Skip to content
The Twenty Minute VCThe 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 26, 20251h 9mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 0:49

    Intro

    1. OP

      The first round was valued at 280K pre-money, and we raised 100K. (cash register dings) (laughs)

    2. HS

      Wow.

    3. OP

      Well, I would say all the European VCs, or most of them, passed on us. Nobody believed in our story, you know, a bunch of kids from Barcelona beating the Deliveroos and the Uber Eats of the world. I remember the series B, it was like 25 million. We were going to die. We unlocked the biggest deal of all history for delivery, which was McDonald's.

    4. HS

      Ready to go? (instrumental music plays) Oscar, dude, I am so excited for this. It is such an incredible journey, so I'm very, very excited to unpack it with you. Thank you for joining me today, man.

    5. OP

      Thank you, man. I've been a, a big fan of 20VC. Actually, we started the same year.

    6. HS

      2015?

    7. OP

      Exactly.

    8. HS

      Yeah. I-

  2. 0:49 – 4:01

    Starting with Nothing

    1. HS

      I was chatting to Paul-

    2. OP

      (laughs)

    3. HS

      ... uh, on our team of one, he was like, "You literally same year." Um, you were 22 when you started.

    4. OP

      Yeah.

    5. HS

      Wh- how did you get the idea for Glovo? What was that origin aha?

    6. OP

      So the origins weren't, weren't huge. There wasn't a huge ambition at the beginning. Um, I was in school, I was in aerospace... I was studying for aerospace engineering, and I graduated. Uh, immediately I went to my, my dream company which was Airbus, uh, in, uh, in France. And there I realized really fast that that was a very big corporate company that I didn't want to be in, uh? And that's when I started basically building a, a deck. Um, I got some inspiration, 'cause I finished my studies in Atlanta, and I saw how Uber, uh, launched in Atlanta, and how big, and, uh, how big it scaled, like it was, and the impact it had on, on all the students in the, in the campus. It was, it was massive. So I said, "Why, why don't we build the Uber for errands?" That, that was the first original idea. I was thinking about my mom. My mom was always very busy, uh, you know, doing errands for, for, for my father, for my, for my brothers, for me. Like, I was like, "Why don't we digitize this, no? And why... just build a, a, an app where anyone can just ask for any errand, no? Just go to the store, pick up this, buy this, and bring it to me?" And that was the first idea. Of course, it was a, a very niche and very, like, uh, high-end, uh, service. Um, and then when we launched it, the first aha moment, no, that really, you know, made our ambitions a lot bigger was that we started seeing people ordering, uh, McDonald's. They ordered Big Macs. (laughs) And I was like, "Holy shit. Like, why Big Macs," no? There, there's already an, a, a website called Just Eat where people ordered food. And that was the big aha moment, no? And that's when I understood that food delivery was still to be massively, uh, disrupted. There was a generation one of food delivery, uh, in, in the case of Spain, Barcelona, where we all started the business, it was, uh, Just Eat, that basically had a, a marketplace, um, where they aggregated restaurants that did the delivery themselves. But there wasn't a, a, a marketplace that also offered the delivery, and therefore unlocked all the supply of the city.

    7. HS

      Okay. So going back-

    8. OP

      Yeah.

    9. HS

      ... how long did it take from idea to launch? I think a lot of people don't execute fast enough.

    10. OP

      (laughs)

    11. HS

      And they kind of just let ideas meander. How long was it from, "Hey, I'm gonna do this." To launching first?

    12. OP

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

    13. HS

      How did you get it made?

    14. OP

      Um, I, I googled "build an X for Uber app", and I found, uh, a developing company in Russia, in Eastern Russia, that was the cheapest provider I found. And they promised me that they would, they would deliver a, a first version of the app for, for like 8,000 euros.

    15. HS

      How was the first version of the app?

    16. OP

      And I was shitty and didn't work. (laughs)

    17. HS

      (laughs)

    18. OP

      But I had something to start showing to investors, I had some mock-ups. And-

    19. HS

      Okay, so you have something to show... Uh, sorry. Fuck

  3. 4:01 – 6:03

    The First Funding Round: Selling ⅓ of the Company for €100K

    1. HS

      the schedule. You have something to start showing to investors. And then what happens? You, you go and raise like a pre-seed, seed round?

    2. OP

      Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I, I was so young. I had, I knew nothing about, of course, VC. And, you- you know, you will find this very funny, but the first round was valued at, uh, 280K, uh, pre-money. And we raised 100K. (laughs)

    3. HS

      Wow.

    4. OP

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

    5. HS

      So 100K at 380 post?

    6. OP

      Yeah.

    7. HS

      Wow. That is incredible. Okay, so you raised 100K. What happens then? We build out the app again, but it's much more fully fledged. (laughs) I mean, 100K is not much.

    8. OP

      But yeah, with that, we could hire the first CTO. Uh, of course, we had to s- start th- the app from zero. But we were already serving, no? We were already getting some orders somehow. We also had a website, people just send us, like text messages, like, "Go to this store, pick up this." Uh, now again, we started seeing some orders from McDonald's. So now we launched, and then we started seeing some traction. It took a while, took a year, and that took us to the next round which was uh, like a million and a half.

    9. HS

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

    10. OP

      For very long time, I, I could see we were delivering a service that, uh, that people liked, but we had very negative unit economics, no? And there was a, there was a very... Most of the investor community didn't believe that this new industry would turn into profitability, right? So that's not really product-market fit 'cause you're delivering, uh, a service that people like but, uh, but at the price that people don't want to pay. So it took a while until you started seeing the power of network effects, you know, the fleet of couriers growing, getting, gaining all the efficiencies. And then at some point, which is the key of this business of course, is, is you start moving the revenue stream to the, what we call the, the merchant, no? The partner, no? The, the restaurants, the stores, the groceries. So you, you can start making the service cheaper and cheaper for the customer.

  4. 6:03 – 12:52

    Marketplace Dynamics and Expansion

    1. OP

    2. HS

      I do want to kind of go to that-

    3. OP

      Okay.

    4. HS

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

    5. OP

      I mean, it's all about scale. So, in our industry, uh, marketplace dynamics are, work on a, on a city or on a national level, right? So we invest a lot in, in building the brand and the business on a national level. Um, and why the, the country is important is because most of the big partnerships are also country-wide, no? So you negotiate with, with McDonald's, with, uh, I don't know, with Walmart, with big brands that operate in a country, uh, in all the country. Um, and then you also build a brand, no? We use a lot of, uh, channels that are, that are, uh, that apply to all the country. Like, for example, we, we have invested a lot in TV. So you have to win in every country, right? And, and, and the network effects happen inside the country. When you cross the border, it doesn't matter how big and how well-known, uh, your brand is in Spain. You go to Portugal and you start from zero, and, and that's another battle that you have to win, no? And I think what we learned really fast, because as a, as an entrepreneur from, from Barcelona, our natural expansion was, you know, first we launched in Barcelona, then in Madrid, then Valencia, then we said, "Okay, let's try... Let's go international," no? And we picked, uh, Paris and Milan. Um, Milan worked really well. Paris didn't work well. And the main reason was because in Paris we were late, no? We were launching maybe like two or three years after, uh, Deliveroo and Uber Eats launched. So we never gained the scale and, and the, and the leadership to be a sustainable business, right? In our industry, you really need a lot of market share. You need to become-

    6. HS

      Does it work if you're number two?

    7. OP

      It can work, and we have, uh, out of the 23 markets we have, we have very few where we are number two and are profitable. But it's, uh, it's tough. You need to be a very relevant number two.

    8. HS

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

    9. OP

      So, it depends, right? Because we've been launching markets since Day 1. Um, now, uh, like for example, the most recent market we launched I think was Tunisia. Um, and Tunisia has taken maybe like two, between two and three years to, to turn it into, into profit. Now, it all depends on how fast you wanna go. You can turn it into profit in six months, but, uh, you're gonna go a lot, move a lot slower, right? So if you wanna reach a big scale and you want to invest, you only have to invest big in, in, in service, in marketing in the first two years and then you turn it into profit.

    10. HS

      Two to three years?

    11. OP

      Yeah.

    12. HS

      That's a long time. How much does it cost-

    13. OP

      But it's-

    14. HS

      ... to launch a market? Average.

    15. OP

      Yeah. So in the case of Tunisia, maybe I'd say between 5 and 10 million.

    16. HS

      Oof.

    17. OP

      But then these businesses get a lot of scale. Like, the, the beautiful thing about this, this industry is, is the scale. Like, we, we're in some markets where our GMV, our, you know, gross merchandise value, is getting to close to 1% of the GDP of the country, right? It's a service that people use so frequently and for so many things, right? It's, it's not only restaurant, it's groceries, it's pharmacy, it's, uh, shops, that it, it gets to a lot of scale, right? So it's, that's why there was so much money poured into it, right? Because I think all VCs understood at some point that this model was here to stay, no? And would become this massive scale platforms in every country. But you had to win, right? And that's why the 2018 to 2022, uh, I think it was probably the, the m- the bloodiest VC bat- you know, uh, battle of pr- maybe of all consumer history.

    18. HS

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

    19. OP

      I mean, it helps everywhere in the marketplace, right? On one end, um, on one end it's logistics, right? Like, the, like, we very fast, we become the, the largest logistics fleet in any city where we operate. Um, that means that we have the, the cheapest cost to, to serve, uh, to move something from point A to point B. It's, it's like Uber, right? You generate an order now in, in Glovo in, in Barcelona, you will probably find a courier available, um, a few meters away, no? From the pickup point. Then there's all the data, right? So all the data you generate with, uh, with the restaurants, right? Delivering food is so complex, right? Because you can... It's, it's a, it's a business where, where every single second matters a lot, right? You cannot send the courier late to pick up the order, because the food is gonna get cold. You cannot send it very early, because that's seconds that you're gonna have to be paying the courier, right? So it's a, it's a, it's a business about seconds and, and the more data you have about, okay, how long is this restaurant gonna take, um, to prepare a pizza? Or how long is it gonna take that same restaurant if instead of preparing a pizza, it's preparing, uh, a paella, right? Which is gonna take... So this is all data that you keep training the models. And then I would say that the last one is-

    20. HS

      Can you train models on ambiguous, uh, externalities? And what I mean by that is like, yes, traditionally speaking, it takes 15 minutes to cook a pizza at Pronto Pizza.

    21. OP

      Uh-

    22. HS

      But they've got a new person this week and they're 10 minutes late because they're new.

    23. OP

      (laughs)

    24. HS

      That's the, that's the challenge of real world, right?

    25. OP

      Yeah.

    26. HS

      Or it's raining, and so it takes longer for the driver to get there because it's raining. And so they're gonna be five minutes late to pick up.

    27. OP

      Yeah.

    28. HS

      Do, does data actually help in a highly ambiguous world?

    29. OP

      I mean, on the rain, yes, you can train, uh, on weather, and we have a lot of, uh, data, uh, live data-

    30. HS

      Mm-hmm.

  5. 12:52 – 16:19

    The McDonald's Deal That Saved the Company

    1. OP

    2. HS

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

    3. OP

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

    4. HS

      What was the test?

    5. OP

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

    6. HS

      Because you were a bunch of kids. (laughs)

    7. OP

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

    8. HS

      With McDonald's?

    9. OP

      Yeah, with McDonald's, because the, the CEO of Italy McDonald's was like, "Wow," you know? "You're doing pretty well. Who are you doing this with?" And, and, you know, with global. And, uh, and, and they also gave us the exclusivity for three years.

    10. HS

      So, a lot of founders are told early on when they meet a big customer, like a McDonald's, say, actually, like, "Don't let it influence your product strategy. Don't be too, uh, concentrated in your customer-"

    11. OP

      Mm.

    12. HS

      "... dominance," whatever you want to call it. Would you say that's wrong advice?

    13. OP

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

  6. 16:19 – 24:47

    Running out of Money Three Times: Fundraising Hell

    1. OP

      in most countries.

    2. HS

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

    3. OP

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

    4. HS

      (laughs)

    5. OP

      ... cap table. Like, there was-

    6. HS

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

    7. OP

      It was so many, and there were so many names that you would not know. So all the, all the typical VCs, or I would say all the European VCs, or most of them, passed on us. Nobody believed in our story, you know? A bunch of kids from Barcelona beating the Deliveroos and the Uber Eats of the world who were always, like, one step ahead in fundraising, right? So, um, I remember the series B, which was the first, like, large round. It was like 25 million. We were going to die because we had like, uh... No, no, we had... I had visited... I still have the list, 120 VCs that passed, not, not, not an email, but an actual call or, or a, or a meeting. And I just had no more VCs to pitch. Like, I, I Googled, and there were no more in Europe, right?

    8. HS

      (laughs)

    9. OP

      And that round, it was-

    10. HS

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

    11. OP

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

    12. HS

      Can I be blunt? What do you think of the European VC product at the early stage?

    13. OP

      Yeah, no, I struggled.I struggled a lot. Um, most of the people that I found had never built things, right? So it was really hard to connect. Even the, the ones that invested in us. Building a company is such a rollercoaster, right? That if you don't have people that are used to this rollercoaster, um, they add so much pressure, right? You get a lot of pressure from the com- from the business, because there's always bad news coming. And, but if you also get pressure from the VCs, it's like, "Look, I ... It's too much."

    14. HS

      I always say to founders, actually, it's one of the benefits of, another benefit of working with, like, the owner of a firm or the principal of a firm-

    15. OP

      Mm.

    16. HS

      ... is that no one's gonna fire me if I do a bad deal. In another firm, you do feel the pressure if you have not done great deals, and-

    17. OP

      Exactly.

    18. HS

      ... people do get let go. And so they bring that animosity and concern to you, the founder, because Glovo's not doing well, and now my other partners are looking at me going, "Glovo's not doing well, and we put in 10 million," and that is not helpful to you.

    19. OP

      Exactly. I felt that a lot. Yeah.

    20. HS

      Do you think that European founders are aggressive enough? You know, you are wonderfully talented, okay? (laughs)

    21. OP

      (laughs)

    22. HS

      But you're also very, um, humble.

    23. OP

      (laughs)

    24. HS

      And you are not a sales guy, no offense-

    25. OP

      Yeah.

    26. HS

      ... I mean, like, aggressively sales guy.

    27. OP

      No.

    28. HS

      Do you think Europeans lack that in the way that Americans are fucking amazing at it?

    29. OP

      I'd say on average, yes. Yeah, yeah, when you speak to not only Americans, also, I don't know, you go to Tel Aviv, you also feel that, um, that, that, that you just feel smaller, right? Um, and then you look at the business you have, and, and they, they have noth- nothing to envy.

    30. HS

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

  7. 24:47 – 28:43

    International Expansion: What Worked

    1. OP

      Look, the, the ... So after Spain and Italy-... when we realized we, we, we had cracked the model, we got super ambitious and we said, "Hey, uh," because Paris we failed. And we understood why we failed, because we were late.

    2. HS

      It- was it that simple?

    3. OP

      Yeah.

    4. HS

      We were late and we couldn't afford to outspend them?

    5. OP

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

    6. HS

      What worked there? What did you see?

    7. OP

      Uh, it was the same as, uh, uh, very similar to, to what we saw in, in Milan and Barcelona and Madrid.

    8. HS

      Which was frequency of orders? It was AOV? It was restaurant sign-ups? It was driver sign-ups? What was it like?

    9. OP

      No, it was the, the three sides of the marketplace, uh, were working. It was easy to convince restaurants. Uh, couriers, there was good availability, uh, but s- but the most important thing was customers, that we were acquiring customers and retaining them. And when we saw that, we were like, "Whoa. It, the platform works really far away from Barcelona. Let's go, let's go here." So, and then we, we s- we roll out, you know, LATAM. We went to countries that, uh-

    10. HS

      Just on LATAM while we're there before we go.

    11. OP

      Yeah.

    12. HS

      D- how do driver acquisition costs vary between Barcelona and Peru?

    13. OP

      Courier position is, is, uh, is now a huge line in the PNL in our business-

    14. HS

      Really?

    15. OP

      ... compared to ride hailing. Yeah, it's, it's, it's fairly cheap.

    16. HS

      Okay.

    17. OP

      Yeah.

    18. HS

      Acquisition strategy the same? Different?

    19. OP

      Uh, for, for customers?

    20. HS

      W- uh, no, for couriers actually.

    21. OP

      Yep.

    22. HS

      Same for couriers.

    23. OP

      Couriers-

    24. HS

      On customer side, was it different in terms of CACs and then channel?

    25. OP

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

    26. HS

      Okay, so we have Peru and we're like, "Wow, this works so well-"

    27. OP

      Mm-hmm.

    28. HS

      "... miles and miles away." What happens then? You were like, "Where else do we go?"

    29. OP

      So, look, I sent, uh, Arnau, Arnau was kind of our co-founder. He was our COO, and, and we sent him there to, to lead all LATAM for the, for the first two years. And we expanded to, I think, 10 or 12 countries. Meanwhile, I hired, um, I hired someone that came from Uber that had been doing expansion there. Uh, and we looked at the rest of the world. And, and where we, uh, places that we liked a lot, um, were, were countries that the investors, you know, I, I, I, I, I had to really convince them or even launch without their approval in countries like, uh, Kenya or, um, I don't know, or Kazakhstan, because f- from the European point of view, it was like, "Who's gonna order food delivery in Kenya?" I was like, "Well, (laughs) there's a lot of people with, with cellphones and, you know, people like food, and they like to, and they like convenience."

    30. HS

      Respectfully, are your AOVs not much reduced there?

  8. 28:43 – 31:22

    Lessons from Failures: What Brazil Taught Us

    1. OP

      end customer.

    2. HS

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

    3. OP

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

    4. HS

      How much money did you lose?

    5. OP

      It was like a black hole. Like, uh, um, probably we lost like 30, 40 million euros. (laughs)

    6. HS

      (laughs)

    7. OP

      And what, uh-

    8. HS

      What did you learn?

    9. OP

      Yeah, that we just did the wrong assessment. So, um, we looked at, uh, what was, what was there in the market. There was a company, very successful, called iFood. Um, and we thought that iFood was very similar to Just Eat, you know? When- whenever we, we saw Just Eat in, in any market, we, we, actually we launched because we knew we, we, we could compete against them and we could, uh, offer a better service. So we saw a lot of similar things, but we just did the wrong analysis. And when we went there, we realized that iFood had all the content, so all restaurants, all brands was, were delivering with iFood. They had a pretty good service. So at the end, these platforms are really sticky, right? So if a high percentage of population is already using iFood, you need to spend a lot of money in vouchers to convince customers to switch to another app. Even if they switch, they will tend to go back to their favorite app, right, unless you, you, you keep vouche ring them, right? And, and vouche ringing in our business is, is horrible because you don't have ... The margins are really thin. Anytime you go into a voucher, you, you go into negative economics.

    10. HS

      (sighs)

    11. OP

      So we had to shut down Brazil.

    12. HS

      How long did you give it?

    13. OP

      That was fast. It was like a year.

    14. HS

      Was that a tough decision to shut down at that year mark?

    15. OP

      Yeah, it was really tough. I think shutting down things is a, is a, is a super important skill for a founder because at the end, it's a, it's an ego thing, um, because you have to go against what you have previously told the board, the investors, the, the employees, right? Uh, one year before launching Brazil, I was selling the Brazil dream. I was telling everyone like, "Hey, this is gonna be massive and, and-"

    16. HS

      Look how many people there are.

    17. OP

      ... like, and even when you launch and you start seeing things, uh, not going super well, you have to keep selling it, right? Because you need to inject that energy into everyone. And one day, you're like, you have to go out there and be like, "Hey, you know, everything that I told you, I was wrong." And I think the, the toughest thing is, is this, the ego when you, you know, when you have to take this decision. Apart from, of course, how tough it is to, to, you know, in Brazil probably, we had 100 employees, we had to let them go. And they were doing things well. It, it just the, the market was too tough.

  9. 31:22 – 31:49

    How to Win in Emerging Markets

    1. OP

    2. HS

      Okay. So we go into these emerging markets, Kazakhstan, Kenya. What do we see? Like, all up and to the right?

    3. OP

      Pretty much.

    4. HS

      Why does this journey not get easier on the fundraising side? I'm, I'm confused. Like, we are now having, you know, Peru, Italy, Spain, Kazakhstan, uh, Kenya.

    5. OP

      Yeah. (laughs)

    6. HS

      Um, but who gives a fuck? They're performing great and the unit econ are looking good. We're starting to see the benefits of scale. Why are investors not flocking

  10. 31:49 – 33:33

    The Burn Rate (Burning $1M per day) and Investor Concerns

    1. HS

      to you at this point?

    2. OP

      So, I think there were two things. Um, one was the burn. The burn was really scary, uh, and it, it kept going up, no?

    3. HS

      (laughs)

    4. OP

      15, 20, 30.

    5. HS

      Did it make you-

    6. OP

      It was-

    7. HS

      Did it make you nervous?

    8. OP

      Yeah. Yeah, of course, 'cause y- you saw, like, I, I, one thing I did during seven years was checking how much cash we had in the bank for seven years, right? And, and, and it keeps going down every single day. And it's, it was crazy how-

    9. HS

      Also, it keeps going down, no offense, a lot.

    10. OP

      A lot.

    11. HS

      Like, uh, if you're doing 30 mil a month, I mean...

    12. OP

      A million a day. When we launched in LATAM, we had a competitor there, uh, very well funded called Rappi.

    13. HS

      Oh, yeah.

    14. OP

      Yeah. They, they would, they raised from, they, they were the, the best fundraisers, they raised from Sequoia, from I think-

    15. HS

      SoftBank?

    16. OP

      ... from DST, SoftBank. And it's crazy, when we went there, it was, we went from saying, "Hey, these guys are crazy, they're so irrational," to doing exactly what they were doing in a matter of three months. League exclusivities are worth a lot.

    17. HS

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

    18. OP

      Yeah.

    19. HS

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

    20. OP

      We do it ourselves. It does pay back.

    21. HS

      How long does it take to pay back?

    22. OP

      (laughs)

    23. HS

      I know it depends, but like, what's acceptable payback?

    24. OP

      We usually invest at, uh, three, four years payback.

    25. HS

      Three, four years payback?

    26. OP

      Yeah.

    27. HS

      And then you get the exclus- exclusivity for three to four years?

    28. OP

      Yeah. Well, it depends. It depends.

    29. HS

      Wow. That's astonishing.

    30. OP

      (laughs)

  11. 33:33 – 34:28

    Scaling Challenges and Competitor Threats

    1. HS

      okay, right. So one, the burn was very high, that was one reason why I didn't like it. You said there were two.

    2. OP

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

    3. HS

      You mentioned layoffs in Brazil. Super hard thing to

  12. 34:28 – 36:13

    The Biggest BS Elements of Company Values

    1. HS

      do. I do wanna talk about talent. Um, building a business is merely a collection of people. Uh, you said some great things before about talent. You said to me before about rewriting values. Everyone might, uh, you know, I speak to mostly Americans and they love mission and values. Um, what are your biggest lessons on rewriting values?

    2. OP

      It's something that I've pushed, uh, in, in my, in my, in the executive team every single year, right? So we block a few hours, we look at the values, and even though 12 months ago we all agreed on every single word on how to define each one of the six values that we have, every time we sit down and we look at them, we're like, "Ugh, this doesn't feel right anymore. We should, we can improve it with this word or changing this, or maybe adding a new value," right? We haven't changed the values so much, but we have proactively worked on them on a yearly basis. I think the problem was when we got to, like, 1000 employees, uh, that's when we messed up the culture. That's when we, and it, it's, it was all my fault, because...

    3. HS

      Yeah, you said you ruined the culture.

    4. OP

      Yeah. (sighs)

    5. HS

      Why, why did you ruin it, and what did you do?

    6. OP

      (laughs)

    7. HS

      (laughs)

    8. OP

      Look, wh- when you are, when you're hyperscaling, uh, it's really easy to have a very aligned culture and everyone working super hard, right? Because it's, everybody's so stretched. You're always behind the business, right? You, uh, like, the, it's, everyone's responsibilities is huge, no? And that, and that, that challenge and that, that, you know, that, it, it just pushes everyone to work really hard. But it's inevitable but, that one day your business starts growing at, at 30%

  13. 36:13 – 42:27

    How I Ruined the Culture of the Company

    1. OP

      year on year. And that coincided when we got to, uh, around 1000 people, and I think I ruined it because I started getting scared of some, uh, part of our team reacting to how I said certain things, no? And I started being a bit of a politician. So what do politicians do? They, they say things in a way that a l- a very large percentage of the population will like it. It always gets to a, that first all hands or Zoom call where you say something, uh, you're talking about values, you're talking about work ethic, you're talking about the importance of working really hard and long hours. And when you finish the call, like, you're gonna get a message from someone, like, "Hey, what you said maybe was a bit too aggressive. Uh, certain people in my team, uh, you know, didn't like it." And as a young founder, you know, when I started got- getting those messages, I, I, I was like, "Oof, yeah, it's true. Maybe I was too aggressive. Maybe I should thi- say things a bit nicer." And that was the beginning of, uh...... uh, not the end because we have, you know, reconducted it.

    2. HS

      How do you think about that? I'd love your help here, because I, I think I, I don't have that at all.

    3. OP

      (laughs)

    4. HS

      Like, I'm very, very bullish and kind of confident in my leadership. But the challenge is some people find that abrasive and bluntly too direct.

    5. OP

      Yeah.

    6. HS

      And part of me listens to this and goes, "Ha ha, I'm right to be this way." Like, brilliant. I'm not affected by kind of bluntly weak people who get offended by it. But then you do have talented people who you want to feel empowered and opinionated and great. How do you think about that balance?

    7. OP

      The day I, I realized I was, uh, I was, uh, uh, ruining the culture was in a, in a Christmas party of, uh, Glovo. And I, I was in a, in a conversation with a few engineers. At that moment, there was a company poaching a lot of our engineers. And that company, I'm not going to name the, who it is, but they, they were, they, they, they worked really hard there. No, they had a very hardworking culture. And I heard one engineer saying, "Yeah, I was also poached, but I, I decided not to go there because they work really hard there." And when I said that, when I heard that, I was like, "Shit." Like, it's not only that the, the, the intensity starts going down of the company, it's that you're losing the hardworking people to another company that is achieving to set and keep that intensity, right? So it's also a network effect-

    8. HS

      Wh-

    9. OP

      ... that you need to keep working on.

    10. HS

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

    11. OP

      (sighs) It was.

    12. HS

      What did you do?

    13. OP

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

    14. HS

      Respectfully, is it lack of work ethic or is it wokeness?

    15. OP

      I think it's just, um, human nature that, uh, if, uh, nobody, if your leader is not on top of you, you know, raising the standards, pushing for faster deliveries, uh-

    16. HS

      How do you do that as a leader?

    17. OP

      ... you just relax.

    18. HS

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

    19. OP

      I wouldn't point to a single thing, but it, it's just everywhere. It's when you recruit people, in that interview, you have to be super transparent about what you expect in terms of, uh, of working hard. And if you feel that he or she doesn't understand what working hard is, you, you explain it. It's like, "Hey, look, most of the days I'm here in the office until 8:00, and I hope you're f- you know, you, you might have to do the same. And on weekends, I connect." The people you fire is, uh, another mega signal. Uh, and then in every single meeting, like I, I, I try, when I walk into a meeting, I try to remind myself, "Okay, my, my mission here is just to add more velocity and to raise the standards." No, nothing that they will present is going to be fine. No, this is the mentality that any leader has to go into because if you go to report and you see the manager, your leader is fine with everything you're presenting, I think it's just human nature that the next time you have to, to, to report, it's going to be a little less quality.

    20. HS

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

    21. OP

      Look, I, I've had two, two stages at Glovo. One was hyperscaling. And, and as I said before, I think in hyperscaling things can work with the CEO being away fundraising because there's just so much energy into the business that, that is transmitted. Um, and it, you know, and actually that's what I had to do. I was all day fundraising. No, I was almost until six hours a day fundraising and then I, I worked in the business. Um, and then my new stage was when, you know, after acquisition of Delivery Hero, which coincided when we started growing at, I don't know, 30% year on year. And, and when you're at this growth rates, which, which are good, but it's not hyperscale or hypergrowth, um, that's when you need... you cannot sit back. No, you need to be injecting velocity and energy into what I said before, not into any single meeting where you go.

    22. HS

      Totally agree with you. Uh, I, I think you always fundraise as a CEO, so don't worry about that.

    23. OP

      (laughs)

    24. HS

      Um,

  14. 42:27 – 43:26

    Layoffs and Talent Management

    1. HS

      how were the layoffs? Layoffs suck. If you were to advise founders on giving layoffs, I think there's more coming, what would you advise a founder who is about to give layoffs?

    2. OP

      So we, unfortunately, we've done a few layoffs. Um, what I found is, is that people are, uh, are a lot more mature than when you expect when you're planning the comms and all that. I don't know, we've, we've always put a lot of budget into it to treat people well. It's not only about the people that will be, will be leaving, which, uh, they deserve it. It's not their fault that you have to lay off or do a big layoff. But it's, it's even more important for the people that stay, because those people that you lay off are their friends and the way they exit the company is super important in the post-layoff era, no? So we've...I, I always push 􏰀no􏰀, we always got the, the layoff proposal from the HR department. I always push for more. Let's give them more, 'cause it's, it's, it's ... For sure it's a good investment.

    3. HS

      I always say to people, like, "The way you leave somewhere is often the way

  15. 43:26 – 46:21

    Biggest Lessons from M&A

    1. HS

      you're remembered." When we chatted before, you said that you did too much M&A.

    2. OP

      Yeah.

    3. HS

      Wh- what did you mean by that?

    4. OP

      I did a lot of M&A. I think entrepreneurs are, are by nature very optimistic, and, and you think only about the upsides, no? Like, "Well, I'm gonna take this company, I'm just gonna connect it to Glovo." Eventually, we shut down everything, uh, and my conclusion was I was just too optimistic, uh, about the upside, but not looking at how complex it is to integrate different tech stacks, different cultures, different teams. Of course, when you buy a company, that founder will most probably stop thinking about building and, and, and, and leave.

    5. HS

      What was the biggest acquisition you made?

    6. OP

      So we bought a couple Instacart, uh, type of businesses, right? Sort of large baskets, grocery marketplaces. One in Spain and one in Portugal.

    7. HS

      How much did you spend on them?

    8. OP

      Maybe like five million each. I don't remember.

    9. HS

      Five million each? That doesn't feel like, bluntly, a huge amount of money.

    10. OP

      No.

    11. HS

      Like this is not a sink the boat decision.

    12. OP

      No, no. It wasn't huge, but, um, it was also a lot of the focus. I wa- I also got really excited, right? Because it was like, uh, me going back to the beginnings and starting again, and I, I talked a lot about it to the company, so. Now I think about it, I'm like, "Man, you're so stupid. Just our business is about focusing on the small details every single day and making the marketplace better every single day, not about, you know, expanding to other things."

    13. HS

      How do you think about market depth versus breadth, in terms of, like, penetration of ... You know, you could have stayed in Italy and Spain and just gone more services, more services, gone into pharmacy, gone into cash delivery, gone into, um, driver banking and financing. I mean, we could take this-

    14. OP

      Yeah.

    15. HS

      ... a long way. Versus breadth, as you did, of Peru, Kazakhstan, Kenya.

    16. OP

      I think the answer to that is, uh, how time-sensitive it is, uh, and, and, and, and, and when is your right to win, no? So for example, I know I can, I can keep expanding now in, in Italy and in Spain into other delivery services because we have already won the battles, right? We are already by far the largest delivery brand, right? So, um, the opportunity of groceries or pharma, where we're growing very fast, is still there. And we can, and we can crack it and we can invest massively now in 2025. It- the opportunities are still there. If you go to Peru or you go to, I don't know, uh, to, uh, Romania, i- it was now or never decision back in 2018 because you had to be the first mover. Like, getting there first and building the scale, it was a, it was a now or never, no? So, now we know that, you know, our playbook basically is, number one, winning food delivery and restaurant delivery, and number two, expand multi-category. And we think the second will be much larger than the first, but it's just a matter of, of, uh, of the timing

  16. 46:21 – 47:31

    The Future of Quick Commerce

    1. OP

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

  17. 47:31 – 51:23

    Acquisition by Delivery Hero

    1. OP

      of it.

    2. HS

      Before we get to the future of eCommerce, you built a business's scale where acquisition offers start to come, and you decided to take the acquisition offer at one point.

    3. OP

      Yeah.

    4. HS

      Why did you decide to sell? And was it the first acquisition offer?

    5. OP

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

    6. HS

      How much was it for?

    7. OP

      I think 100 million, and, uh, we had, uh, half of the board was in favor of taking it (laughs) . I guess it made sense for them.

    8. HS

      How much did you have of the business then?

    9. OP

      Maybe 25%, 30%.

    10. HS

      25, 30 million's a lot when you're 25, 26. I mean, it's a lot at any time, but when you're t-

    11. OP

      Yeah.

    12. HS

      Was any part of you tempted?

    13. OP

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

    14. HS

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

    15. OP

      First of all, Delivery Hero invested in Glovo in series B.

    16. HS

      Uh-huh.

    17. OP

      It was part of, you know, those rounds that nobody wanted to invest, so we ended up taking the competitor's money (laughs) . We were competing against Delivery Hero in some markets. Uh, and, and Delivery Hero also did some investments, and, and we, we, we agreed to take their money. Why did we decide to sell? Well, after the series ... I think it was the series F. You know, that moment when you close the round, you go to a notary, you're so happy, but, you know, you go back to the office, you look at the business plan, and you're with your CFO, uh, with Edu, and I was like, "Edu, we, we need to start fundraising for the next one." (laughs)

    18. HS

      (laughs)

    19. OP

      Right? We cannot wait much. And we looked at each other, and we were like, "I- I can't do another one. Like, emotionally, I can't." Because every single round was so stressful. And, and it was rational also not to do it because w-... in every single round, there were high chances of failing and, and, and, and having to shut down the company. So that's when we decided, hey, either we IPO or, or we sell. And we started looking at both options. Um, IPO-ing with, uh, the, we were still burning almost a million a year- uh, a day. A million a day, so 30... (laughs)

    20. HS

      (laughs) When you heard it, was like, "Wow, I think capital efficiency is really taking effect at a million a day." Okay.

    21. OP

      So IPO wasn't very viable. Um...

    22. HS

      And you, and you weren't profitable.

    23. OP

      We were not profitable. We were already at, uh, three billion top line, and then we started looking for a sale, and we talked to, to all the potential buyers and, and Delivery Hero by far was the, the best bidder, not only for, for my investors, but also for the, for the team and for me, right? Because, uh, uh, basically, Delivery Hero operating model is, is, is, uh, is to empower local brands. You know, they have, uh, Talabat in Middle East, which actually recently IPO and they have 80%. They have a PedidosYa in, in South America. They have Glovo now. So they, they, they have a bunch of amazing delivery brands and they empower them with a lot of technology and with, uh, capital when, when we needed it. Um, so this allowed us to keep operating and keep running the business, and it was, uh, it was a great deal for everyone.

    24. HS

      Can I ask, how much did they buy it for?

    25. OP

      It was an all-stock acquisition for 2.3 billion.

    26. HS

      When you sign that deal, how does it feel?

    27. OP

      It was 31st of December. (laughs) We had to do it in 2021. I felt really good. I felt like, you know, part of the mission was completed, uh, which, uh, which was on one end, you know, uh, returning the money, and on the other, making sure that Glovo would keep existing, no? Keep delivering to customers, keep serving, uh, riders and, and restaurants.

  18. 51:23 – 58:40

    Post-Acquisition Reflections

    1. OP

    2. HS

      With that, bluntly, on paper, you suddenly have, I don't know, whatever your ownership was, $220 million, $300 million, whatever it was at stock. You don't seem like a guy who really cares that much about money, Oscar.

    3. OP

      (laughs) No.

    4. HS

      How did it change your mindset?

    5. OP

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

    6. HS

      And you're still at Delivery Hero today, right? Still in the role?

    7. OP

      Yeah. Yeah.

    8. HS

      Most leave post-acquisition.

    9. OP

      It's something that I think about. On one hand, I co-founded a, uh, a small VC in, in Europe called Yellow. So it's a 30 million fund we invest in in young entrepreneurs. And, uh, it's, it's a bit of a hobby.

    10. HS

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

    11. OP

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

    12. HS

      What have been your biggest lessons from investing as well?

    13. OP

      (laughs) I think when, one thing I realized, as a first-time founder, when I spoke to VCs back then, I thought I was having a one-on-one conversation. Uh, and in reality is like if you are broadcasting to the entire VC community, you know? So the amount of chit-chatting that happens across all the VCs, like they're, they're, they're talking all day, like they're, they're sharing all the deals, they're sharing all the intel. So that, that's an advice for, for all founders, especially first-time founders, like it's a very, very connected community. Anything you're saying to one, don't try to play games, uh, assuming that, that conversations are confidential, because they're not.

    14. HS

      Also, like, don't go out too early. This is often i- not in my interest, but, like, don't go out too early, 'cause they talk so much that if you go and meet one, it will likely go in a associates WhatsApp group that, that you are meeting. Do you see what I mean?

    15. OP

      Yeah.

    16. HS

      And then suddenly, people think you're raising.

    17. OP

      Exactly.

    18. HS

      And su- and then suddenly it's like, "Oh, well, we turned them down." And it gets known as, "Oh, they were turned down by Accel or Index," or whoever it was. And suddenly, like, vicious rumors can start.

    19. OP

      Yeah. Totally. I've seen that. Yeah.

    20. HS

      That's dangerous.

    21. OP

      Yeah.

    22. HS

      So, okay, totally agree. Any others?

    23. OP

      Any others?

    24. HS

      Will you still be at Delivery Hero in five years?

    25. OP

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

    26. HS

      Is Glovo profitable today?

    27. OP

      Yeah.Yeah, we just turned profitable. We just turned 10 years, and, and the last, last, uh, semester was our first, uh, profitable semester.

    28. HS

      Fucking amazing.

    29. OP

      (laughs)

    30. HS

      That must be a special moment.

  19. 58:40 – 1:03:28

    The CEO on Trial and Facing Prison

    1. HS

      hear that.

    2. OP

      I agree, yeah.

    3. HS

      One element that I do just have to discuss before we do a quick fire is regulation. Regulation is difficult to implement, and sometimes poorly done.

    4. OP

      Mm-hmm.

    5. HS

      When I look at the market that you operate a lot of time, and it seems like Uber have a lot of freedom to do what they want to do-

    6. OP

      Mm-hmm.

    7. HS

      ... and you maybe don't, is regulation enacted fairly?

    8. OP

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

    9. HS

      Does, does that make you very nervous?

    10. OP

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

    11. HS

      Is that lobbying? Is someone paying for that?

    12. OP

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

    13. HS

      Do you worry it's going to get worse? If we're just being blunt, eh, EU has hired 1,500 people for AI safety-

    14. OP

      (laughs)

    15. HS

      ... policing. Do you worry that it's gonna get worse?

    16. OP

      Generally, I'm very optimistic in life, but, uh, but I just don't see the incentives so that this trend changes. So in, no, in, in EU and regulations getting easier for the next wave of entrepreneurs, I'm not super optimistic.

    17. HS

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

    18. OP

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

    19. HS

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

    20. OP

      If you sustain a hardworking culture, you will, you will keep finding it. The talent is there. Young talent that wants to work hard, y- I mean, you don't need to convince, uh, you know, a million people. That's what I told the team, like, when they told me, "No, because now, you know, n- younger talent, they want more l- work/life balance." I'm like, "Look, I only need 1,000. Like," "... I don't need to convince the entire-"

    21. HS

      (laughs)

    22. OP

      "... young community. I just need 1,000 people that want to work hard, and

  20. 1:03:28 – 1:09:17

    Quick-Fire Round

    1. OP

      you will find them."

    2. HS

      Dude, I want to do a quick fire. I could talk to you all day. So, let's start with, what do you believe most that most people around you disbelieve?

    3. OP

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

    4. HS

      Which competitor do you most respect and why?

    5. OP

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

    6. HS

      Which market are you number two in that you would most like to be number one in?

    7. OP

      I'd say Portugal, but we, but, but we're gonna get there in a year.

    8. HS

      (laughs)

    9. OP

      Uber Eats is still ahead because we launched too late, but we're gonna get there.

    10. HS

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

    11. OP

      Bea from Seaya. She was the first, uh, VC that believed in us, and she was in the board all the way until the very last day.

    12. HS

      What makes a great board member to you?

    13. OP

      What I loved about her is, uh, she always told me, "Hey, Oscar..." Because, you know, most of the conversations with her were, were around fundraising. And she was always like, "Hey, look, I know that if you don't call me, it's that you don't have news." While most of the other investors were l- were like, "How's the term sheet going? Have you received the term sheet? Are they signing it? How, how did that..." And also, this just added so much pressure because they were suffering also. And, and Bea knew that the moment I had good news, I would call her immediately. So, I appreciate it a lot. (laughs)

    14. HS

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

    15. OP

      Look, I was lucky that my, um, my parents had money. So, we've never lacked anything at home. But at the same time, I saw my father working until 2:00 AM every single day. Every single day. And that, I think, marked me a lot. I think that's also the, the other very important reason, uh, to keep working, you know, just to, to, to show the example to your kids. I, I don't... I'm not a father yet, but, uh, but I know that when I am, it's really important that your kids see you suffering every day, or (laughs) not every day, but that they don't see that it's easy life all the time.

    16. HS

      One of the most famous CEOs in the world said to me once that if you want to learn to be a good parent, just watch the Discovery Channel or National Geographic and watch the elephants.

    17. OP

      (laughs)

    18. HS

      Yeah? The little ones learn by watching the big ones. You learn by doing.

    19. OP

      Yeah.

    20. HS

      And so if you want your kids to work hard, you got to work hard.

    21. OP

      Yeah.

    22. HS

      Exactly the same.

    23. OP

      Exactly.

    24. HS

      Can I ask you, did having a bit of a safety net, like, not worrying about money, help you as an entrepreneur? I always kind of say I'm, I'm not an entrepreneur.

    25. OP

      Yup.

    26. HS

      I started... My family was kind of middle class, but, like, I lived at home in a nice home. Mom paid for food. I was going to be a law scholar. If mine failed, I'd just be, like, a middle-class lawyer. Wasn't that risky?

    27. OP

      (laughs) Uh, I think it helped me in, uh, having irrational ambition, um, and, and taking a lot of risks, to the point that we almost shut down the company three times, right? Because I was always pushing to the limit so much because, I guess, back to your point, I guess that I wasn't that scared about death, no? I didn't have kids. I didn't have a house. For the first four years, I was living with my parents. So, I was like, "Look, (huffs) if it, if this..." I mean, I was, I would be terribly sad, but my life didn't depend on it.

    28. HS

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

    29. OP

      I think, uh, Vinted. I, I, I think about Vinted a lot, yeah. Because I like, uh, big consumer platforms, and of course, I like the impact they have.

    30. HS

      Do you know Thomas?

Episode duration: 1:09:18

Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript

Transcript of episode Tt9NJ62xEIc

Get more out of YouTube videos.

High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.

Add to Chrome