YouSaid · the spoken record

Dominik Richter

lines on the record: 64
first: 2023-12-01
most recent: 2023-12-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I think most likely I'll still be running HelloFresh. Hopefully HelloFresh at that point not only $2 billion business lines like we have today with our meal kits and our ready meals, but with a lot more different business lines that we have at that point, still solving problems at scale with some of the smartest people in the world. If I ever wake up and I feel this is not fun any longer, I feel like I'm not spending my time problem solving, but I'm spending my time solving other people's problems and not my own problems and not problems that I'm excited about, then you'll probably find me either on the beach or running a football club. If the one day that I sneak into the boardroom, I find that exciting enough.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably an obvious one because a lot of people have been talking about it, but the Elon Musk biography definitely allowed me to pick up some things and also understand some of the companies much, much better. There were definitely some elements of SpaceX in particular that I didn't understand as well before the book and then after.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Work is part of life. I don't think the two need to be in balance. You should be enjoying what you're doing, and I think it's very fluid between, am I reading that article or that book because it makes me a better CEO or am I reading it because I actually enjoy it? Am I reading that report or that consumer research that my team has prepared because I'm very interested or because I have to? I think that whole term always assumes that work is bad and life is good. But in the end, sort of like they're very tightly connected. work is part of life so everybody needs to be balanced in some way but it's not necessarily between work and life”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think best piece of advice is, I would say, question a lot of things and form your own view. I always feel if you're too much trying to follow the crowds, if you're not thinking first principle, if you're not kind of like asking the tough questions, then very often, you know, you end up being above average, but you're never going to be like part of the 0.1% in whatever domain you choose. I think you have to be contrarian to out-execute and outperform the 99.9% of others.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is a certain threshold where probably some things become a lot easier and a little bit more comfortable, but it's not the main motivator in everything that you do or that should be doing.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think DoorDash has done an amazing job. I don't think they're directly competitive with us, maybe on the margin like we're going after the same wallet. In the end, I think the way that they have also had a huge focus on operational excellence, how they have scaled in non-obvious ways where everybody else in that space was focusing on other areas, had a certain hypothesis, and they took the contrarian view, have a business that is, I think, operationally also very challenging. a three-sided marketplace. That is something that I have huge respect for and I think they've built like a massively successful business and they're very much focused on the long term. Tony and the team are doing such an amazing job.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably going to choose Jeff Bezos. It's such an outlier, such an anomaly, how Amazon has scaled with such high investments in infrastructure, in technology and processes, completely reinvented how people think about organizations. And given that I'm also building in that space, sort of like at the intersection of supply chain, marketing, and technology, I probably have questions for two weeks straight.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In my view, competition is a constant source of innovation and inspiration. I think it's extremely arrogant to not pay super close attention to competition. And I'm not only talking about your direct competitors. I'm also talking about all other companies that market to consumers that want to reach the same consumer. Like what are they doing? What are they experimenting with? What have they learned? Thousands of super smart people at all of those companies which are thinking every day about how to reach customers, how to build new technology, et cetera, to not listen to them, observe them and not basically get inspired and see that as a big shortcut to your own experimentation and learning is extremely arrogant in my view.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't mind that much. I think it's not so much my personal affiliation with any club as to rather wanting to be on the table and understand how those businesses are run, how sophisticated some of the decision making is, et cetera, et cetera.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going back to my youth fascination with professional football, I probably would love to be the CEO of a Premier League football club for a day.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everything around tactics is much more important than strategy. If you have the right strategy, you don't need to change your strategy every six months every year. You have a long-term strategy, three to five years, and you're spending 99% of your time on tactics.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, look, one of the biggest trends in engineering is MOP programming, which basically means you're getting together three people around one laptop giving them each other instant feedback. There's a huge value in that, everything that has to do with planning that has to do with aligning on strategy, figuring out architecture, playing thoughts back and forth. These things work way better. I do think if you have a plan, if you need to deliver, if it's like very clear what are the milestones where do you need to get to, then potentially you don't need to necessarily sit next to your colleague. But I do think there are huge benefits to working together very, very closely and having strong bonds in your team.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Stage, I think that is what he's referring to always pushed me at that stage to hire more experienced people, to hire people that have led larger organizations, larger teams, et cetera, et cetera. But we always felt like we need people who are super scalable in terms of their skill set, in terms of their personality, who have an incredibly high work ethics. I think back in those days, was very much expected of everybody to stay in the office till 10 p.m. I think that's also very different today. But nonetheless, I think that was a time where we hired for raw smartness only. And I think that was at that point, I think very contrarian with some of both our US investors versus our European investors.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's different stages, and definitely in the beginning, I think we prioritized a lot through Gality and mostly recruited friends, family, and acquaintances. That's also always what I tell everybody in my Angel portfolio. If you cannot convince some of your friends, family or acquaintances to join your company, then either your idea is not that good, or you're just not a great salesperson. After that period, you have the opportunity for a couple of years to hire for raw smartness only. You don't need to hire for a lot of experience at that point in time. Business tries to figure itself out, all of the domains kind of like are still open. We've had really good experience with hiring people with very high degree of raw smartness, putting them on certain domains, and those people over the sort of like next five, seven years becoming like some of the deepest domain experts in those topics. And I think back then, my board always pushed me during”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't particular enjoy being the center of attention. I can be fairly good at it, but I just don't enjoy it that much. I always have to push myself. I think they are important up to a certain point, but it's definitely something that I'm definitely scoring very light on that one.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On that end, and we wanted to go kind of like very quickly towards having common shares, no pref stacks in there. And we felt like if there is a window, we want to go out. And then on public markets, we can prove ourselves and everybody can decide. Let's make a decision whether that was successful or not three years in. In the end, I think it was the right decision. I think the way that our category traded would have not allowed us to IPO the business at any other point in time.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's irrelevant. First day price completely irrelevant. The price after 12 months after two years, yes, that starts being relevant. The price after three years, that's what you should be optimizing for. Think about it like that, right? I think also for us, if we had missed the window in 2017, potentially there would have been another window in 2020. Now who knows whether that window actually opens or not, whether you have a big crisis like the pandemic coming and the window is actually closed or not. All of the macro factors that you have that you can't control. There is so much uncertainty. History is littered with companies that wanted to go public and optimize and squeeze out the last 10% for the first day and they missed the window and then had to do emergency fundraising if they weren't profitable or put a lot of structure and ratchets in. We never had any structure. We never had any ratchets. We always were very concerned.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Public, and six months later, when lockups are up, kind of like you're down 50%. The price at which you go public is completely irrelevant for everybody.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We had the notion that we want to run this company for a long time. When you raise a lot of venture capital, you need to make a decision. Are you going to sell that company or are you going to take it public? My view is the price at which you go public is completely irrelevant. Almost nobody sells at the price of the IPO. Everybody is locked up. In the end, it just matters at the point sort of like when lockups are over, when somebody wants to sell, et cetera. So the price at which you go public doesn't matter. It's all about grabbing the window. And we felt back in 2017 there was a window for business models like ours tried to make sure that we can get out through that window and then felt like if we establish a public market track record, then sort of like valuation will take care of itself versus saying like, hey, let's optimize the last 10 percentage points and go public at that share price. And then, you know, the market is not there or you actually going.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the approach to fundraising as well, right? I believe for my seed round and for my series A round, I've been asked about providing business plans for the next five years, which were obviously all made up, et cetera. That is also very different in the US. I think it has changed. We have been public since 2017. But back in the day, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, I think that environment was very, very different. And it was very different what people were asking for.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the beginning, it's a lot more cowboy math that you need to do and where you need to get comfortable with certain levels so that you can actually build a competitor that's worth competing with”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think number one, everything that you know about competition will be 10x, what you'll find in the US because the size of the price is just so much bigger that you will naturally have more competitors going after the same space. They will be able to raise vastly more venture.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have grown up as a company in Europe and you go to the US, you definitely need to throw overboard a lot of the things that you feel that you have learned”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Differences really all go back to just the massive size of the domestic market in the US, right? The massive tam that you can go after. If you're operating in such a big domestic TAM, you're making right from the start, you tend to make different decisions. You're trying to scale much faster. You're trying to hire more expensive people because in the end, you're going to have a lot more operating leverage. You're going to have higher salaries. You're probably not caring as much about the details as about telling your vision. What I always felt is that bringing some of the more European skill set, diving deep more of an engineering mindset, having attention to detail to such a large domestic market like the US is like a really great success formula. The size of the domestic market caters more towards certain types of founders than what you tend to find in Europe. And what that means is that if you”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would describe it with problem solving at scale. I don't want to take the easy route. I want to figure things out. It's that sense of competition. It's that sense of winning and it's that sense of probably like proving yourself over and over again that you can do it. But that is something that I really enjoy.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the end, it's always a race against yourself and against your mind and how you feel about things. You have all those cases where people, you know, from one day to the next make a lot of money. And that high goes away after two or three months already. And I think that is something that in the end you need to be at peace with yourself, always just a race against yourself. Yes, you can probably afford a nicer chair and a better laptop and a nicer mattress. But in the end, it's all about being in control of your head and control of your mind and being at peace with yourself. I think that's the most important thing.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it definitely helps when you run a profitable company. You definitely sleep much better. You still have like as many problems and as many things that worry you, but you don't have this existential angst that you carry around with you. I think I definitely sleep better since the point that we were sustainably profitable and started generating like real profits. How do I deal with it? Generally with stress, I think my way to deal with stress is just having a very good routine of doing sports. I'm a sports fanatic. It helps me clear my mind. It helps me get peace of mind. And every time I pick up one of many injuries that I pick up while doing sports and I can't do something for two weeks or three weeks, I'm getting really anxious and I can feel that I get like way more stress, that I don't feel as healthy, that I don't feel as fit, that I do feel a lot more stressed.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think in the early days, there were one or two occasions where we were literally like three to five days before thinking about filing for Chapter 11, which I guess is the right term, at least in US terms, very, very close. Because in the end, I mean, you're probably sitting on the other side of the table. But in the end, there's always like, you know, things popping up, gets delayed by two weeks, gets delayed by another month. There is this one document missing, et cetera, et cetera. And all of a sudden, you're like, hey, my duty is actually when I feel like I cannot be able to do payroll. It's actually my duty to flag that. They were definitely in the first one or two years. I think two occasions that I remember very vividly where it was very, very close to getting to that point.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Definitely developed our scar tissue around fundraising. We definitely started fundraising processes too late and it was very, very close to actually closing around and getting it done.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Up to IPO, we raised around about 300 million. We had a cumulative cash burn of about 300 million before we actually started generating cash flow. And since we have started generating cash flow, I think about three years post-IPO, we had our cash flow break even. And since then, we have returned cash to shareholders, invested in all the businesses, did M&A, et cetera. So I feel for the type of ambition level that we had and for the revenue growth and category that we were going after, it was not insane amounts that we raised.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we have a number of particular features, characteristics of our business model, why it makes sense to raise venture. Number one, you're cooking or eating basically on a daily basis, right? It's something that has like a very high frequency, which means what a lot of direct-to-consumer companies suffer from, that they don't get the frequency. We have very high frequency. Secondly, food is like such a big category that you can build a really, really big company. So in the end, I think for what we actually did and achieved, we didn't raise crazy amounts of venture.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of companies ended up being venture-backed when the better path would have been to raise an angel around trying to get to profitability and actually scale the business to 100, 200 million in revenue. I've made a bunch of angel investments and I've had that discussion with founders a lot where they say like you scaled the company to that level, you raised some venture money. I want to do the same and I very often advise them and said like look at the personal outcome for you the much less risky way is for many many of those categories and many many of those companies to not raise venture.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think very clearly those times are over, but I don't think that the time for direct to consumer is over because in the end, right, direct to consumer means you make it more convenient for the consumer. The consumer probably has a lot more information, has a lot more advice, has a lot more crowd feedback on your products. So I think from a consumer perspective, direct to consumer is anything but debt. But what you need to do today, you need to have a very differentiated proposition. You need to either be deeply integrated on the supply chain or you need to have a unique angle with distribution, or you need to be like very, very good to outperform some of your competitors or others to make the marketing equation work. But still every single year you have great direct-to-consumer companies being started. And every single year you have great exits of direct-to-consumer”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd say it's a very different time than what it was maybe five or seven or eight years ago when the whole direct to consumer boom started. We started the company when direct to consumer was not really a term. I think we're today one of the largest direct-to-consumer companies outside of China. I don't really know any direct-to-consumer company that is much larger than we are, but it's certainly very different today than it was back then. And I think back then, you had a lot of people that started a direct-to-consumer company by going to a retail store, looking at shelf space, looking at what are the most outdated brands there that could use a new font and a new branding. And you started your direct-to-consumer company. It was very easy to get the first customers in, and especially if you were operating in the US with such a large domestic market, it was very easy with one or two growth channels to actually get to 50 or 100 million of revenue without being extremely”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thing which maybe is the same price, maybe slightly higher. So I'd say we have now shown over the last two years that we can also navigate through economic cycles without having like a hugely negative impact on our business.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, one of the first buckets people start saving is they're going less to restaurants. That's definitely what you have seen in previous recessions, the share of out-of-home food has actually declined, whereas the share of food that you consume inside your own home actually goes up. I think that's something that is marginally positive for us. On the other hand, there are definitely some customers who are much more concerned about their disposable incomes, and they might think longer and harder about taking up a new routine. And that's also something that you can see with us. I think our existing customer base actually shows very good retention. They're on average ordering more meals with us than they did before. Part of that, because we made a lot of investments into the assortment, into the menu. But in tough macro times, a little harder to get customers to that first purchase, to basically say, I'm going to start some”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think it concerns me. When you look at different consumer categories, it's very rare that you have a consumer category where one company has 100% market share. What you tend to have in consumer categories, you have one or two really big brands, usually global brands, that own a large share of that category. But then you always have like smaller niche players. Tastes are very different. And that's not only about food, right? That's in beauty. That's basically everywhere in the direct-to-consumer or in different consumer categories. You tend to have the gorillas in a certain category and you tend to have a much more fragmented long tail because you also have long tail tastes and some niches.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do feel that people checking a stock price that happens once you go public, especially in the beginning, because everybody is excited and everybody thinks like, hey, what's happening today? Why is it up 3%? Why is it down 3%? Guess what? It's just randomness or macro factors, et cetera. Your business is still the same. I think Warren Buffett had that great quote where you basically said, if I buy a hamburger at $2 and the next day they sell the same hamburger to me at $1, like I'm happy. You know, I can buy double the amount. It's still the same company. There might be like a different price on the stock ticker, but it's still the same company. And that's also if I look at the last 12 months, I think in almost every domain of the business, we're a better company today than what we were 12 months ago. So that's kind of like what really counts. And then in the long run, there will be times when things look differently.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are some things which are definitely beneficial, and there are others which are not incredibly beneficial. I feel when you raise venture capital, in the end, you need to make a decision. Are you going to go for a trade sale or are you going to IPO the business? Those are, in the end, the only two credible paths. If you still want to run the business, if you still feel that there is a lot of runway ahead of you, then you probably don't want to sell the business and give up complete control. So you're going to IPO the business. It's not the easiest to have a daily reflection of everything that's going on on a screen and like a value put on you every day instead of like every two years or so. But it also is sometimes good as disciplines, teams kind of like makes you think straight. You have a lot less of this insanity in public market companies than you might have seen in private market companies in the last three years. But if you want to keep being in”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The rearview mirror one of our share buybacks was at much higher levels than where the share price is trading today. So if I'm looking at the IRR of that investment, that was probably not a great investment. But then in the end, right, we're not doing that to push the stock price, we're doing that to grow free cash flow per share by reducing the share count.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Integration is very hard. Probably been an integration phase of about 12 to 18 months where we worked through like a good plan. It was all about being aligned on our operating system. That is something that we talk a lot about internally. What is our operating system that makes large groups of people run in the same direction, talk the same language? And then just, you know, making sure that we can build an athlete that carries over the best muscles that we have built at HelloFresh with the best muscles that we have built at Factor.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think first we do a lot of desk work. We do a lot of desk research. We're trying to really understand all of the competitors. We're trying to look at things like credit card data. We're trying to look at web traffic, blind tasting of meals and mystery shopping to understand the products and do a lot of black work and pre-validation work before. And then at some point make a decision, hey, we should build a relationship, get to know each other. That's usually then your dating phase. You're trying to evaluate if that might be a fit, if there is some willingness.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say it's one component of it how much money you invest, but a lot is how do you cook that? How do you prep it? How long do you keep it in inventory? How quickly does it move from one station to the next station? That has all to do with the freshness of the product and the quality of the product can degrade like very, very fast if you're not moving it from one station to the next station. You know, those are big cooking facilities. At the moment with Factor, we have two of the three biggest cooking facilities in North America. Guess what the other one is? The one that we're not owning of the top three cooking facilities in the US. Disney word Orlando.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But we couldn't really get the milk quality right. That's when we started looking into sort of like some of the other companies in that space. And really were focused on which companies make the best meals, which companies have really cracked that food manufacturing process, that cooking process at scale. And how can we potentially partner up with them?”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Meal kits, we have a lot of business units, a lot of markets that are in the early days of the growth S curve. And we have others that are maybe a little bit more mature and where it's more about managing them for cash flow and where it's more about really building out the customer proposition. Basically became interested in what are other direct to consumer vertical that share a lot of the things that we like about MealKits and maybe a lot of the complex problems that we already solved for Mealkids. And we first had a big discussion about is that something we should incubate ourselves. Back in 2019, we actually tried our hand at coming up with our own ready meal provider, but we sucked at cooking the meals. We were very good at generating the man. So I think six months after launch, we were at 10, 15 million dollar run rate with a small brand that we launched. But the meals were terrible. Like we got really bad recipe ratings, customers didn't stick around. We tried that for probably about a year.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, first of all, we have been excited by other direct to consumer verticals. I think the way that I look at it, we operate a portfolio of different P&Ls, of different business lines. We started the business in 2012. We IPO'd the business in 2017. And at that point, we were active in six markets globally with one brand HelloFresh. Post IPO, we said there's a lot more markets that we can go into with our Mealkit brands. And we basically in the three, four years after that, so between 2017 and 2020, launched HelloFresh in another eight or nine markets as the one brand. We also said there's a good opportunity to actually go into a premium category and into a sort of like everyday value category and launched different Mealkit brands with Green Chef in the US and every plate in the US and also brought those to some of our European markets. At some point in 2020, we said, okay,”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think have a pretty good track record in MA. Over the last four years, we've generated about 1.5 billion in cash flow from operations. Of those 1.5 billion that we generated, we allocated roughly 900 million into making our own operations better. So in our fulfillment network, in our last mile logistics, in our technology, in our automation of some of the fulfillment centers, we spent about 300 million on M&A and we did a share buyback of about 200 million over that period. Hey, you generate 1.5 billion. How do you allocate that? That's in the end is capital allocation, right? The best capital allocation decision on the less was probably one of the M&A deals that we did. We bought a company called Factor. That's a ready meal company in the US, which has been growing very nicely. And that has certainly been a very good return for us and hence a very good capital allocation.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's a very financial view. That's probably what a PE fund would tell you. They are the best capital allocators. I think capital allocation is a very important part of your job, but it's more than capital allocation, right? It's resource allocation. Where do you actually put sort of like your people? How do you organize your people? How do you make sure you bring out the best in your people, et cetera? These are jobs that are equally important as capital allocation. Probably capital allocation becomes more and more important. the more mature your businesses and the less it is about building and the more it is about allocating the capital that you have at the highest roy projects”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think you described the two dynamics well, right? On the one hand side, you tend to penetrate much more deeply into a specific total addressable market. And that generally means that your customer acquisition cost goes up. On the other hand, like you're building a brand, you probably have a big database of people who have ordered with you at some point. And so those two dynamics kind of offset each other. As you scale and with more tenure on a market or in a geographies, you have really those two effects that are in some ways offsetting each other. And then you need to look really at the category weighing out the other one. But you're describing well the two dynamics that you're seeing.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To end, I want to dive deep. I want to have world class people internally who I can challenge, who can build up like a great growth engine. I don't think that even if that takes some time and investment and technology in people and process, those are things that I just do not want to have any dependency on anybody else.”
2023-12-01 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source