, some people, you know, are gonna have to leave the company. Some people are gonna grow with the company, and that's fine. Like, I think th- for me, the biggest learning is that the company, in reality, is a journey. And in this journey, you know, you have to optimize for each moment in the journey, and then you accept that things are gonna change. You learn new things, you change things, and that's how th- how it goes.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings49:48

       Which was the most difficult change?

    4. MKMiki Kuusi49:52

       Hmm. My most painful day in Wolt was 2017, um, like, we were running out of our series A. It was the un- like, the horrible year of our industry. Like, no one believed in delivery anymore, and Uber is gonna kill anyone evel- everyone anyway, and no one could raise money. And like, when we tried to raise our series B, everyone said no. Like, every single investor we spoke with said no. Um, so we had to part ways with one-third of our, uh, you know, staff in the summer of 2017. Um, on a personal level, going through the day of going through the conversations one-on-one, I wanted to do each and every one of them one-on-one, and I one-on-one told, uh, one-third of our entire company, was around 30 people-ish, uh, back then, uh, that, "I'm sorry. I fucked up. Uh, you know, we can't continue with any- you anymore. Uh, it's a very tight spot. I hope we're going to be able to make it, but, you know, we need to be able to operate with the bare minimum." Um, and that was the saddest, most difficult day I've had at work in my entire life, that day. But ultimately, you know, you know, we came out of it stronger. Like, we were able to, you know, have a little bit more runway. We, you know, every investor said no until we found one that said yes. Uh, and our journey continued and, you know, here we are today. So, that's like, a g- a saying that, uh, rings with me from that time is, again, actually super sales founder and CEO of Ylka, he's been a good friend and a mentor, and he was on, on our board for many years up until the DoorDash transaction. He told me that, you know, "Mikki, the, the difference between bad and good companies is that bad companies don't know what to do. Good companies do know what they need to do. The difference between good and great companies is that both know what needs to be done, but only the great ones execute on the truly difficult things." And when you have to lay off one-third of your people because you know that it's the right decision for you to be able to succeed, that's a difficult

18. 51:43 – 53:27

    Does Leading Get Easier?

    1. MKMiki Kuusi51:43

       decision to go through with.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings51:45

       Can I ask, does it get easier? I've had leaders on the show before say, "You know, it does get easier. You let people go, and you just get more used to it." And part of me is like, "I don't wanna get used to it. I, I, I want to retain my humanity almost." Do you know what I mean?

    3. MKMiki Kuusi52:02

       It doesn't get easier on a personal level, like a conversation of, like, telling someone who fought hard for the company, for whatever reason, that, like, you know, "This is not the right thing anymore. We're not going to be able to continue with you." Uh, it doesn't get easier if you're a small company or a big company. It, actually, it's a little bit easier even if you're a big c- a small company, because, like, you know, you have a more credible way of saying that, like, "We have to do this." In a 7,000-person company, like, sure, we have to do this. You individually can't be here anymore. Uh, but I think what, how it does get easier, frankly speaking, is that, like, yeah, you can lay off, like, I don't think Mark Zuckerberg is gonna go through 11,000 people personally. So, sure, it's gonna be easier than having to lay off 20 people where you do it one-on-one. I, I'm, I'm sure Mark does, like, a lot of these, like, one-on-one and so forth. But the point is that, you know, it's- it's more difficult when you do things in person. If you have a big company, like, you can rely on your, like, uh, management and your kind of structures you have in place, and you might be so far away from people that are impacted by some of these decisions, that for you, it's a financial decision. "We need to cut this line by that much." But I don't think it gets easier. It's just that, you know, for companies that are big, they might not have to deal with it in a similar fashion than a small company.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings53:11

       Be interesting to see his calendar, wouldn't it? You know, fire 10 people, coffee, fire 10 more people, biscuit, fire 10 people, lunch. (laughs)

    5. MKMiki Kuusi53:18

       It's harsh.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings53:19

       (laughs) Yeah.

    7. MKMiki Kuusi53:19

       It's, it's harsh. Like, having gone through it, it's actually not too different from that.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings53:22

       Oh, God. Um, yeah, media companies are much more fun and profitable.

19. 53:27 – 55:33

    Early Investor in Wolt

    1. HSHarry Stebbings53:27

       (laughs) Um, can I, can I ask, um, you mentioned, uh, the investor who said yes. Who was the investor? In this re-

    2. MKMiki Kuusi53:34

       So, Lorel Bowden out of 83North. Um, 83North, you know, formerly Greylock in Europe. Uh, like, Lorel is, uh, hands down, probably the best growth investor I know. Sh- I look up to her immensely when it comes to, um, her impact on Wolt and, and what she's like as an investor. Also, her partner, Arnon, is just world-class. They were the two involved in Wolt. And how it went, actually, he was an early, she was an early investor in Just Eat, so she, uh, ch- she sat on the board of Just Eat basically from, I think, series A or B until IPO. So, she knew the industry. I didn't know this, but they had been looking for a company, uh, with our type of a model, uh, in the US. They had a hypothesis that there's, uh, uh, there's an opportunity in the US in these kind of underserved long-tail markets in food delivery. They were trying to look for a company to invest in that space, and they realized that a lot of restaurants don't do delivery in these areas. So, they figured that we have to invest in someone who does delivery as a service. Um, then they looked at, I think, close to 100 companies doing what Wolt does, and they concluded that this model does not work. It is impossible to have great retention and great unit economics and a viable business for the merchant and for the courier exist at the same time. So, um, I happened to run into someone who was like, "You have to talk with Lorel and 83North. They did this, Just Eat, they know this industry." And I took a call with one of the, like, more junior folks on their team, and I haven't heard of them, you know, as the big mighty ex-Slush CEO. It was like, "I don't know them, so they must not be relevant." But I sent them the deck, you know, as a follow-up out of courtesy because I promised to do that. And the next day, I get a phone call from an unknown British number, and I'm like, "Who is this?" And answered the call, and it's like, "Hello, this is Lorel Bowden from 83North. I saw your deck. You must be lying. These numbers can't be true."... um, and they ended up leading our series B. The only one investor that said yes. Everyone else said no. We even had an acquisition offer, a 3X devaluation that we raised money at. It was the stupidest thing I'd have ever done, you know, raising that round being like, "Why the hell don't we sell the company? No one believes in us, uh, if you look at the level of, like, you know, what we are getting from, like, an

20. 55:33 – 57:24

    Relationship to Money

    1. MKMiki Kuusi55:33

       industry player." And, yeah, she was right.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings55:36

       Can I ask, Miki, when you sell a company, you obviously get liquidity and your financial profile changes. How do you think about your relationship to money today, your relationship to money then when you could have sold and made g- really good money? Like, how do you think about that relationship to money today?

    3. MKMiki Kuusi55:52

       So for me, this has genuinely never been about money. And the moment I realized that this is not just something you say to investors to make, you know, them feel like you're in it for the long term and you don't just wanna run when someone gives you a check or offers you a check, the moment I realized that was when we got our first acquisition offer. This was 2015. We're a one-year-old as a company and we get an acquisition offer which had, like, cash and stock involved. And I was like, you know, 2015, I was 26. It was a big amount of money. Like when I started Wolt, my credit card was maxed out. I was zero euros in my bank account. I was literally living from, like, hand to mouth. Like I wasn't one of these people that had, like, money to go around or whatever. Um, and I remember contemplating on it, uh, for quite a few nights, and same with my co-founders, and I just ultimately came to the conclusion that like, "I wanna see what comes out of this." And there's the same thing, the next acquisition offer we got was the same thing. Like sure, there's a lot of money that we could have made in the moment, but we are not done. So like for me, I realized over that time that for me it was really never about the money. Like, you know, for me, it was about the fact that, you know, we get this maybe once in a lifetime opportunity to build something and I wanna see what comes out of it. And to be frank with even with DoorDash, like I'd sold secen- secondary over the years, so I'd made money in the li- later years. So it was not really about money. It was about, you know, can we build something bigger together than what we could build on our own? So for me it's always been about building, you know, first and foremost. But I can say that, that it's not about money because I've literally said to money... said no to money and struggled for years after that decision. Uh,

21. 57:24 – 1:00:17

    Advice to Founders Thinking of Selling

    1. MKMiki Kuusi57:24

       so like, you know, that's when you, like, realize whether that's actually true or not.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings57:28

       What advice do you give to founders who are contemplating selling?

    3. MKMiki Kuusi57:32

       So there's a good piece of advice. Petri, our chairman of the board, uh, you know, later years said, you know, from Lifeline Ventures, that, you know, he's once spoke with someone from Sequoia, um, and they said that of their research of I think like a 400 companies or something, one thing they noticed was that founders, because it's so difficult to get su- something up and going, that as a founder, you are paranoid and fearful about losing that momentum. You're like, "It was so difficult to get this thing moving."

    4. HSHarry Stebbings58:00

       (laughs)

    5. MKMiki Kuusi58:01

       So you're like, "It... What if it stops? Like it's this competitor, that regulatory thing, you know, there's money running out, this, you know, economic change, something." So you're so afraid of losing that thing because it was so difficult to get it that you're almost, like, always mentally trying to run for the exit. Like let's, like, you know, take... you know, you know, you know, cr- you know, sign this off as a success before it's too late, before people see, see that we're in reality a fraud and none of this was real. And like, people-

    6. HSHarry Stebbings58:25

       Yeah.

    7. MKMiki Kuusi58:25

       ... just thought we were better than we were.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings58:27

       Yeah.

    9. MKMiki Kuusi58:27

       And the Sequoia thing was that out of looking at 400 entrepreneurs, if you have ach- achieved momentum, that momentum is statistically so incredibly difficult to lose. Like if... Of course there's gonna be the cases like the FDX and so forth that where things go horribly wrong, but those are the edge cases. But, uh, mostly when you get momentum, that momentum is not gonna wai- gonna go away. And you have to ha- manage your mentality as a founder and switch that, like, you know, "We need to see where this goes." This is why I think secondary and later rounds is important, because secondary a little bit relieves the pressure. It relieves the pressure of like, you know, everything being in one basket. Like, "If we don't make it, I'm gonna be out on the street. My wife is gonna leave me. I'm not gonna have any money. I need to find a job, you know, the next month because I don't have money to live." So you take off that. With secondary, you can be a little bit more rational. But the thing that helped me was this kind of realization that maybe I just have to trust what we've built and that it's gonna carry on longer than right now.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings59:30

        (sighs) Miki, as an investor in Clubhouse and Hopin, I have felt momentum go the other way, my friend. (laughs)

    11. MKMiki Kuusi59:39

        That's the other side of the journey. And like I said, like every, every advice you hear from an entrepreneur, always be mindful about that because like, you know, first of all, entrepreneurs that are successful telling advice is like a lottery millionaire telling that, you know, "Keep on betting. You're gonna eventually win. It's one in 15 million." Like, keep on going. Like the point is that like you have to take every piece of advice with a grain of salt. There's different, uh, occasions, different kind of stories people go through. Different kind of things work in different kind of places. Uh, but I think like, you know, there's also these like, you know, 70% of the time, this might apply. And you might be in the 30% that it doesn't help you-

    12. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:14

        Mm-hmm.

    13. MKMiki Kuusi1:00:14

        ... but at least for me it's helped.

    14. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:16

        No, I, I, I,

22. 1:00:17 – 1:03:20

    Do you ever take a break?

    1. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:17

       I do totally agree. Um, can I... j- final one, I promise. Do you ever get off the treadmill? I always think momentum is very transient. You have it and then you, you don't. And it goes in and out a little bit, especially in like medium press cycles. When you have it, fuck, double down. You have to go for it then. Like that is when you are riding the wave. But then you are just turning up the speed on the treadmill more and more and more. And Miki, you know, I'm actually quite young. I look like Benjamin Button, okay?

    2. MKMiki Kuusi1:00:46

       (laughs)

    3. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:46

       Like (laughs) this is why. Um, but-

    4. MKMiki Kuusi1:00:48

       How old are you?

    5. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:50

       25.

    6. MKMiki Kuusi1:00:51

       25. Jesus Christ.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:53

       Yeah. Well, I mean, you, you had a offer for, you know, Wolt at 26, my friend, so I mean, it's not exactly 25. (laughs)

    8. MKMiki Kuusi1:00:58

       I was 25 when I founded Wolt and like, you know, I think like, you know, you're very, very young. I, I, I, I'm 33 and I feel like, uh, super old when I'm talking with you right now.

    9. HSHarry Stebbings1:01:07

       I've done it for e- eight years. (laughs)

    10. MKMiki Kuusi1:01:09

        (laughs)

    11. HSHarry Stebbings1:01:09

        But do you ever get off the treadmill? Do you ever sit and go, "Ah, that was great. Well done, team. I'm super proud"? Yeah.

    12. MKMiki Kuusi1:01:16

        So when I s- I remember when, uh, I was like a lo- young student at the university.... doubling in the world of startups. And I, I ran into this, like, older student that had started a gaming startup, and they raised two and a half million from Index. And they had this penthouse office, 15 employees, their own sauna with a terrace of ... with a view of the city and Helsinki. This is, like, tw- 2000 and, like, 11 or something.

    13. HSHarry Stebbings1:01:39

        (laughs)

    14. MKMiki Kuusi1:01:40

        Uh, and I was like, "Man, these people are cool."

    15. HSHarry Stebbings1:01:43

        (laughs)

    16. MKMiki Kuusi1:01:43

        Like, they have their own company and their own office and millions of financing, and they're building games, and it was the coolest thing ever. So when we raised ... And I was like, you know, "You've made it when you make there." So when I raised, uh, or we raised the, the two million round of financing, our, our, like, uh, um, like, uh, seed extension round back in 2015, I was like, "Fuck," like, you know, "We are so underfunded." Like, you know, "We need to get more financing." And we raised a 10 million round of financing. "Oh, we're still so underfunded." We raised 100 million. We raised half a billion. Like, you get cities profitable, you get countries profitable, you sell secondary, you know, you, you know, uh, you know, exit the company to DoorDash. And there's just always the next mountain. Like, what I've learned over the years is that if you're one of these personalities that, you know, just wants to build something, you're never gonna be satisfied. There's never gonna be a mountaintop that you reach, and you're looking back at where you came from, and you're looking, you know, the down, the other side of the mountain, and you're like, "We made it." You're just gonna come there, and you're gonna be, "Oh, I didn't see that peak before." And it's a lot higher. It's a lot steeper, and like, "Man, we can't stay here for too long, because, like, we have to keep on going." That's, that's what it's like. You never really get to the point. Like, I've never ... Like, people ask me, like, "Oh, how does it feel like you've made it?" I've never felt like I've made it. I've always felt like we're still on the way somewhere, and it's a lot more difficult than the previous thing. And I'm not sure we're gonna make it to, to the level of our ambition. But we're gonna work our asses off to get there. So that's what it feels like.

    17. HSHarry Stebbings1:03:14

        I do love you, Miki. (laughs)

    18. MKMiki Kuusi1:03:17

        (laughs)

    19. HSHarry Stebbings1:03:17

        That is such a good answer. I wanna move into a quick

23. 1:03:20 – 1:04:30

    Favourite Book

    1. HSHarry Stebbings1:03:20

       fire round, my friend. So I'm gonna say a short statement, and you give me your thoughts.

    2. MKMiki Kuusi1:03:23

       Go.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings1:03:23

       What's your favorite book and why?

    4. MKMiki Kuusi1:03:25

       Uh, like, I read, like, 200 pages of internal documents a day. Like, welcome to a 20,000-person company, my friend.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings1:03:30

       (laughs)

    6. MKMiki Kuusi1:03:30

       Um, my favorite book, though, it's actually very clear from a professional point of view. That would be Hard Things About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. Uh, if there's a book I spent the most time on professionally, that's that book. I've le- read the paragraph, The Struggle, maybe, like, 20 times in my career, uh, Hard th- Uh, the, the paragraph about how to fire, uh, as, uh, an executive several times when I've had to do it, how to demote a loyal friend several times when I have to do it, uh, wartime CEO, peacetime CEO several times when I've been in a, in a fucked up competitive situation. So that's been the only book that has really given me solace. Because there's a lot of these management books that tell you how to be an amazing leader, and they are like, "How are you an amazing leader when you're running out of money, your competition is killing you?" You know, you're not sure that you're gonna be able to keep everyone that's working on the team. You're not sure the technology is gonna work out, the product is gonna work out, you're doing the right decisions. Like, you know, how did you, like, you know, make great decisions and be a great leader in that instance? And that, that book I love for that reason, that it gives you solace.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings1:04:28

       (laughs) The thing I love about Europeans

24. 1:04:30 – 1:05:53

    Lessons from Tony Xu DoorDash

    1. HSHarry Stebbings1:04:30

       is the swearing.

    2. MKMiki Kuusi1:04:31

       (laughs)

    3. HSHarry Stebbings1:04:31

       Americans, zero. Um, tell me, my friend, what have you learned from Tony at DoorDash?

    4. MKMiki Kuusi1:04:37

       Tony's actually ... Like, I ha- ... I wouldn't have gone. So I had actually a personal blocking right to any M & A, M & A transaction of Wolt. So Wolt was not possible to get acquired by another company without ... I actually have a placard. This is the placard for allowing the company to be sold. It's called managing director consent.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings1:04:56

       (laughs)

    6. MKMiki Kuusi1:04:56

       Um, it's like, it's a stupid thing we negotiated as part of one of our rounds. Like ... Uh, but the point is that, uh, I wouldn't have gone for, for this if it didn't feel like, you know, the right decision, not just for, like, the shareholders and the employees and the company, but also from a personal, like, growth perspective. And Tony's a leader that I look up to. He's a leader that I've already learned tremendously from, and I recognize that when we have spent time together. He's an incredibly thoughtful leader, uh, and he's great at, like, uh, you know, articulating culture. DoorDash is a magical place when it comes to how culture is embedded in language, in the kind of things that people say that are, like, you know, DoorDash-type things to say. We have similar things in Wolt, but, like, for DoorDash, like, usage of language and culture internally was on a whole another level. That's a v- very individual good example, and it's oftentimes, you know, it could start with Tony, as, like, culture tends to start from founding CEOs.

25. 1:05:53 – 1:07:07

    Guilty Pleasure

    1. MKMiki Kuusi1:05:53

    2. HSHarry Stebbings1:05:53

       I spoke to him before the show. A- always a lesson when I speak to Tony. Um, tell me, what's your biggest guilty pleasure, Miki?

    3. MKMiki Kuusi1:05:59

       Fortnite.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings1:06:01

       (laughs)

    5. MKMiki Kuusi1:06:01

       Big ... I'm, I'm a gamer by background, so I, I spent my growing up years, like, playing a shit ton of games like, you know, Dota. I grew up with that game. My first, uh, leadership experience was starting a Dota clan on, like, Warcraft III, like, the Battle.net. Then we had, like, 60 people, and I was the chieftain of the clan. That's the first time I fired someone. I still remember firing (laughs) a person that's, like ... I was, like, 15, and the other guy is, like, 15, and, "You're not, like, making it work for the clan anymore." Like, "Sorry, you have to go." Uh, so I'm a gamer, and, like, I hadn't played games for a very long time. You can notice I have a gaming rig on because this gaming rig I bought myself as a present in January 2020.

Episode duration: 1:15:59