Will Shu: American-born founder and CEO of Deliveroo, the UK food delivery company he grew from an idea while working in finance in London into a multi-billion-pound publicly traded business.
What this episode covers
Will Shu tells the story of how a bad Tesco microwave meal during a 100-hour finance work week inspired Deliveroo, which he launched in 2013 with childhood friend and co-founder Greg Orlowski. He describes the scrappy early days delivering food himself in a kangaroo costume, hiring through Gumtree, and using hotel door hangers as guerrilla marketing. Shu opens up about the hardest moments: a $600M funding round collapsing days before close, an 16-18 month antitrust review that froze Amazon's investment as Covid crushed the business, and the pain of mass layoffs. He reflects candidly on the loneliness of founding, struggling with relationships and friendships, and not knowing whether his personal journey still aligns with the company's. The conversation closes on Deliveroo's future vision of making food online emotional and social rather than transactional.
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
Burger King Whopper
Burger King
“i ordered 25 whoppers because burger king had this dollar whopper special and everyone's like what are you doing”— Will Shu
Calm
Calm
“sometimes i tried that calm app yeah i got through day six of the 30 day challenge got got a little bored at day seven”— Will Shu
Bloomberg Terminal
Bloomberg
“i'd worked in finance and i worked at hedge fund sat in front of a bloomberg machine right so i'm just on gumtree”— Will Shu
Uber Eats
Uber
“but how are we supposed to compete when we compete against the likes of uber and justine you know that are well funded”— Will Shu
Big reveals from this episode
- A roughly $600-700 million funding round from one of the world's biggest funds collapsed three days before closing in summer 2017, forcing 25 emergency investor meetings worldwide.
- The UK antitrust authority (CMA) blocked Deliveroo from accessing Amazon's investment for 16-18 months, leaving Amazon a minority shareholder while the company ran low on cash.
- During Covid, restaurants vanished from the platform and the company had to make major layoffs while still cash-starved from the antitrust freeze.
- Shu cites the Covid-era layoffs as the hardest thing he has ever had to do as a founder.
- Deliveroo's very first order was delivered by Shu himself to a friend, and he delivered the pizza upside down, turning it into a calzone, then ate it.
- Bartlett reveals his own first business grew to be worth 300 million only after running out of money forced first-principles thinking that led to building Facebook pages.
- Despite running a multi-billion-pound public company, Shu still personally did five deliveries the previous night in Notting Hill.
Worth remembering
- The idea for Deliveroo came on Shu's first day in London when colleagues working late ate Tesco microwave meals instead of proper food.
- Shu didn't do real marketing for the first couple of years, instead wearing a kangaroo costume to hand out flyers.
- Shu used hotel-style 'do not disturb' door hangers listing local restaurants as cheap marketing, costing about 20p each.
- The police contacted Deliveroo worried the door hangers were a method for burglars to identify vacant homes.
- An early concept for the company was called 'booze food,' aimed at letting people order food at 3am after nights out.
- Alternative names considered included 'food pony' and 'food mule.'
- A Starbucks repeatedly kicked Shu and three Pakistani riders out, an experience of prejudice that shaped his focus on treating riders with respect.
- Three of Deliveroo's original four riders still work with the company, one now doing rider support in Dubai.
- Index Ventures gave Deliveroo its first investment of 2.7 million pounds.
- Shu credits the iPhone and iOS SDK (2008) as the prerequisite technology that made Deliveroo possible, having abandoned an earlier 2008 attempt.