The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
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
26 Feb 2025
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
Full Episode
The first round was valued at 280k free money, and we raised 100k.
Wow!
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 Deliveroo's and the Uber Eats of the world. I remember the Series B, it was like 25 million. We were going to die, so we unlocked the biggest deal of all history for delivery, which was... And that was a huge inflection point.
This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and the show today is the most incredible founding journey. Oscar Pierre is the founder and CEO at Glovo, the food delivery site that will get you anything you want to your doorstep. Now, this story is insane. The company started by Oscar 11 years ago in their pre-seed round. sold a third of the company for just 100,000 euros.
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 even came from the CEO of Rakuten, who Oscar met an FC Barcelona drinks party. Today, they are part of Delivery Hero, who acquired them for 2.2 billion dollars. They've delivered 1 billion orders and have almost 60 million customers.
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