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Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding

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Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding

#81

Post by madeofpalk »

BillinghamJ wrote: post #57
amyboyd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think Just-Eat ran out of steam "years ago"? Stock price is higher than ever: http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/prices-and-marke... They are reporting good growth: http://www.cityam.com/256734/just-eat-reported-order-growth-... I see lots of Deliveroo bikes around where I live in the centre of London, but they are basically non-existant when I go to other towns and cities. Also, Deliveroo sta…

Entirely anecdotal, but my perception of Just Eat, Hungry House, etc. is of consistently crap takeaway food. I do not, and will not, order from them. Their reviews are completely untrustworthy - you literally never know what you’re going to get. There is no image to hurt - they’re the lowest of the low. In the UK, Deliveroo originally differentiated primarily by only accepting high quality restaurants, rather than ta…

As someone who's just moved from Sydney to London, I've found the overall quality of 'restaurants' on Deliveroo and Uber Eats to be much much lower in the UK. A lot more scrappy takeaway chicken places, for example.

Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding

#82

Post by mrisoli »

mirekrusin wrote: post #58
pault wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that strange because they aren't Brazilian?

They are Brazilians with paulistas accent. It's strange that they are, all, Brazilians.

As a Brazilian it makes sense to me, Brazil economy just keeps getting worse and worse, a lot of Brazilians are moving abroad chasing some opportunities. London is very famous as a destination for them, before there was Deliveroo I knew some people who did a lot of construction work because a lot of firms would hire them even if they don't have the proper visa, I assume you can do the same with Deliveroo.

Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding

#83

Post by croatially »

mattmanser wrote: post #16

I find it funny they're claiming some sort of AI system will help them make better margins. In my city, Nottingham. all the deliveroo people gather in Trinity Square waiting for jobs. There's obviously no special AI needed. I do think though that it raises the issue that they should be paying for their own business premises and stop using our public spaces as their company waiting spots.

Their logistics solution is just not as advanced as it can be. That's just common startup logic, the hardest problem will be solved with more money and good people and SV network has good people.

They need combinatorial search and some travel time data, live re-search when new orders come in. For this to work well they need to predict new orders in advance, this means they need data on the spatial distributions of orders through time (which now they certainly have).

They practically need to solve a variant of a problem that Uber has. Their delivery drivers load much more "passengers" but have static pickup points (known restaurants so there's only variance in the delivery point, pickups are pretty much static).

It's an interesting problem to solve, given that this kind of logistics research is practically invisible and I can't name any papers that dealt with this problem in any advanced way.

If done properly, then they've solved the logistics problem for on-demand companies that have enough data.

If solution is some ad-hoc mutated monster then it is just a chance for someone else to get the other pieces of cake.

Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding

#84

Post by raiyu »

javiramos wrote: post #43

Money Quote: "Deliveroo grew a lot in 2016, with revenue up 611 per cent to £129 million. But losses were up too — a 300 per cent increase to £129 million. However, the figure to really watch is the food delivery company’s gross margin percentage, which sat at just 0.7 per cent. " How can an investor, justify this as a solid investment when the gross margins are 0.7%?

300 percent growth to £129M is impressive growth and those stats are 9 months old, so if they have been able to continue to increase their revenue growth they maybe ending 2017 with £250MM+ which would be about an 8-10x multiple on their 2017 year end revenue which isn't that outrageous.

The challenge with startups is that you don't yet have a clear insight as to how their sales and marketing spend will evolve over time, so people are willing to invest in growth of revenue over those metrics.

What's more worrying is their gross margin percentage. Taking the revenue growth and sales and marketing expense and overall loss out of the equation, that margin percentage is going to make it extremely difficult to make a business model that works in the long term.

However, building a large revenue base helps to offset that, but we've also seen that play out negatively for companies in a similar position like Groupon.

I think with this valuation they will need considerable consecutive years of revenue growth to grow into that valuation meanwhile their losses are high and also increasing so really this funding round buys them the usual 12-18 months of runway.

Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding

#85

Post by taysic »

tolien wrote: post #68
rce wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delivering food is not a high value activity. Most people are only willing to pay a few dollars to have food delivered to them. If you raise the cost of employing low skill workers then many of these business models cease to exist. It's hard to survive on very low wages. That's one reason we have a social safety net. Many argue that it should be the company's responsibility to pay their workers higher wages and not s…

> If you raise the cost of employing low skill workers then many of these business models cease to exist. At risk of getting into a discussion about UBI and tax doctrine, is that a bad thing? The business doesn't have a right to exist. If it can't operate without paying its staff below-subsistence wages, why should it (or the VCs who provide it funding) expect the state (read: other taxpayers) to subsidise that? Rega…

I think it is a bad thing if a useful service could not exist - and people who voluntarily chose to be employed by that service cannot have access to those jobs.

I think it's better to be employed and increasing your value/skill set in the job market than living off welfare. You can't move up the ladder if you don't develop skills.

Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding

#86

Post by BillinghamJ »

madeofpalk wrote: post #81
BillinghamJ wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entirely anecdotal, but my perception of Just Eat, Hungry House, etc. is of consistently crap takeaway food. I do not, and will not, order from them. Their reviews are completely untrustworthy - you literally never know what you’re going to get. There is no image to hurt - they’re the lowest of the low. In the UK, Deliveroo originally differentiated primarily by only accepting high quality restaurants, rather than ta…

As someone who's just moved from Sydney to London, I've found the overall quality of 'restaurants' on Deliveroo and Uber Eats to be much much lower in the UK. A lot more scrappy takeaway chicken places, for example.

It seems to be quite dependent on the location. In places with fewer restaurants, they do seem to have dropped the barrier a little and allowed on more takeaway style places. In places like Shoreditch though, it’s just hundreds of top notch restaurants.

I guess it’s just down to Deliveroo’s (sometimes quite annoying) strict rule of not delivering further than 2km, so depends on the density of restaurants.

Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding

#87

Post by user5994461 »

gist wrote: post #80
whipoodle wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for a company worth billions. I've talked to entrepreneurs who "already tried the idea" for the sort of business I work at. I guess how you execute matters, or something.

Among other reasons Kozmo failed a) prior to smartphones and b) when there were less people using the internet.

Broadband didn't exist in the year 2000. It is fair to call that the pre-internet era.

Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding

#88

Post by icebraining »

mschuster91 wrote: post #30
rrivers wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are gig economies the problem (and the companies that create them) or are they an inevitability? I''d argue the latter, especially as the wave of automation that is foreseeable in the very near future will displace more people. Companies are going to innovate but what we are witnessing now is innovation that under the current market economy ) this innovation "devalues" people. Perhaps the solution is better legislati…

> and likely inevitable shift towards a gig economy The "gig economy" scam must be stopped before it's too late. It is not "innovation", but pure exploitation. As for automation, tax robots and distribute the profits to the people made jobless by them.

What would "tax robots" entail? Fixed amount per machine? A percentage of profits per machine? Is there a concrete proposal you have in mind?

Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding

#89

Post by tomarr »

mrisoli wrote: post #82
mirekrusin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are Brazilians with paulistas accent. It's strange that they are, all, Brazilians.

As a Brazilian it makes sense to me, Brazil economy just keeps getting worse and worse, a lot of Brazilians are moving abroad chasing some opportunities. London is very famous as a destination for them, before there was Deliveroo I knew some people who did a lot of construction work because a lot of firms would hire them even if they don't have the proper visa, I assume you can do the same with Deliveroo.

A lot of Brazilians (allegedly) come in on fake Portugese documents too

Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding

#90

Post by Accacin »

orf wrote: post #10

For those wondering about these numbers, Deliveroo has a great concept, solid execution and huge brand recognition. Just-eat (worth 4.6B) connects people to shitty takeaways and has a terrible website. Deliveroo connects people to restaurants and provides the delivery service themselves, through bikers (here in London). They have taken this and spread throughout Europe. They are going to (and are) completely canablis…

Anecdotal, but I know loads of my people in my age group that use Just Eat. I know none that use Deliveroo. I don't really have a problem with their website either, if I want some fast food it's quick and easy.. And I get the option to pay with cash on delivery or card.
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