Sceptics23 Jun 2019 13:53
Starting Deliveroo and overcoming the scepticism.
“After graduation, I teamed up with Greg again. At this point, the cost of smartphones and tablets was very reasonable so we decided to start Deliveroo to solve the dual problems I recognised with Just Eat [lack of recognisable restaurants and slow delivery times).
“At the time, we definitely ran into a lot of sceptics. They would say things like ‘Just Eat is this big company’ or I got this one a lot ‘English people don’t want good food delivered!’ But we started down that path and launched the business in Feb 2013 in Chelsea where I lived.
“We had three restaurants [at the time]. One was my landlord – I lived above a restaurant on the King’s Road – and he was like ‘you can put your tablet here but this is a really dumb idea’ and then we convinced two amazing restaurants who actually believed in it. I was the first delivery guy and for eight months I delivered food every single day for five hours, not because I really needed to for money’s sake but because I really wanted to understand what the customer went through.
“There were a few funny stories along the way. My friends would order all the time just to see me deliver food because they thought it was super funny. They were bankers and they thought it was really comical but they kept ordering so that was cool. And then one time, this other guy ordered who I hadn’t spoken to in about four or five years and he used to work at the hedge fund with me. I got to this really big house in Knightsbridge and this guy opens the door and he looks at me and he’s like ‘Will, what are you doing?’ I didn’t remember him too well so I was like ‘Excuse me?’ and he asked ‘Are you okay?’ and I was like ‘Yes, I’m just here to deliver your pizzas’. He thought I was absolutely insane and we got that a lot in the beginning.”
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