From Scrappy Startup to €2.3B Exit: Lessons from Glovo's CEO & Founder
Oscar Pierre's key insights on scaling Glovo, shared in his 20VC interview with Harry Stebbings
I loved the interview Oscar Pierre, Glovo CEO & Founder, gave to Harry Stebbings on 20VC.
It’s a concentrated dose of insights on entrepreneurship and growth.
Born in Barcelona, Spain, Oscar founded Glovo - an on-demand delivery app covering restaurants, grocers, supermarkets, retail stores, and pharmacies - at just 22 years old.
Hearing him talk about Glovo’s journey hit close to home.
I spent 6+ years at Deliveroo, fiercely competing with Glovo in Italy. Every challenge he described, the tough calls, the high-stakes decisions, the relentless push for growth, felt familiar. My colleagues and I lived through many of them firsthand.
Listening to him brought back a flood of memories, some tough, but mostly good. The kind that remind you why the journey was worth it.
That’s why I wrote this piece.
I took extensive notes from the interview and distilled them into a collection of key insights. Below, you’ll find what stood out the most ⬇️
🍔 The original idea: The very first idea was to build an “Uber for errands”, but when people began ordering Big Macs, they quickly realized food delivery was the real game-changer.
🛠️ Scrappiness: With only €10K in the bank, Oscar found a Russian development firm online that built the first version of the app for €8K, giving him something tangible to pitch to investors (also the app did not work very well).
📈 Marketplace dynamics: Marketplaces like food delivery work on a city or a national level. Growth comes from securing major partnerships (e.g. signing McDonald’s unlocks food delivery for all their locations in a country) or investing in broad-reaching channels like TV advertising.
🏆 First-mover advantage: One of the most important learnings as a founder in this industry. In food delivery, you must be either the undisputed #1 or a strong #2. Launching a market first gives you a huge competitive edge. In France, Glovo failed because they entered too late, customer acquisition was expensive and inefficient.
📊 Scale = better unit economics: Being the largest logistics fleet in a city reduces delivery costs. Also more data means better algorithms. Scale wins.
🍟 The McDonald’s partnership: Convincing McDonald’s to break its Uber Eats exclusivity was Glovo’s biggest growth unlock. Initially, 70% of Glovo’s orders came from McDonald’s, but over time, that dependency dropped to 10-20%.
⚠️ Being at the edge of bankruptcy: Oscar and Glovo were rejected by 120+ VCs. They survived bankruptcy 3 times. He later realized he might have been too humble and transparent. On the other side, some investors underestimated the power of relentless execution and a scrappy culture.
🎲 Luck & networking: Glovo’s Series A was “saved” when Oscar attended an FC Barcelona event where Hiroshi Mikitani, Rakuten’s founder (a sponsor for Barcelona at that time) met him and decided to lead the round, investing €15M.
🔍 Learning from competitors: Initially, Glovo thought Rappi (big competitor in LATAM) was irrational in some of their strategies. But seeing how high the stakes were, they started mirroring Rappi’s “irrational” moves, like restaurant exclusivity deals1.
⚖️ How company culture gets ruined: Oscar admitted that at one point, he became too much of a "politician", saying what people wanted to hear instead of staying radically transparent. The wake-up call arrived when he heard a Glovo engineer at a Christmas party saying he didn’t join a competitor because he’d have to work harder.
🔄 Fixing a broken culture: The solution was extreme transparency, setting clear expectations, and parting ways with those who didn’t align. It led to a year of toxicity and tough decisions, but it was necessary.
🏃♂️ The CEO mindset: Oscar’s philosophy for a great CEO is to increase velocity and raise the bar. Nothing should ever be just "fine", leaders should always demand more.
👥 Handling layoffs: While severance matters, what’s more important is how you treat the employees who stay post-layoff.
📉 M&A lessons: Many founders overestimate M&A benefits, underestimating the challenges of integrating different teams, apps, and cultures.
⏳ Speed up market expansion to capture time: Food delivery is an extremely time-sensitive business. Be first, gain scale, only then expand into grocery, pharmacy, and retail deliveries.
❌ Turning down a €100M buyout: When Glovo was in just Spain and Italy, they received a €100M acquisition offer. Half the board wanted to take it. Oscar “irrationally” refused because he was convinced Glovo had room to expand.
🤝 Selling to Delivery Hero: After Series F, Glovo was still losing €1M per day. An IPO wasn’t an option. Oscar and the CFO realized: “We can’t do this anymore.” The best move was selling to Delivery Hero in an all-stock €2.3B deal.
🎯 Life after acquisition: Oscar felt a sense of mission completion, returning money to investors. But he quickly realized that happiness correlates with staying in the game. He loves solving big problems and plans to work until he dies.
📡 Talking to VCs: VCs share everything, so never assume you’re having a private conversation. Oscar thought he was having 1:1 conversations, while in reality he was broadcasting to the entire VC community.
🌎 Glovo’s future: Oscar believes Glovo can 10x its current size, comparing its trajectory to Amazon 20 years ago.
📢 Advertising in quick commerce: Glovo expects to generate €5 in ad revenue for every €100 GMV. If you are a brand you want to be visible at the moment of purchase.
🚀 The advice Oscar wishes he got earlier: “I wish someone had told me to be more ambitious.”
Hope you enjoyed this!
I wrote a similar piece, with my notes, about Naval Ravikant’s appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience - check it out here.
📩 Also, here’s what you might have missed on Getting Better:
See you all next Sunday 🗓️
Thanks,
Giacomo
In these deals, Glovo paid restaurants a single, upfront payment to secure exclusivity. Oscar understood that, especially when executed at scale across a city or region, these initiatives delivered a strong positive ROI.