![]() ![]() HelloFresh and replaced by a British executive. Nine months into the job, Schmincke himself ran into a visa issue he was dismissed as CEO of U.S. (The case was settled out of court.) Employees in the Rocket system were swapped out like tires on a Formula 1 racecar. Later, one intern sued, likening his internship to little more than manual labor for a $1,000 monthly stipend, far less than minimum wage. Schmincke, one of many executives Rocket kept in reserve as entrepreneurs-in-residence, was hired to become HelloFresh's new U.S. In September 2012, the startup was plotting its U.S. "You'd go up the stairs and there was a glass container, with Dominik and Thomas sitting in there, not talking to their employees, making sure no one is socially interacting with them," recalls Simon Schmincke. Lofted in the back, inside a sparse, glass-walled conference room, are Richter and Griesel, whom Richter had recruited to help start the company, silently pecking at their laptops, in mission control. The co-founders' office is set apart from all this charm. Farmhouse tables are a folksy contrast to the industrial concrete floors. Farmers' market–style, green-and-white striped awnings shelter rows of computer monitors. Inside the defunct wholesale bakery in Berlin that now houses HelloFresh's headquarters, the decor is hardly subtle in reminding you that, yes, this is a fresh-food company. If meal kits turned out to be more than a Scandinavian anomaly, he'd be able to disrupt one of the biggest industries in the world: the grocery supply chain. Now Richter had a backer, and better yet, a potentially massive opportunity. But they'd been unable to persuade investors to buy into their dreams. More recently, he and Thomas Griesel, also an MBA and a champion miler and steeplechase runner, had been pitching a daily fantasy-sports betting site for professional soccer. Over the years, he'd made attempts - there was his idea for an Airbnb-type site geared to university students and the plan for a campus-based food-delivery service. But for Richter, it was an opportunity to fulfill a vision of himself he'd nurtured since college: He wanted to be a startup founder. The meal-kit venture was a small bet for Rocket. HelloFresh (then still under the code name Jade1314) launched from Berlin in October 2011. In Sweden, the concept had proved extremely popular. A Swedish startup called Linas Matkasse sold preportioned groceries with corresponding recipe cards that arrived weekly through the mail. I am ready - anytime!"Ī new category Samwer wanted to test - and dominate - was meal kits. "Each country tells me with blood when it is time. "The time for blitzkrieg must be chosen wisely," he wrote in an email to managers of Home24, one of his clone companies that sold furniture online. Yet even as his net worth swelled, Samwer was no longer content to just plunder market share from the innovators. Rocket Internet, their four-year-old flagship company, was a veritable clone incubator, having staffed and funded more than two dozen startups. During the prior four years, he and his brothers had amassed a fortune by copycatting overseas startups, building and selling European versions of eBay, YouTube, Groupon, Facebook, and more. As one of Samwer's former executives puts it: "You could have chosen a hundred other guys - same look, same profile."Īround the time Samwer decided to activate Richter on his latest venture, the almost-billionaire was feeling restless. He had a type - MBAs from elite European business schools who had done a few years at investment banks or consulting firms, often with a serious athletic streak - and collected them. The German internet mogul was always prowling for future CEOs. It was likely all these qualities that originally caught the attention of Oliver Samwer back in 2011. ![]() "Being the one that is very structured, very motivated, very hands-on, doing everything that needs to get done." "Leading by example," he says with a German-accented lilt, explaining how he's managed to become the king of a brutally competitive industry that at its peak had more than 100 contenders. He prefers to put his head down and work. He's not a fan of work coffees or breakfast meetings or this lunch, for instance. Richter doesn't seem to much care for the social aspect of food either. "We're in the business of creating meal solutions for different meal occasions," he explains, perhaps thinking I'd never before heard of the concept called dinner. 1 meal-kit company on the planet - actually derives any gustatory pleasure from food. It's tough to discern whether Richter, the co-founder and CEO of HelloFresh - known for delivering the ingredients for Instagram-perfect home-cooked meals like Argentinian-Style Cod With Almond Herb Chimichurri and Chicken Thighs in Kimchi Sauce With Asian Pear Slaw, and now the No. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |