From investment banker to delivery man: how Deliveroo chief Will Shu built a US$2 billion company

Deliveroo's teal-coloured kangaroo logo is a familiar sight for many in Hong Kong, especially for hungry office workers who need a quick bite to eat while working late or for those at home who want a plate of food delivered before settling down to watch the next instalment of their favourite Netflix show.

All around Hong Kong, motorcycle riders equipped with a Deliveroo top box can be seen zipping in and out of traffic as they race to deliver piping hot meals to hungry customers. The company began life as a scrappy start-up in London but today it has a presence in over 200 cities across Europe, the Middle East and Asia – where it has operations in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan.

Deliveroo was founded in 2013 by Taiwanese-American Will Shu and childhood friend Greg Orlowski. Shu, a 38 year-old former investment banking analyst at Morgan Stanley, came up with the idea to start Deliveroo when he was working overtime in London and saw that there were a lack of suitable food delivery options.

When Shu started Deliveroo, they managed to convince just three restaurants to be part of their service. For the first eight months he was also the firm's first delivery person, delivering food for five hours every day to better understand customer needs.

“My friends would order all the time just to see me deliver food because they thought it was super funny,” Shu recounted in an interview with UK site Startups in 2016. “They were bankers and they thought it was really comical but they kept ordering so that was cool.”