This episode starts with a surprising origin story: before building one of Europe’s most iconic on-demand companies, Sacha Michaud left home at 16 to become a professional racehorse jockey.
From there, we go deep into the operator playbook behind Glovo’s rise: launching fast, expanding internationally with limited capital, choosing battles ruthlessly, and pulling out of markets quickly when the data says the flywheel won’t spin.
This is a conversation about discipline, focus, and survival in one of the most brutal categories in venture—where network effects are real, fundraising can consume the CEO, and consolidation is always lurking.
Less theory. More real-world execution.
What’s covered:
01:10 From racehorse jockey to startup founder: discipline, sacrifice, and the founder mindset
02:20 How Glovo started: meeting Oscar, shipping in 2.5 months, and rebuilding the MVP later
05:05 International scaling principles: why Europe isn’t enough and why speed mattered
06:25 Fundraising reality: the “lead investor” trap and why multi-stage funds can matter
08:05 Split-scaling and the growth-at-all-costs era: what the ecosystem learned (and didn’t)
10:15 Expansion playbooks: the launch team model and copying what Uber did right
13:25 Competition strategy: when to enter, when to avoid, and why capital constraints shape everything
15:25 Exiting markets fast: Brazil, iFood, and the moment you realize the playbook won’t work
17:35 Network effects in delivery: why the flywheel is more extreme than most marketplaces
19:05 Exclusivity vs multi-homing: how restaurants evolved from “threat” to “channel”
25:55 Emerging markets: Latin America → Eastern Europe → Africa and what changes operationally
33:00 Glovo Cares: why executives still deliver orders and what it teaches the org
34:30 Acquisition mindset: what founders get wrong about selling (and not selling)
43:20 YELLOW VC: building a disciplined pre-seed fund without losing operator sharpness
🎧 Listen on Apple or Spotify, or queue it for later with chapters ready to go.
Show Notes
Discipline is the real throughline
Sacha’s story begins far from venture capital. He left home at 16 to become a racehorse jockey, riding professionally for four years across the UK and the US. The point isn’t the novelty, it’s what that life requires:
extreme discipline
relentless repetition
no holidays, no slack
performance under pressure
That same discipline shows up later in how Glovo was built: focus, speed, and ruthless prioritization.
Glovo’s early strategy: ship fast, learn faster
Sacha describes meeting Oscar (fresh back from Georgia Tech with a similar on-demand thesis) and launching the first version of Glovo in ~2.5 months.
They didn’t call it an MVP, but it was one:
get to market quickly
start learning immediately
rebuild what breaks later
In a category with land grabs and network effects, time-to-market is not a nice-to-have. It’s survival.
Fundraising: the “lead investor” problem is real
A recurring theme: Glovo often had less capital than competitors and struggled to secure leads every round.
Sacha’s practical observation is one most founders recognize instantly:
lots of investors say “I’ll join once there’s a lead”
finding the lead becomes the bottleneck
CEOs can end up spending 60–70% of their time fundraising
He also makes a nuanced point: multi-stage investors can reduce that burden dramatically, but founders don’t always get to choose.
Split-scaling was a cycle, not a law of nature
Andreas pushes on whether the ecosystem “should have known better” given the massive burn and losses in last-mile delivery.
Sacha’s take is blunt: markets are cyclical.
capital swings from “only growth matters” to “only profitability matters”
eventually, it swings back again
The lesson isn’t “never pursue growth.” It’s: don’t confuse the mood of the moment with the fundamentals of the business.
International expansion: focus on the few things that matter
Sacha reduces product execution to two essentials:
content/selection: the customer’s favorite restaurant/store/product must be there
service reliability: if it says 28 minutes, it must be 28 minutes
Everything else is secondary.
This principle also shaped expansion. Glovo built a repeatable launch machine heavily inspired by Uber:
small elite launch team
2–3 months in a new country
build supply + ops + onboarding
install a GM
move to the next market
improve the playbook each time
That playbook is how you scale quickly without reinventing yourself in every geography.
Picking battles: capital constraints force strategy
Sacha is explicit: Glovo couldn’t afford to fight everywhere.
They didn’t enter the UK or Germany.
They were in Paris but never went all-in across France.
They focused on markets where they could become leader or co-leader.
The insight: in network-effect marketplaces, being second or third isn’t a business model. It’s a fundraising problem disguised as strategy.
Exiting fast: growth is the signal
The clearest operational principle Sacha shares: if growth isn’t happening, get out.
Brazil is the case study:
iFood was already an exceptional incumbent with massive share
Glovo didn’t bring a step-change experience to steal customers
Uber Eats and Rappi entered at the same time with deep pockets
the market became instant carnage
Glovo left quickly and focused on the rest of Latam. The lesson is not about Brazil. It’s about sunk cost: don’t romanticize a market once the data says the playbook doesn’t work.
Network effects in delivery are brutal and real
Sacha argues that last-mile delivery is even more network-effect driven than many marketplaces because the loops compound:
consumers choose the best selection + best service
restaurants choose platforms that bring orders and visibility
couriers choose platforms with liquidity (orders per hour, hours per week)
Each side reinforces the others. If you’re not close to the top, the flywheel works against you.
Restaurants changed their mindset: from “threat” to “channel”
Sacha notes how restaurants used to see platforms as competition. Over time, they realized the bigger competitor is cooking at home and that platforms are a distribution and branding channel.
Today, multi-homing is normal:
restaurants want maximum reach
platforms provide incremental revenue and discovery
the economics must still work, but exclusivity is rarer
Acquisition: founders regret not selling more than selling
Sacha makes one of the strongest founder statements in the transcript:
He rarely meets founders who regret selling.
He often meets founders who regret not selling.
Andreas adds a key dynamic: VC incentives may diverge from founder incentives around exits, because VCs optimize for fund-level outcomes, not founder-level risk-adjusted decisions.
Sacha agrees and offers a practical rule: be well-advised. Ideally with impartial counsel, not only by capital with its own incentives.
The Glovo halo effect: why great companies produce ecosystems
The conversation closes with the Glovo’s dynamic: strong companies create strong operators who go on to build more companies.
Glovo leaned into that with:
Glovo House
Glovo Startup Campus
and now YELLOW VC
Sacha frames it simply: people will leave to build anyway, so the best move is to support them, create the tools, and let the legacy compound across the ecosystem.
YELLOW VC: disciplined venture without losing operator sharpness
YELLOW VC was born from years of angel investing by Sacha and Oscar, plus a disciplined investing partner (Adam, ex-Atomico).
Their edge:
operators who are still in the arena
disciplined fund construction (vs emotional angel bets)
co-investing with top pre-seed funds
bringing real distribution, customers, and execution insight
In other words, a fund built around operator leverage, not vibes.
One-line takeaway
Glovo wasn’t built by hype. It was built by disciplined execution in a network-effect market. Expanding fast, exiting faster, and staying brutally focused on the few things customers actually care about.
