20VC: The Insane Story of Glovo: Selling 30% of the Company for €100K | The McDonalds Deal That Saved Them | Running out of Money Three Times | Burning $1M Per Day | Being Acquired for $2.2BN with Oscar Pierre, Founder @ Glovo
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 693 Ratings
🗓️ 26 February 2025
⏱️ 67 minutes
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Summary
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:
04:27 Starting with Nothing
07:30 The First Funding Round: Selling ⅓ of the Company for €100K
09:23 Marketplace Dynamics and Expansion
15:34 The McDonald's Deal That Saved the Company
18:38 Running out of Money Three Times: Fundraising Hell
25:57 International Expansion: What Worked
29:25 Lessons from Failures: What Brazil Taught Us
31:36 How to Win in Emerging Markets
32:02 The Burn Rate (Burning $1M per day) and Investor Concerns
33:29 Scaling Challenges and Competitor Threats
34:29 The Biggest BS Elements of Company Values
35:40 How I Ruined the Culture of the Company
41:14 Layoffs and Talent Management
42:06 Biggest Lessons from M&A
44:41 The Future of Quick Commerce
45:38 Acquisition by Delivery Hero
48:56 Post-Acquisition Reflections
54:47 The CEO on Trial and Facing Prison
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The first round was valued at 280K free money and we raised 100K. |
| 0:05.0 | Wow. |
| 0:06.0 | I would say all the European BCs or most of them passed on us. |
| 0:09.0 | Nobody believed in our story, you know, a bunch of kids from Barcelona, |
| 0:13.0 | beating the Deliveros and the Uberidge of the world. |
| 0:15.0 | I remember the series B, it was like 25 million. |
| 0:18.0 | We were going to die. |
| 0:19.0 | So we unlocked the biggest deal of all history |
| 0:21.8 | of food delivery, which was... And that was a huge inflection point. |
| 0:26.9 | This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and the show state is the most incredible founding |
| 0:31.5 | journey. Oscar Pierre is the founder and CEO at Glovo, the food delivery site that will get |
| 0:36.9 | you anything you want to your doorstep. |
| 0:39.4 | Now, this story is insane. The company started by Oscar 11 years ago, in their pre-seed round, |
| 0:45.4 | sold a third of the company for just 100,000 euros. The company was later saved by a deal |
| 0:51.3 | they made with McDonald's. The company nearly ran out of money on several |
| 0:55.0 | occasions. One time, the funding round even came from the CEO of Rakuten, who Oscar met an |
| 1:01.4 | FC Barcelona drinks party. Today, they are part of delivery hero who acquired them for $2.2 |
| 1:07.6 | billion. They've delivered one billion orders and have almost 60 million customers. |
| 1:13.1 | This was such an incredible story to tell. But before we dive in today, here are two fun facts about |
| 1:18.8 | our newest brand sponsor, Kajabi. First, their customers just crossed a collective $8 billion in |
| 1:24.9 | total revenue. Wow. Second, Kajabi's users keep 100% of their earnings, |
| 1:30.3 | with the average Kajabi creator bringing in over $30,000 per year. In case you didn't know, |
... |
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