Ep184 – Adrian Osman (Co-founder & COO – Me&U) on metrics, ratios and mergers

The Startup Playbook PodcastInsights and lessons from the world's best entrepreneurs and investors Twitter Facebook YouTube Instagram Ep184 – Adrian Osman (Co-founder & COO – Me&U) on metrics, ratios and mergers May 23, 2024 rohitbhargava Podcast My guest for Episode 184 of The Startup Playbook Podcast is Adrian Osman. Adrian is the Co-founder & COO of Me&U formerly known as Mr. Yum. He started his career as the Founder of pitchblak, an agency that helped hundreds of Australian entrepreneurs to validate and test their startup ideas. From that agency, the idea of Mr. Yum was born to provide sales and marketing tools for the hospitality industry. The business found product market fit very quickly and raised a $89M Series A funding round led by Tiger Global in 2021. In late 2023, Mr. Yum merged with their largest competitor, Me&U to become the global leader in its category, collectively processing over $2B in dining transactions per year. In this interview we covered a wide range of topics including: The early days of Mr Yum Focusing on ratios over volume Lessons from raising a record $89M Series A funding round led by Tiger Global Behind the scenes look at the merger between Mr Yum and me&u and much more! Timestamps: 2:12 Adrian’s background 7:02 Lessons from early career sales roles 9:16 Adrian’s first consulting business, pitchblak 14:25 The initial idea for Mr Yum 22:29 When is the right time to speak with VC’s and how to pitch to them 27:43 The launch of Mr Yum and initial customers 37:02 Growing the business and navigating Covid 42:36 Raising a $89M Series A 46:58 Challenges scaling the business post raise 53:58 The merger between Mr Yum and me&u 1:08:13 Navigating structural changes to the company post merger 1:14:06 Learning and growing as a leader at the same rate as the company 1:18:19 Developing and sharing a compelling vision for a company as a leader 1:22:54 Building culture and high performing teams Our partners A big thank you to Kim Teo, Boden Westover and Stew Glynn for their help with this interview! Also a big shout out to our partners for the show: Scendar  Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business. Find out more at Scendar.com Vanta Vanta helps businesses get — and stay — compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in-demand compliance frameworks. And with over 300 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on.Join over six thousand fast-growing companies that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over to vanta.com/playbook to get access to this exclusive discount Links mentioned Adrian’s links Adrian on LinkedIn me&u People mentioned Kim Teo Stew Glynn Tobi Skovron Stevan Premutico Ben Horowitz – The Hard Thing About Hard Things Boden Westover Companies mentioned Optus Telstra pitchblak Uber Uber Eats Apple Google WeChat Zapier Airtable Playbook Ventures DoorDash Airtree Ten13 Tiger Global Shopify Amazon Afterpay Block Feedback/connect/say hello: [email protected]@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)My Youtube Channel Credits: Music: Paycheck Other channels: Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/startupplaybook/Ep184_-_Adrian_Osman.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download | EmbedSubscribe: RSS admin January 1, 2014 Reply Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat admin January 1, 2014 Reply Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat admin January 1, 2014 Reply Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. 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