Deliveroo boss: London founders are still the best in the business
London as a location to both conduct business and start a business is increasingly a hot topic. Having started Deliveroo in London a decade ago and listing the business on the London Stock Exchange eight years later, I’ve seen firsthand how the start-up scene here works.
I still firmly believe that London is brilliant for business, in particular for start-ups and entrepreneurialism. We have enormous talent backed by a supportive ecosystem, infrastructure and culture. And that’s on top of London being a really great place to live. We’ve had our bumps and challenges along the way at Deliveroo, but I am extremely proud to call the UK both my home and the home of Deliveroo. That’s why I recently applied to become a UK citizen.
Deliveroo celebrated its 10th anniversary this year and it has been surreal to look back at what we have achieved. Ten markets, approximately 179,000 restaurants and grocery partners, 150,000 riders, and over 7 million monthly active consumers worldwide.
But it all started back in Chelsea, with me and my best friend Greg and our first restaurant partner, Rossopomodoro. It’s been an extraordinary decade for both Deliveroo and the UK business scene. Back then London had all the right ingredients to make Deliveroo a recipe for success – and it still does today. We had access to talent from the UK and across the world, with members of our early team hailing from India, Europe and the US; we have been able to attract capital from global investors that supercharged our growth; and there is a thriving ecosystem of like-minded entrepreneurs providing support.
Deliveroo has not just grown as a business itself, it has also been an incubator for successful start-ups and new tech talent. One of the things I am most proud of are the 50 Deliveroo alumni who have gone on to set-up remarkable businesses themselves – the majority here in the UK. They have built disruptive, innovative startups which have created over 1,100 jobs across the UK and Europe in industries ranging from fintech and data management to women’s wellness.
The businesses range from food tech start-up Taster, that creates delivery-only food brands, to Zego, a leading insurance provider. From Peanut, the app to support finding friends through pregnancy and motherhood, to Ravio, a compensation benchmarking platform. From Stitch, a health startup to improve patient’s experience of medical trials, to RedKite, a data management company, and to Sessions, a company creating exciting new food concepts.
I’m continually amazed by the creativity and innovation shown by not only Deliveroo alumni, but budding entrepreneurs and business founders across London and the UK.
What these new founders all have in common is that they were at Deliveroo in the early days. They saw what is possible when hard work, risk-taking, insightful ideas and complex problem solving all come together. They cut their teeth in a culture that necessitated and rewarded taking bets, and now they’ve done it for themselves. We need more of this art-of-the-possible ecosystem, in which ever-growing generations of founders inspire others to pursue their own ideas. This should be a self-reinforcing culture, where the startups we foster today themselves inspire new startups tomorrow.
To make this possible, we should be more open to risk-taking. Britain doesn’t always champion this as it should, in the way this is promoted in the US, for example. New business models and start-ups are not always going to succeed, but regardless of outcome we should back the entrepreneurial spirit that leads people to try. Failure can be positive when it’s the route to learning to succeed – and we need to talk about this more.
More people should be encouraged to start their own ventures, with the risk-taking mindset that underpins entrepreneurialism promoted at an early age and the right environment developed to enable people to challenge how parts of our sectors and markets operate. It’s positive that the Government is looking at this agenda.
If we don’t champion entrepreneurship, we risk falling behind other global innovation hubs and losing talent, even though we have all the ingredients and creativity right here in London. Those who left Deliveroo to become founders in their own right will create jobs and help to stimulate growth, which is so vital to the country right now. I hope there are more like them in future.