Goodbye, Deliveroo

Last Friday, I said my goodbye to the Deliveroo team. After 2 years and 6 months, I’ve decided to move on from what has been an amazing experience.

Over the course of such a long period, it can be easy to forget some of the details. Such is the nature of startup world - it’s an always moving machine. Before I forgot, I wanted to write down some of my personal highlights and experiences.

Things I’m Grateful For

• Moving to Edinburgh and living in a different city. I couldn’t have guessed how much I would enjoy my time there.
• Launching new cities (Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen) and being part of “team rogue”. Those first 6 months in Scotland were some of the most fun and most fast-paced.
• Building the mobile acquisition channel. It was fun to learn something completely new in the digital marketing space.
• Building the affiliate channel. Developing a strategy around how we build digital partnerships on the web was a challenging task. The commercial experience and multifaceted digital knowledge that came with this has been beneficial already.
• Being involved in engagement groups on diversity and inclusion.
• Working deliberately on our company culture.
• Meeting and working with such great people. This can’t be said enough.
• Team trips to Edinburgh, Berlin and Amsterdam. I feel very lucky to have worked with and visited some of our international offices.
• Working in an environment where people are committed to positivity and fun. I’ll miss Flip cup Fridays.
• Interviewing many candidates for a couple of different roles. I always wanted to gain some team building experience.
• Being involved in business review meetings, both UK and International. It was great to get exposure to senior leaders in the business and see the way they think about company challenges.
• For Caroline and Federico. These two colleagues, in particular, have been an amazing source of friendship and mentorship over my time at Deliveroo. I can’t thank them enough.
• Being involved at speaking events. Public speaking is a skill I continue to enjoy developing.
• Getting to deliver food to our customers around London. It’s a pleasure seeing the delight it brings people first hand.
• Attending leadership course both at Google HQ and internally.
• The Deliveroo football team. Beating Uber and Uber Eats at the Tamebay Cup on route to defending our title will always be a fond memory. It’s no coincidence that successful companies hire competitive people.
• Working with legal profesionals and getting into the details of large deals. It’s not easy or fun, but invaluable experience.
• Managing a significant amount of budget and get my head around account, P + L, PO Systems and so on.
• Launching the TripAdvisor partnership. It took a long time to set up but went live across all 12 markets. I was very happy to see it gained exposure on BBC News, Fortune, New York Times and many other famous publications.

Reading that back, I do feel my Deliveroo experience fulfilled many of my wishes when I joined Deliveroo. For that, I will always be grateful.

What Next?

A bit of me time. After almost 5 years in the startup game, I’ve decided to take some time off. Deliveroo was such an all-encompassing experience and I’m excited to think about things outside of food delivery. Later this year, I’m going to spend some time traveling with a close friend across Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia. Time to tick off some items from my bucket list. Before that, I want to spend some time developing good habits, such as reading, writing, and meditation.

I’m sure in the coming months I’ll share some lessons and learning from my experience. But for now I want to decompress, relax and reflect. I’ll keep myself busy, but for the next few months, the focus will be on me. I’m looking forward to that.