Deliveroo, wow this company is HUGE! I’m sure most of you would have used it but do you know anything about the guy behind it? My guest this week is Will Shu, founder and CEO of Deliveroo. Born in 1979, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, Shu grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. His mother, a scientist, and father, who worked in insurance. He founded Deliveroo in 2013 with childhood friend and software engineer Greg Orlowski. Deliveroo operated in London for the first two years, growing via word of mouth. It now operates in 12 countries and more than 200 cities. Deliveroo is worth £5 billion, becoming Europes fastest growing company with 2,000+ employees. In mid-June 2016, Will and Greg received an award for the Best Startup Founders as part of The Europas Startup Conference and Awards, mainly given to technology companies. The company also received Fastest Rising Startup of the Year and the Europas Grand Prix award. In December 2017, a study by macroeconomic consultancy Capital Economics revealed that Deliveroo had helped create 7,200 jobs across the restaurant sector since it launched in 2013. It also boosted the industry's revenue by £460 million in the year to June 2017. The report also found that Deliveroo had helped add £372 million in value to the UK economy in the same 12-month period, a figure which Capital Economics projects to rise to £1.5 billion in the year to June 2019. By mid 2020, Deliveroo had not benefited from the COVID-19 pandemic, when demand for food delivery from restaurants and takeaways surged. Deliveroo reported to be cutting 367 jobs (and furloughing 50 more) from its workforce of 2,500. Will talks about how hard this decision was at the time in today's podcast. Will is an incredible entrepreneur, one thats a far cry from the usual braggadocios CEO of a multi billion dollar company. He’s a humble person and lives a very modest lifestyle saying his life hasn’t change much at all since the early days of Deliveroo. This is conversation proved to me that you don’t have to be born an entrepreneur.   Follow Will: Twitter - https://twitter.com/willshuroo Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest this week is my friend and all round good guy True Geordie, otherwise known as Brian Davis. Brian is from Newcastle upon Tyne, England. He was born on a council estate, raised mostly by his mother as he describes his father being in and out of prison and not really being the father figure he desperately needed. When Brian left home he went to work on the oil rigs, scuba diving to work on them underwater. He describes how this would put him into life or death situations on a daily basis. The colleges he gained on the oil rigs became his father figures. After leaving the oil rigs he started YouTube under the name footballfan533, and first rose to prominence when his first video (titled A True Geordie's view on Nile Ranger) went viral. Brian quickly gained a following due to his expletive and passionate opinions, and therefore changed his channel name to True Geordie, uploading more regularly. He was originally known for uploading rants about his football, but has since become best-known for the eponymous True Geordie Podcast, hosted by himself and his best friend Laurence McKenna. Geordie was chosen the host and commentator for the KSI V Joe Weller fight in February 2018. He had previously been a commentator for some of the charity football matches.  I met Brian back in 2017 to record his podcast, we recorded it in a tiny abandoned bomb shelter that he paid £50 a day to rent out. Brian has come a long way since then, running a rapidly growing Youtube channel thats accumulating millions upon millions of views per week, he’s commentated on one of the largest Youtube events in history and he’s also created some of the best content I’ve ever seen. All of this was quickly ripped away from him last year after one of the hardest weeks of his life, something we talk a lot about today. He’s gone through it all, been to the darkest of places, anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. However this didn’t stop him getting back on his feet and rebuilding himself from the ground up, coming back bigger and better than before. Follow Brian: YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/TrueGeordie Twitter - https://twitter.com/TrueGeordieTG Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/TrueGeordieOfficial Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices