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

  1. “Want to understand how good you are in something, right? Then you actually need to go in and do that yourself. And I think there have been different phases in our journey. I would definitely say also looking at some of the competition that we've had, at certain points in time, we felt that really going from five wholesale suppliers to integrating with 1,500 suppliers all over the US directly to capture that margin upside, to get much better freshness and quality, that this is something that drives a lot of value. It meant that we had to hire like 100 people internally and build technology for that, etc. But it really helped us to capture a lot more margin on every order that we did. We also never said we want to outsource anything that has to do with performance marketing, for example, because as a direct to consumer company, right, that's one of the biggest sensitivity on your LTV to CAX is your CAC. So I really want to understand that.”

    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

  2. “I don't think you need to vertically own everything. I think there are some parts of the value chain that you want to own. But it also depends on the stage of the business. So even today, we're incubating like a number of new business lines. And very clearly, in the first two, three years, we're trying to keep fixed costs as low as possible. It's all about finding product market fit. In these times, I think it makes total sense to say everything that doesn't have to do with product market fit, you want to outsource. I don't want to spend mental bandwidth on that. I want to make sure I have a great product. I understand some of the distribution channels. I understand my consumers, I can act fast on their feedback. I don't want to do all this stuff that can keep me up the whole night and the whole day and worry about that stuff. But at some point, I think it's really important that if you actually say like, hey, this is mission critical for my success. I don't want to have any dependency on somebody else. Plus, I also...”

    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

  3. “If I look internally and what we're trying to do and some of the philosophies that we carry, then maybe those are like a little bit different to some of the philosophies that some of our competitors or some of our US competitors specifically have carried. We've always had a big appreciation for understanding things in the most detail there is and diving deep and building things internally rather than leveraging external agencies or leveraging external suppliers. So we always felt there is a number of competencies, a number of muscles that we want to really understand in detail and we rather build them in-house and we try to really figure things out and then that will really pay off in the long run.”

    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

  4. “More recently with a couple of others that we've launched. But in the end, I think these muscles are pretty strong and these are real competitive modes. We've always had some competitors that were also developing some of these muscles, but I think in the end, it's the sum total that you need to really be successful.”

    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

  5. “Over time, the type of business that we run, you really need to build a lot of different muscles. We talked about being an athlete before. So if you're an athlete, you have a number of muscles and if just one of your muscles doesn't work very well, you're an insured athlete and you're on the bench. And that's a little bit the same with our business, right? You need to be world class. You need to build muscles in a lot of different dimensions. You need to be very good at building a brand. You need to be very good at building your Last Mile Logistics Network. You need to be very good at establishing all of your suppliers and your supplier relationships and those integrations. We're running 42 different fulfillment centers with heavy automation in those fulfillment centers around the world. You need to scale up your operation and basically run people and processes and technology at scale. So all of these are in a way muscles we have built to pretty big muscles. That helps us also going into new business verticals like we have”

    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

  6. “You've already figured out you're already working on the next thing, and these things compound so much over time that then when a category like ours is now more than a decade old, we had a decade to solve some of the most complex problems here. Now, if I look at that from the outside, it would be absolute insanity to launch a competitor to us as of today. So that's why I like complex business model and complex problems. I think they're very often much more sustainable in the long run, and they also attract a lot less competition.”

    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

  7. “So it's maybe a contrarian view. I think a view that sometimes in the investor community is not much appreciated. But I like hard businesses. I like complex businesses. If you figure them out, you create really big competitive modes. And that's because, number one, you figured something out that is hard, that is complex, and you make it work, and that means that everybody else wants to figure that out, needs to work equally as hard. Plus you have a head start. You figured something out and you're already working on the next thing. So I always feel like if you're working on a complex business and you solve something, then you actually creating modes that are so hard to overcome. Plus you have the advantage of time that you can then use to your own advantage that all compounds over time. And when you think about modes, right, in the beginning of a category, everybody starts from a blank sheet. Nobody has any modes. If you're starting in a hard category and you're figuring something out, number one, you probably have less competition in the beginning. Number two, as you're figuring things out, you're creating modes. And then number three, you have a head start. So when your competition is figuring out”

    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

  8. “We were definitely very naive in the beginning. And I think if you had talked to industry experts, they all would have told you how complex it is to ship perishables, how complex it actually is to run fulfillment, to run a supply chain at scale, to get growth marketing right. So all of the things that we didn't know, I think we're actually very, very good. We didn't know them because otherwise we would have never started that business. And in terms of fuck-ups, there are...”

    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

  9. “Up and coming. So in 2011, arrived in Berlin, a little money in my pockets and basically got together two of my smartest friends that I met throughout university. And we said, you know, we want to start something. And we wanted to figure, we wanted to settle on something that we have a big passion for because that to me was one of the key lessons I learned when starting my side hustles at university that you should be doing something that you're really passionate about because you're always going to hit some rough stretches and it's way easier to get out of bed in the morning when you have a rough stretch when actually you're very very passionate about what you're 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

  10. “Already at university, I had a little void to fill. There was something of being an athlete and then ditching that career and focusing on something different. And I was always fascinated by entrepreneurship. I think the one thing that also throughout my childhood, I always figured sort of like I want to run things. I want to be at the helm of things. I want to invent things. I want to run a business. I want to be the one making decisions. So I always had that type of drive of being my own boss and deciding about my own destiny. I started two businesses on the side during university without funding, basically with some of our own funds and with free interns to do all of the work alongside myself and a friend. So after that short X courses to Gopman, I kind of like was more back on track and starting that business. So what I did is actually moved to Berlin, which was, I think, up and coming, very different from what it is right now. European tech was”

    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

  11. “Be fair, I think that was a mistake on my side. I'm still always fascinated how good some of the big banks and the consulting firms are to lure in top talent. The job is pretty boring. Nonetheless, I think they attract like a huge deal of world-class talent each and every year. And in the end, I think that all comes down to marketing. They're just really good at marketing and at branding their places as these are the most desirable places where you should go if you're a top graduate. And I have not been immune to resisting that and so I also ended up there but figured very quickly that is probably not the right place for me. So after about nine months I already left.”

    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

  12. “Absolutely, a lot of lessons and also painful lessons that you get taught. When you get left out of the team, when you don't agree with the manager, when you don't agree with some of your teammates, and then being able to absorb that, maybe, you know, shut up, go to bed and next day kind of like go back onto the pitch and really trying to make the best and not have anybody notice how sad you are or sort of like how much that worries you. I think that is like a key lesson that you learn very, very early on.”

    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

  13. “I probably had the dream that many young kids have. I always wanted to become a footballer. That's what I did most in my youth, basically playing football each and every day. I played academy football. At some point, figured that the chances of getting there are very, very slim and then pivoted towards university and the boring path of becoming a professional.”

    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

  14. “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? The way that our category traded would have not allowed us to IPO the business at any other point in time. First day, price completely irrelevant.”

    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