The new guys we have chosen to work with are Vitruvian Partners – also great for us to see we got full backing from our existing investors, thanks to Index, Greylock and Redpoint. For those that follow the European internet scene Vitruvian doesn’t pop up as the traditional VC, but more of a Private Equity company (”PE”), which is true. So, why are we suddenly getting money from spreadsheet driven PE’s instead of the sexy “big picture” VC’s? The answer is simple: it is difficult in Europe to raise that level of money from traditional VC’s. $65 Mio. is a lot of money, and well beyond the scope of the traditional VC model. In the US it is different, but if you want someone that has a European presence to support you then an important option to explore is the mid-cap growth focused PE guys with internet experience. Another argument for inviting PE’s on board is that they in general have another set of expertise and support infrastructure which is helpful in our situation.

We got – as usual, I am cocky enough to add – a fair amount of interest, and most of those potential investors were PE companies, typically US investors with a good European presence. Several of them we really liked, but we ended up with Vitruvian partly because they had a different feel to them. Of course Vitruvian offered the right terms, but several investors did – most of the people we talked to in the process were also really good people we got along with, but the specific Vitruvian guys on this transaction had a great rapport with us. It probably helped some of them in the past worked as VC’s, entrepreneurs or executives in high growth companies.

And what will we use the money for? Other than the usual jokes about corporate jets, there are only a few specific things on the list, and the rest is dependent on what happens in the future. We already run a tight ship, where we generate enough money in profitable countries to fund loss making countries. But there are so many growth opportunities out there in terms of new countries, consolidation/M&A opportunities, new technologies etc. so it makes a lot of sense to have a very strong balance sheet so we can move fast if the right opportunity arises.

Just-Eat is ready for the next chapter in our history, thanks to all who contributed so far! Back to running the business – money is nice, but the real deal is what you can do with those money, and that is all about satisfying restaurants and consumers.

One of the issues we spend some time on yesterday was “professionalism”. Several people asked questions that were related to getting more structure & planning, more defined roles & responsibilities, better coaching & training, etc., i.e. all the stuff you would expect from a professional company.

Any successful, high-growth company goes through the different phases from idea/concept, early start-up, early growth, etc., and the trick is to get it right in each of the phases which are often very different from previous phases. And if a company doesn’t adjust quickly enough to a new phase (often pro-actively pushing into the next phase), then coming to the next level is only more difficult, if not impossible.

The challenge is that people also need to change. Some people are brilliant in one phase, but out of their depth (or just not motivated) in the other phases. A few can actually master many phases, extremely few work well in all phases. Nothing new here, this has been part of the technology and management literature for many decades, but the interesting thing is that it is still so difficult to get right, and the key reason for this is that “people” don’t get it. Or rather; they might understand to some extent, but they are not actually taking the full consequence.

In Just-Eat, one of the challenges we have is that we want our culture to represent both professionalism as well as entrepreneurialism. Entrepreneurialism I believe is about energy, willingness to take risks and mental flexibility. Key elements of professionalism is for me about applying the necessary levels of intelligence and structure. Some people believe the two things are not compatible. That is absolutely not true! It gets harder as a company grows, absolutely, but if you roll over and surrender to one view then it only gets worse.

Of course sometimes the two will clash, but at a closer look it happens less often than what we normally would think. Sometimes people that are out of their depths will complain about things no longer being entrepreneurial enough, and things are now “corporate and bureaucratic”. Likewise, sometimes some would say it is difficult because a situation is not handled professionally enough, “more time/analysis/structure/money” is needed, but maybe the problem is difficulty in getting on with fixing the problem, and taking a bit of calculated risks (”sometimes” is the key word here …). In many cases where I hear one of the two sides it is more excuses than real problems. Yes, it is tough sometimes to get it right, and I don’t always have the ultimate silver bullet either, but I am certain that the two sides can live together in healthy competition. When building high growth companies it is the right thing to balance the two. The right mix will change over time, but they both need to be there. Those that believe professionalism is equal to bureaucracy lose out on major opportunities.

At the personal level, I think it is important for all who loves to participate in building and growing businesses, that you do as was stated across the Apollo Temple in Delphi: “know thyself”. Understand what part of company building you are good at, and motivated by. Don’t fool your self into believing you are great in all phases. And be happy to leave the organisation the day you can see things are no longer good for you – and move on without moaning about how the company will now be destroyed and everything was better in the old days. You could of course be right, but the future progress of the company (or lack of) will typically tell the story.

Get the balance right in your culture for each phase, and I promise you have one of the most important things in place when building and growing a company. Very banal in theory, very difficult in practice.

Here is one of the front pages covering the story – the astrounat is Rasmus. He is also the first to play the sax on the moon, but that is irrelevant for this story.

We would like to express our gratitude to our investors (yes, $4 bn is a lot of money, but how many VC’s have invested in a truly cloud penetrating company?), NASA for lending a first stage rocket (ok maybe not lending, but thanks anyway, you can get it back if you go to Latitude 2.460181, Longitude -157.500000) the Chinese for hacking into Boeing Systems and sharing with us and finally to the aliens of Planet X34Masala for transporting our slightly defunct spaceship most of the way.

What can we do with this experience, where will this take us? Mars is the obvious next frontier, but we are thinking bigger than that. There is a whole galaxy out there, Just-Eat will go universal. Come and join the first galactic internet company in our interstellar conquest. Everyone should be part of the revolution, don’t cook, just-eat is our banner.

NB: we are looking for restaurant entrepreneurs that want to set up shop on the Moon. Underlying demand right now is fairly low (the international space station is not far away, and they do like a good dim-sum), but if you are building your business for the long term, and enjoy space suits and lonely nights then this is a must. Real estate prices are low, and delivery scooters goes really-really fast.

Sorry Tanya, promise I will do better in the future …

Almost all great companies are shaped significantly by the their national background. Most people know that IBM and Google has an American feel to it, that Siemens and SAP are heavily inspired by German engineering values and Japanese diligence and discipline is still shaping Toyota. This is natural – for an illustration of what national culture can mean see e.g. here or this fascinating one tracing the origins of different languages. The trick for these companies is to sort out how their culture develops and adapt to them spreading out into the world. Successful start-ups/tech growth companies has the same challenge, but in general they are a bit more international from day one (a lot of founding teams are a mix of nationalities and cultures), but it is also helpful for them, that often they are very centralized, i.e. a dominating HQ and a big tech team all sit in one place (typically around the Bay Area) and has no need for big foot prints locally.

In the same way, the Just-Eat culture has been shaped by our history, so there are quite a lot of Danish traits, but are we therefore culturally a Danish company? No, we have strong Danish roots – and the CEO is a fanatical Danish nationalist. Being a very local company (local management teams has quite a lot of autonomy, many people works locally, etc.) means that what ever roots we might have had, these roots will come under more pressure as more and more non-Danish people are joining the company. Today, of the 8 people in our Exec Team only 2 are Danish, and among the 25 people in our Group Management Team (”GMT”) only 3 are Danish. Top of the list are the English which contribute to 8 of the GMT members.

It is interesting for me to compare this to other great (and “somewhat” bigger) companies that has originated from Denmark and are world leading companies today, and it is puzzling for me to see that they are still heavily skewed towards Danish executives at the top. I am very-very happy these companies are still mainly based in Denmark (sadly that was too risky for Just-Eat if we should accelerate and be an international success), but maybe they should consider to add a few foreigners to the upper levels of their company, e.g.  Novo Nordisk (5 execs Danish), AP Møller-Mærsk (1 of 6 execs is a foreigner – but from Norway which is very close to Danish culture), Lego (1 exec is a foreigner) and Vesta (1 exec is a foreigner). In my quick survey, Carlsberg is the one standing out, since both their top execs are Danish, but next layer has plenty of non-Danes.

Formally Just-Eat is registered in London, so are we then a British company? No, but we are influenced by our host country, especially the British humor is something we take quite seriously.

So what cultural background can we say we belong to? Today we are a mix, and the mix luckily transcends borders. We can not argue that the Just-Eat Jam is for everyone, absolutely not, but there are people all over the world that can thrive in our company. Talented people that want to build a success with other people in a frank and fun environment comes in all shapes and colors. Good for us – and good for our customers and restaurant partners. Maybe in relative terms, more people from N.W. Europe understand the quirkiness of our company, but that doesn’t change that we can find of people all over the world that can make our company tick.

My British colleagues often jokingly tell me, that now Just-Eat is a British company. I always respond they are very wrong, not because we are still a Danish company (sadly …), but because the right thing for our company is to make sure talent from all of the World can thrive in our company, and being arch British (or arch-some-other-nation) does not build the optimal platform for a tech company like ours with a clear local focus (post code by post code, etc.). Again, our company is NOT for everyone, a culture that is for everyone is not really sharing anything, and therefore such a company ends up being average and that is the first step towards being below average and so on. But the edge our culture has is not based on being “British”, it is more universal than that. And for all of those talented people out there that wants to join our company (or are already working here), it is important to know that being culturally British or Danish is not the direct way to success in our company. The path to glory in Just-Eat is more fundamental than that, and is based on our own unique blend of values that is open to all entrepreneurial and open minded people that wants to use their talent to build a great company.

I.e., we are an INTERNATIONAL company with our own, unique culture. So be it!

Sebastien launched Alloresto.fr in France all the way back in 1998 (back then called EatOnline.fr), and he is therefore the most senior person in the European online takeaway industry (maybe in the World?) – this is full 3 years before Just-Eat launched. Back then it was not really an industry, because there were hardly any players, and hardly any customers either. Alloresto has had to fight longer to prove the model works than anyone else, because Sebastien was out so early that even general e-commerce was looked at with suspicion.

Few people have the stamina to keep working on something that for the first many years is an uphill battle, but in the case of Alloresto the vision and energy eventually paid of handsomely for Sebastien and his colleagues. Especially the last 5 years he has build a big and very solid business in France. The deep insight into how things work in France plus clear leadership in the category was what made this partnership logical for us. And for Alloresto it is logical to get access to knowledge about how to quickly scale the business to the next level. Together we have spend a lot of time on a new, and very aggressive plan for how to make all of France as enthusiastic about Alloresto’s offering as the hundreds of thousands of existing customers and the 2,500 restaurant partners.

Alloresto will continue to operate under it’s current name (same model as when we partnered with RestauranteWeb in Brazil), and Sebastien will continue running the company and join Just-Eat’s Group Management Team.

At Just-Eat we are looking forward to working with Sebastian and our new French colleagues in the coming years. And visiting Paris from time to time will probably not be the worst part of my job going forward -;)

The official press release is here.

It is with great pleasure that John Hughes going forward will take an active lead of our board (official press release of John Hughes joining Just-Eat is here). It is a relief for me, that I have a wing-man of that calibre, who will take charge of a big chunk of the overall governance of the company, which frees most of my time up to focus on running the company together with the Just-Eat the team. And it is also a great support for me, that I can lean on John’s experience when handling some of the strategic issues we constantly are dealing with in our fast paced company.

Just-Eat is constantly growing, in only a few days we can e.g. say that we have partnered with the clear leader in a major European market. All this growth is exciting, but it also adds complexity, and as we add more and more investors/owners to our company, then what is called “corporate governance” with a fine word becomes important.

John not only knows from own experience how governance works, but he also adds a lot of hands-on executive/operational experience from running mid-sized as well as really big tech companies; and he also has a great strategic mindset.

John will be an important asset for our company going forward, and it’s going to be great to team up with him as we develop our company the coming years.

Welcome on board John!

• We grew our UK business to more than 10,000 active restaurants – and a looooot of orders.
• We pushed into new countries, where we are now market leaders: Brazil, India, Italy, Switzerland – and one more European country has been added via a partnership just before Christmas, details will be announced in January.
• We launched a couple of exciting new products, e.g. our mobile solution came in the beginning of 2011. It is still a fairly basic version, but it works and e.g. in the UK it is giving us more than 10% of our orders.
• We worked better than ever across countries and our ability to exchange ideas and move best practices back and forth is getting pretty good. We are really learning how to get the most out of acting local and still operating globally.
• We added a lot of good people to the company. We are now 500+ colleagues in the organisation, and many of those has arrived the last 12 months. As usual I am looking forward to saying hello to most of them at our annual World Party in May.

Of course it was not everything that went according to plan, and in some cases we even failed. For example we have to admit, that in some countries our service up time has not been good enough, e.g. our payment service providers in a couple of countries has not been living up to the standard our customers and restaurants expect from us. There has been other operational issues as well, and even though we are much better than last year, then we need to focus more on stability of all the services that makes up our tech platform.

But that was 2011, now we are ready to get the most out of the next 366 days (yep, 2012 is a leap year), and I am sure it will be exciting. I think we will run through all emotions possible, happiness, frustration, anger, joy, love, hate, etc. – but that is part of the ride when building a true, global success story. If you can’t handle that, then stay a long way away from start-up and high growth companies.

All at Just-Eat are wishing you the best in 2012, we hope to serve our customers and restaurants even better than last year.