The Twenty Minute VC

Oscar Pierre, Glovo CEO & Founder: Selling 30% for €100K |The McDonald's Deal That Saved Them |E1263

Oscar Pierre is the Founder and CEO @ Glovo, the food delivery site that will get you anything you want to your doorstep. This story is insane, the company was started by Oscar 11 years ago, in their pre-seed round they sold ⅓ of the company for €100K. The company was later saved by a deal they made with McDonald's. The company nearly ran out of money on several occasions, one time the funding round came from the CEO of Rakuten who Oscar met an FC Barcelona drinks. Today, they are a part of DeliveryHero who acquired them for $2.2BN, they have delivered 1BN orders and have almost 60M customers. ---------------------------------------------- In Today’s Episode We Discuss: (00:00) Intro (00:49) Starting with Nothing (04:01) The First Funding Round: Selling ⅓ of the Company for €100K (06:03) Marketplace Dynamics and Expansion (12:52) The McDonald's Deal That Saved the Company (16:19) Running out of Money Three Times: Fundraising Hell (24:47) International Expansion: What Worked (28:43) Lessons from Failures: What Brazil Taught Us (31:22) How to Win in Emerging Markets (31:49) The Burn Rate (Burning $1M per day) and Investor Concerns (33:33) Scaling Challenges and Competitor Threats (34:28) The Biggest BS Elements of Company Values (36:13) How I Ruined the Culture of the Company (42:27) Layoffs and Talent Management (43:26) Biggest Lessons from M&A (46:21) The Future of Quick Commerce (47:31) Acquisition by Delivery Hero (51:23) Post-Acquisition Reflections (58:40) The CEO on Trial and Facing Prison (01:03:28) Quick-Fire Round ---------------------------------------------- Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZTtgTNBKwtZBMHvl?si=85bc9196860e4466 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465 Follow Harry Stebbings on X: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Oscar Pierre on X: https://twitter.com/oscarpierremi Follow 20VC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20vchq Follow 20VC on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@20vc_tok Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/contact ----------------------------------------------- #20vc #harrystebbings #oscarpierre #glovo #CEO #venturecapital #founder #startup #fooddelivery #ubereats #deliveryhero #justeat #deliveroo

Oscar PierreguestHarry Stebbingshost

Feb 25, 20251h 9mWatch on YouTube ↗

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

From €100K Seed to €2.3B Exit: Glovo’s Relentless Rise

The conversation traces Glovo founder and CEO Oscar Pierre’s journey from a naive 22‑year‑old with a €10K outsourced MVP to building a multi‑billion‑euro delivery platform acquired by Delivery Hero. He explains how an early, existential McDonald’s partnership and brutal market expansion battles against Uber Eats, Deliveroo, Rappi and others shaped Glovo’s strategy, unit economics, and culture. Oscar dives into marketplace dynamics, geographic expansion, fundraising struggles with European VCs, painful shutdowns and layoffs, and the eventual decision to sell instead of pursuing another risky mega‑round or IPO. He closes with lessons on culture, work ethic, regulation in Europe, and why he still sees Glovo as “Amazon 20 years ago” with huge upside in multi‑category commerce and advertising.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Early signals can redefine your product and market.

Glovo began as an ‘Uber for errands’ but noticing customers repeatedly ordering McDonald’s Big Macs revealed a far larger opportunity in restaurant delivery than the original niche concierge concept.

Scale and timing are decisive in marketplace businesses.

Oscar stresses that food delivery economics only work with dominant share on a city/national level, and being late to markets like Paris or Brazil made winning prohibitively expensive against entrenched players.

Strategic anchor partners can be existential inflection points.

Securing and operationally over-serving McDonald’s in Spain and then Italy broke Uber’s global exclusivity and became the customer-acquisition engine that “saved” Glovo and transformed its trajectory.

Fundraising resilience matters more when you lack investor enthusiasm.

Rejected by ~120 European VCs and frequently weeks from running out of cash, Glovo survived via relentless outreach, opportunistic capital (including from competitors), and making €25M–200M rounds last despite heavy burn.

Founders must protect and periodically reset culture, especially around work ethic.

At ~1,000 employees, Oscar softened his messaging, culture diluted, and top performers left for harder‑working companies; he later reversed course with direct communication, value rewrites, and leadership changes.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

We unlocked the biggest deal of all history for delivery, which was McDonald's.

— Oscar Pierre

All the European VCs, or most of them, passed on us. Nobody believed in our story.

— Oscar Pierre

For seven years, we raised a round every nine months.

— Oscar Pierre

I think shutting down things is a super important skill for a founder because at the end, it's an ego thing.

— Oscar Pierre

I see us as Amazon 20 years ago.

— Oscar Pierre

Founding story of Glovo and early product-market insights (Uber-for-errands → food delivery)Marketplace dynamics, scale, unit economics, and city/country-level network effectsFundraising challenges in Europe, near-death moments, and the Rakuten lifelineStrategic partnerships and expansion, especially the McDonald’s deal and international marketsFailures and hard decisions: Brazil shutdown, layoffs, M&A missteps, culture driftAcquisition by Delivery Hero, decision to sell vs. IPO, and life post-exitEuropean tech ecosystem, regulation (especially Spain), culture and work-ethic philosophy

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